The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) cordially invites you and your guests to an invitation-only roundtable with two research pioneers at Stanford University on drivers for innovation and entrepreneurship of Silicon Valley.

This roundtable is designed to bring together a small circle of the Valley's leading executives, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, and Stanford faculty for an in-depth, off-the-record  conversation.  Your participation and insights  will inform future research at Stanford on topics relevant for the future sustainability of the Valley.

CHARLES EESLEY Assistant Professor Department of Managament Sciences and Engineering Stanford University Charles Eesley, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Management Sciences and Engineering, Stanford University

SHAI BERNSTEIN Assistant Professor of Finance Stanford Graduate School of Business Shai Bernstein, Assistant Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business

8:30AM: Welcome and Introductions

8:40AM-9:30AM: "Stanford University’s Economic Impact via Innovation and Entrepreneurship"

Topic for discussion:

• How do various key institutions of the Valley's ecosystem, such as Stanford, contribute to real economic outcomes in innovation and entrepreneurship?
• How can they be measured? What has been Stanford's economic impact?
• How has it changed over time? What light does this new analysis shed on changes and vulnerabilities for the Valley going forward?

Charles Eesley will share the results of a newly-released study that puts into perspective the sheer scale of Stanford's economic impact. In this systematic survey of Stanford alumni and faculty conducted by Eesley and SPRIE co-director William F. Miller, it is estimated that companies formed by Stanford entrepreneurs generate world revenue of $2.7 trillion annually and have created 5.4 million jobs since the 1930s. In addition to quantifying Stanford’s economic impact, the report examines Stanford’s role in fostering entrepreneurship and describes how the university creates an ecosystem that encourages creativity and entrepreneurship across schools and disciplines.

Moderator: William F. Miller, SPRIE Co-director; Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Discussant: Dixon Doll, Co-Founder and General Partner, DCM

Roundtable Discussion: All

9:30AM - 10:20AM: "Does Going Public Affect Innovation?"

After going public, how do firms perform in innovative activities, such as internal innovative projects, inventors' turnover, and reliance on acquisition of external technologies? Is the overall"IPO effect" positive or negative for a firms' innovation? Why? What implications does this have for innovation strategies in Silicon Valley?

Shai Bernstein will share his new findings on the "IPO effect" by comparing the long-run innovation of …firms that completed their filing and went public with that of …firms that withdrew their filing and remained private due to exogenous reasons. Using standard patent-based metrics, the results illustrate that the quality of internal innovation of public firms declines by 40 percent relative to …firms that remained private. He will discuss the reasons why and public leads firms to change their strategies in pursuing innovation.

Moderator: Henry S. Rowen, SPRIE Co-director; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Discussant: Bob Pavey, Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures

Roundtable Discussion: All

10:20AM-10:30AM: Wrap-up Discussion

All participants should RSVP by Wednesday, October 31.

Any further questions, please contact Yan Mei at yanmei@stanford.edu, or 650.725.1885.

About the seminar

Does labor mobility matter for innovation more in some countries than in others? Based on theoretical considerations of the economic systems literature we argue that labor flexibility has different innovation effects depending on national-level institutions. This talk further argues that institutional constraints may be encountered by creating functional equivalents. The analysis is based on career histories in the videogames industry. The videogames industry is structured differently between the best performing countries U.S. and Japan. This raises two issues on human capital diversity: How does composition of human capital affect innovation? How do people react towards institutional constraints in the labor market? Contrasting approaches on the systematic relations between the structure of labor markets and the dynamics of innovation is first introduced, the seminar will then present an empirical case which is based on the career histories of 39.439 videogame developers between 1999 and 2009.

This talk is part of the seminar series hosted by by the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (STAJE) at Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and sponsored by The Miner Foundation.

About the speaker

Cornelia Storz is Professor for the Study of Economic Institutions and East Asian Development at the University of Frankfurt, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, and affiliated to the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO). She is associate researcher of the EHESS, Paris.

Her research focuses on comparative institutional analysis, innovation and industry emergence. With scholarships of JSPS, JILPT, BMBF and others she has been invited to the University of Tokyo, the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training, the RIETI at METI, the Hitotsubashi University, the Stanford Graduate Business School and others. She was granted research funds by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Wolfgang Ritter Foundation, the Japan Foundation and others.

Recent papers have been published in Research Policy, ZfB and Social Science Japan Journal. She is co-editing a special section of Research Policy on “Path Dependence and Emergence of New Industries” and a special issue of Socio Economic Review on “Asian Capitalism” (both forthcoming). She is co-author of Institutional Diversity and Innovation. Continuing and Emerging Patterns in Japan and China  (Routledge, 2011) and co-editor of Institutional Variety in East Asia. Formal and informal patterns of coordination (Edward Elgar, 2011). She is co-organiser of the SASE network “Asian Capitalisms” and member of executive committee of the European Research Network EJARN, based at the Stockholm Schools of Economics.

About the seminar

This talk will describe new research showing that bankruptcy law reforms affect the rate of founding by well-educated and older entrepreneurs and the performance of their ventures.

The seminar will show the results of a natural experiment in Japan where changes to bankruptcy laws reduced the consequences of closing a company to find that:

1. likelihood of bankruptcy increases, especially for firms founded by elite entrepreneurs
2. elite entrepreneurs form an increasing proportion of the new firms
3. new firm performance increases as these elite entrepreneurs are more likely to found higher performing firms.

While prior research emphasizes the lowering of entry barriers, our work suggests that reducing the "barriers to failure" can stimulate venture formation among elite individuals leading to higher performing firms. Overall, we find that legal reforms that reduce failure barriers encourage "better", not just 'more", entrepreneurs to found ventures.

This talk is part of the seminar series hosted by the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (STAJE) at Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneruship, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and sponsored by The Miner Foundation.

Paul Collier will talk about how to manage the difference between helpful and damaging commercialisation, and puts forth three arguments. First, we need to face the tough reality that African food production has failed to keep pace with demand over the course of several decades, suggesting that there is a deep problem with respect to innovation and investment given the way African agriculture has been organised. Second, we need to accept that climate change, population growth, and income gains from natural resources will all stress this imbalance further: the prospect is for widening food deficits with business as usual. Third, two major changes are afoot. Globally, the model of commercial tropical agriculture pioneered in Brazil has demonstrated that output can be raised very substantially by changing the mode of organisation. Africa is now starting to open land markets to large foreign management. Superficially this looks like Brazil2, but it may instead be a wave of speculative acquisitions triggered by the price peaks of 2008.

Collier is the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. He is currently Advisor to the Strategy and Policy Department of the IMF, advisor to the Africa Region of the World Bank; and he has advised the British Government on its recent White Paper on economic development policy. He has been writing a monthly column for the Independent, and also writes for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural-resources rich societies.

Derek Byerlee's talk will lay out a number of models of inclusive agribusiness growth, grouped into three categories (i) institutional arrangements for improving productivity of smallholders operating in spot markets, (ii) various types of contract farming arrangements, and (iii) large-scale farms that generate jobs and/or include community equity shares. The institutional and policy context as well as commodity characteristics that favor these models are discussed within a simple transactions cost framework. He will also discuss cross-cutting policy priorities to enable the growth of commercial agriculture and agribusiness. These include continuing reforms to liberalize product and input markets, access to technology and skills, stimulating financial and risks markets, securing land rights, and investment in infrastructure through public-private partnerships. 

Byerlee has dedicated his career to agriculture in developing countries, as a teacher, researcher, administrator and policy advisor. He has lived and worked for a total of 20 years in the three major developing regions-Africa, Asia, and Latin America. After beginning in academia at Michigan State University, he spent the bulk of his career at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). There as a economist and research manager he made notable contributions in forging a new spirit of collaboration between scientists, economists and farmers. He also published widely on efficiency of research systems, spillovers, and sustaining productivity in post green revolution agriculture. After joining the World Bank in 1994, he has applied his experience of research systems to finding innovative approaches to funding and organizing agricultural research, including emerging challenges in biotechnology policy. Since 2003, he has provided strategic direction and led policy world for the agricultural and rural sector in the World Bank.