Principal Investigators and R&D Failure: Probability of Innovation Failure in Small Business (1st ed. 2023) (Academic Entrepreneurship, Scientists, and Scientific Careers)

By: Morgan Boyce

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Synopsis: Failure in R&D efforts are fairly common and with many factors that contribute to the outcome. This book focuses on the role of principal investigators (PIs) in R&D project failures and provides a theoretical model explaining how firm characteristics, including those of the PIs, impact the probability of failure. The theoretical model also serves as a structural form model to motivate the empirical analysis which assesses the probability of failure in small technology-based firms. The author uses data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to build a new and informative tool to assess R&D projects and demonstrate the strengths of the theoretical model. The association between PIs and R&D failure not only provides insights that can have a downstream impact to economic growth, but it can also provide policymakers with valuable information to aid decisions in allocating funds for R&D.