Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Both young and old firms adopt new technologies, but the firms’ growth depends on how difficult the technology is to implement organizationally. Technologies that require large shifts in occupational mix and coordination favor younger firms with fewer organizational frictions, but when new technologies fit existing organizational practices, older firms perform as well as younger ones.
Zhiguo He, the James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, argues that the challenge is not invention, but implementation. He presented his research at the Fink Center for Finance’s seventh annual Conference on Financial Markets, followed by remarks by Gustavo Manso, the Marie-France and Rene Kern Chancellor’s Chair in Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. He introduced a formal model and industry-level data combining O*NET occupational measures, breakthrough patents, firm age, venture capital investment and growth outcomes to reveal findings that have implications for innovation strategy, organizational design, and how established firms can respond to technological change.
The annual conference, hosted by UCLA Anderson School of Management, combines theoretical and methodological rigor with timely policy relevance. Anderson’s leadership tenets include directly confronting both the opportunities and dangers of AI in academic scholarship, while fostering critical dialogue on how institutions must adopt ethical standards for evaluation, disclosure, transparency and accountability in an AI‑accelerated research environment.
00:00 Introduction
00:07 Presentation
23:05 Discussion
35:20 Concluding Remarks
Learn more about the Fink Center’s annual Conference on Financial Markets:
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/about/centers/fink-center-for-finance/news-and-events/conference-financial-markets
#adaptation #VC #datascience
Both young and old firms adopt new technologies, but the firms’ growth depends on how difficult the technology is to implement organizationally. Technologies that require large shifts in occupational mix and coordination favor younger firms with fewer organizational frictions, but when new technologies fit existing organizational practices, older firms perform as well as younger ones.
Zhiguo He, the James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, argues that the challenge is not invention, but implementation. He presented his research at the Fink Center for Finance’s seventh annual Conference on Financial Markets, followed by remarks by Gustavo Manso, the Marie-France and Rene Kern Chancellor’s Chair in Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. He introduced a formal model and industry-level data combining O*NET occupational measures, breakthrough patents, firm age, venture capital investment and growth outcomes to reveal findings that have implications for innovation strategy, organizational design, and how established firms can respond to technological change.
The annual conference, hosted by UCLA Anderson School of Management, combines theoretical and methodological rigor with timely policy relevance. Anderson’s leadership tenets include directly confronting both the opportunities and dangers of AI in academic scholarship, while fostering critical dialogue on how institutions must adopt ethical standards for evaluation, disclosure, transparency and accountability in an AI‑accelerated research environment.
00:00 Introduction
00:07 Presentation
23:05 Discussion
35:20 Concluding Remarks
Learn more about the Fink Center’s annual Conference on Financial Markets:
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/about/centers/fink-center-for-finance/news-and-events/conference-financial-markets
#adaptation #VC #datascience
