Felix Poege’s website

2025 Sebastian Hoenen Research Prize

2025-09-20T10:00:21+02:00

I am deeply grateful to have received the 2025 Sebastian Hoenen Research Prize from the SEI Consortium. The prize is awarded annually in recognition of scholarly contributions in strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

More information about the prize and past recipients can be found on the SEI Consortium website.

Forthcoming in Management Science: ‘Filling the Gap’

2025-06-27T10:43:51+02:00

Great news! The paper “Filling the Gap: The Consequences of Collaborator Loss in Corporate R&D” (see here for details) is forthcoming in Management Science.

MInERS seminar with Thomas Hellmann on June 10, 2025

2025-04-04T11:11:12+02:00

For the next installment of our Milan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Seminar Series, we have Prof. Thomas Hellmann (Oxford) speaking on “The Burden of University Equity Stakes for Spin-outs: Evidence from the UK”. The presentation will be followed by a discussion by Nicola Redi (Obloo Ventures).

The event will take place June 10, 2025, 16:30, at University of Milan – La Statale, Via Conservatorio, 7 - Room 5, Milan, MI 20122, and will be followed by a complimentary aperitivo.

For more details and a registration link, see here.

MInERS seminar with Paola Criscuolo on Dec 16, 2024

2024-11-12T09:11:10+01:00

For the next installment of our budding Milan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Seminar Series, we have Prof. Paola Criscuolo (Imperial College) speaking on “Innovation in large organizations: the role of autonomy and bottom-up inventions”.

The event will take place December 16, 16:00, at Bicocca University, Piazza Ateneo Nuovo 1, Room: U6-29, and will be followed by a complimentary aperitivo.

For more details and a registration link, see here.

AOM Best Paper (& new WP!) Competing for Talent: Large Firms and Startup Growth

2024-03-31T13:11:10+02:00

Excited that an abridged version of our working paper “Competing for Talent: Large Firms and Startup Growth” will be included in the “Academy of Management Proceedings” because it was selected as a ‘best paper’ (top 10% of submissions).

The full paper, which we recently released as a working paper, can be found here: SSRN. Further information are available on the research page, and a short Twitter summary is here.

Paper abstract: This paper explores the impact of large firms’ hiring in local labor markets on the salaries offered by startups and on startup growth and performance. We analyze firm data matched to help-wanted ads and find strong evidence of “crowding out.” A standard deviation increase in the share of ads posted by large firms raises startup pay offers by 5-10% for critical managerial, STEM, and sales jobs, and it reduces expected startup growth by 36%. Crowding is diminished by employee mobility and by spillovers to startups in closely related businesses. It is increased by big firm markups, which may have a large effect on startups. Results are robust to a shift-share instrumental variable strategy. Crowding has important implications for firm strategy, regional policy, and for understanding the slowdown in the aggregate growth of startup firms.

New working paper! Innovation and Competition: The Breakup of IG Farben

2022-09-20T00:31:01+02:00

Released as working paper: “Competition and Innovation: The Breakup of IG Farben” SSRN. Further information are available on the research page. The paper was discussed in an article in the major German newspaper FAZ.

The relationship between competition and innovation is difficult to disentangle, as exogenous variation in market structure is rare. The 1952 breakup of Germany’s leading chemical company, IG Farben, represents such a disruption. After the Second World War, the Allies occupying Germany imposed the breakup because of IG Farben’s importance for the German war economy instead of standard antitrust concerns. In technology areas where the breakup reduced concentration, patenting increased strongly, driven by domestic firms unrelated to IG Farben. An analysis of patent texts shows that an increased propensity to patent does not drive the effect. Descriptively, IG Farben’s successors increased their patenting activities as well, and their patenting specialized relative to the pre-breakup period. The results are consistent with a breakup-induced innovation increase by the IG Farben successors, which then spilled over to the wider chemical industry.

Otto Hahn Medal

2022-06-26T11:12:13+02:00

I received the Otto Hahn Medal, the dissertation award of the Max Planck Society, for my dissertation on “Corporate Innovation – The Role of Scientific Discoveries, Taxation and Antitrust”. The dissertation makes important contributions to the analysis of innovation processes, in particular the impact of competition on innovation outcomes.

The Max Planck Society has been awarding the prize for outstanding scientific achievements, named after the „father of nuclear chemistry” Otto Emil Hahn (1879–1968), since 1978. The prize is endowed with 7,500 euros and is intended to motivate young talented scientists to pursue a research career.

The Otto Hahn Medal for Young Scientists was awarded at the Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society on 22 June 2022 in Berlin.

New working paper! Profit Taxation, R&D Spending and Innovation

2022-01-09T17:13:13+01:00

New working paper released: Profit Taxation, R&D Spending, and Innovation. For details, look on the research page or directly at CEPR.

Postdoc at TPRI (Boston University)

2021-06-10T13:40:00+02:00

I am very excited to start a position as Postdoctoral Associate at the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at Boston University Law.

Call for papers - 3rd Research on Innovation, Science and Entrepreneurship (RISE3) Workshop

2020-07-24T20:49:41+02:00

Annual workshop for Ph.D. students and Junior Post-docs in Economics and Management on the 17/18 December 2020 in Munich, Germany.

We strive to stimulate a rigorous in-depth discussion of a select number of research papers. We offer Ph.D. students and Junior Post-docs an opportunity to present their work, receive feedback from experienced researchers and connect with peers from other renowned research institutions.

The keynote speaker of the RISE3 Workshop is Rosemarie Ziedonis (Boston University & NBER).

Find more details on the workshop website. Also, have a look at the Call for Papers.

Submission deadline: August 30th, 2020