Ideas Made to Matter
Triumph of the underdog: How to beat the odds as a startup
Nike, Netflix, and Amazon are global powerhouses, but they all were once the new business on the block. Here’s how they beat the odds as startups.
Aug 31, 2022
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Birger Wernerfelt
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Birger Wernerfelt is the J. C. Penney Professor of Management Science Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Wernerfelt has held teaching positions and has done research in marketing at MIT Sloan, in economics at the University of Copenhagen, and in strategy at Northwestern University and at the University of Michigan. His current research compares alternative ways of trading services.
Wernerfelt holds a BA in philosophy and an MA in economics from the University of Copenhagen and a DBA in managerial economics from Harvard University.
Publications
Featured Publication
"The Comparative Advantages of Firms, Markets, and Contracts: A Unified Theory."Wernerfelt, Birger. Economica Vol. 82, No. 326 (2015): 350-367. Download Paper.
Featured Publication
"Internalization of Advertising Services: Testing a Theory of the Firm."Wernerfelt, Birger, Alvin Silk, and Shuyi Yu. Marketing Science Vol. 40, No. 5 (2021): 946-963. Download Preprint.
"Diversified Firms: Existence and Behaviors."
Wernerfelt, Birger. Journal of Institutional Economics Vol. 18, No. 3 (2022): 345-360. Download PDF. Download Preprint.
"When Does the Underdog Win?"
Wernerfelt, Birger. Strategy Science Vol. 7, No. 1 (2022): 1-9. Download Preprint.
"A Possible Micro-Foundation for the RBV and Its Implications."
Wernerfelt, Birger. Strategic Management Review Vol. 1, No. 1 (2020): 145-158. Download Paper.
"How Do Successful Scholars Get Their Best Research Ideas?"
Cao, Cathy, Xinyu Cao, Matthew Cashman, Madhav Kumar, Artem Timoshenko, Jeremy Yang, Shuyi Yu, Jerry Zhang, Yuting Zhu, and Birger Wernerfelt. Marketing Letters Vol. 30, No. 3 (2019): 221-232. Download Paper.
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