Prof Hiram Samel

I joined the Saïd Business School in August 2013. I bring extensive management experience to my research, having been an entrepreneur for 25 years before receiving my PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013. My work, in conjunction with colleagues at MIT, on the process and pathways American entrepreneurial firms take in scaling novel production-related technologies has attracted the interest of US policymakers and is highlighted in two books from the MIT Press on Production in the Innovative Economy as well as an article in Mechanical Engineering. Based on this research, President Obama recently introduced a $10 billion public-private matched fund for manufacturing scale-ups into the 2016 U.S. Budget.

I am particularly interested in how firms and states manage in external environments characterised by a high degree of market, technological and/or regulatory uncertainty. Currently, I am examining how entrepreneurial firms compete in global technology markets. My present focus is in two areas, 1) the clean energy, semiconductor, electronics, biopharma and advanced materials industries, and 2) digital platforms in the sharing economy. Within these areas, I am studying how company strategies interact with larger national policy goals of social and economic development, especially during global expansion.

My recent research focuses on how technology entrepreneurship and the resultant division of innovative labour occur across nations. I am particularly interested in how national policies of innovation and production, stated or not, impact company strategies and the corresponding effect these strategies have on the larger goals of economic and social development. I combine micro-level fieldwork, informed by my entrepreneurial experience, with meso-level institutional analysis. Given the complex nature of global technology industries, my research draws on multiple disciplines including comparative political economy, technology strategy, the economics of innovation and labour studies.

Economics and Management

• Hiram M. Samel (2015) The Third Globalization: Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich in the Twenty-First Century? Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 68 (5) pp. 1223-1225.
• Greg Distelhorst, Richard M. Locke, Timea Pal and Hiram M. Samel (2015) Production Goes Global, Compliance Stays Local: Private Regulation in the Global Electronics Industry Regulation & Governance, 9 (3) pp. 224-242.
• Tim Bartley, Sebastian Koos, Hiram M. Samel, Gustavo Setrini and Nick Summers (2015) Looking Behind the Label: Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer Indiana University Press
• Elisabeth B. Reynolds, Hiram M. Samel and Joyce Lawrence (2014) Learning by Building: Complementary Assets and the Migration of Capabilities in US Innovative Firms In: Locke, Richard M. and Wellhausen, Rachel L. (eds.) Production in the Innovation Economy, MIT Press, pp. 81-108
• Elisabeth B. Reynolds, Hiram M. Samel and Joyce Lawrence (2014) Learning by Building: Complementary Assets and the Migration of Capabilities in U.S. Innovative Firms
• In: Locke, Richard M. and Wellhausen, Rachel L. (eds.) Production in the Innovation Economy, MIT Press, pp. 81-108