Events

Dr. Cheng Gao
NBD Bancorp Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Assistant Professor of Strategy
Ross School Of Business
University Of Michigan

ABSTRACT

In category-defying nascent industries, uncertainty over which regulatory agency has jurisdiction is often a major source of dependence for pioneering organizations. How do organizations manage regulatory jurisdictional uncertainty? We conduct an inductive, in-depth qualitative research study on how organizations pioneering the nascent cultivated-meat industry effectively navigate jurisdictional uncertainty. Drawing on hand-collected semi-structured interviews as well as extensive archival data and field work, we uncover stratagems and processes that entrepreneurial ventures and organizations deploy to induce, manage, and influence contestation over regulatory jurisdiction. Our resulting theoretical framework, organized around three phases consisting of jurisdictional uncertainty, jurisdictional contestation, and jurisdictional convergence, unpacks the underlying mechanisms of such strategies and theorizes how they enable organizations to manage overlapping regulators and ultimately influence the regulatory scaffolding of an emergent nascent industry. A unique aspect of our study is that it examines the rich interactions and dynamics between the wide range of disparate actors that comprise new technology-enabled industries: new ventures, incumbents, non-profit organizations, and regulators. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for research on entrepreneurial strategy, non-market strategy, organization theory, and technological innovation. More generally, it provides a fresh perspective on how organizations navigate and shape the uncertain nascent markets in which they attempt to create.