Strategy, Organization & Innovation

Luis
A. Rios

Assistant Professor of Strategy

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business

Purdue University

Editorial Board — Strategic Management Journal

Editorial Board — Organization Science

Research Program

The Architecture of Adaptation

Strategy scholarship has long assumed that firms can fluidly adjust their boundaries and innovation strategies as markets shift. My research challenges that premise. I investigate the structural, environmental, and historical frictions that govern how firms actually adapt — or fail to.

By combining large-sample econometrics, network analysis, and computational modeling, I open the black box of the firm to show how organizational structure shapes the fundamental boundaries of innovation. What emerges is a counterintuitive finding: the structural choices that optimize a firm for long-run survival are precisely those that prevent it from adapting when it matters most.

Research Agenda Publications Curriculum Vitae

Research Agenda

Stream A

The Structure of Innovation and Firm Boundaries

How do external environments and formal organizational design dictate what a firm can invent, acquire, and appropriate?

External capital market development drives the formation of internal corporate groups — environment shapes structure before strategy does. Management Science, 2013
Structural coherence determines innovation strategy: centralized firms extract value from internal R&D; decentralized firms rely on external knowledge and acquisitions. A novel patent-assignment measure establishes this empirically at scale. Strategic Management Journal, 2014
Formal R&D authority decisions cascade to the lab floor, reshaping the informal inventor networks that actually produce innovation — with a multi-year lag that reveals the depth of organizational inertia. Strategic Management Journal, 2020
Near-decomposable and tightly integrated network topologies accelerate within-firm follow-on innovation, determining who wins the race to build on prior invention. Strategic Management Journal, 2025
Peripheral inventor networks serve as experimental space; "temporal brokers" who move across network boundaries are the critical mechanism for injecting exploratory novelty into the core. Working Paper — SMJ target

Stream B

Path Dependence, Imprinting, and the Survival–Adaptation Tradeoff

How do early shocks and knowledge complexity permanently lock firms into strategic trajectories — and what does that cost them?

Firms with high internal fit absorb new external knowledge more slowly — not due to cognitive or social barriers, but through a structural tug-of-war between incumbent routines and new hires that persists through mutual learning dynamics. Strategic Management Journal, 2025
A firm's reliance on technological acquisitions is not a continuously rational choice. It is a path-dependent trajectory locked in during the brief "plastic" window following an IPO, and persists for decades regardless of subsequent market conditions. Strategic Management Journal, 2021 — Solo authored
Early natural disaster exposure imprints high-growth ventures with structural fluidity, enabling precise IPO market timing — but at a significant long-term mortality cost. Organization Science — 3rd Round R&R
Group-based trajectory modeling across thousands of firms reveals the macro tradeoff: persistent transactional reconfiguration patterns maximize survival rates while imposing severe market valuation penalties. Working Paper — Strategy Science target

Publications & Working Papers

Peer-Reviewed Publications

2025

When Do Firms Learn By Hiring? How Complexity Moderates the Value of New Knowledge

Pham, D.N., Rios, L.A., & Workiewicz, M. · Strategic Management Journal

Computational modeling reveals a counterintuitive mechanism of inertia: firms with high internal fit face greater difficulty absorbing external knowledge due to a persistent structural resistance between incumbent employees and new hires — independent of cognitive or social constraints.

SMJ

2025

On the Heels of Giants: Internal Network Structure and the Race to Build on Prior Innovation

Argyres, N., Rios, L.A., & Silverman, B.S. · Strategic Management Journal

Specific network topologies — near-decomposability and integration — govern the speed at which firms build on their own knowledge. Evidence from patent data across 1,417 large corporations over 26 years. Acceleration effects are strongest in the critical years immediately following an initial invention.

SMJ

2021

On the Origin of Technological Acquisition Strategy: The Interaction Between Organizational Plasticity and Environmental Munificence

Rios, L.A. · Strategic Management Journal · Solo authored

A firm's acquisitiveness is not a fluid rational choice. Using 1,201 IPO firms observed over 20 years, this paper establishes that favorable conditions during the plastic window of a firm's founding permanently lock it into acquisitive trajectories — with persistence that no subsequent market shift can reverse.

Solo

2020

Organizational Change and the Dynamics of Innovation: Formal R&D Structure and Intrafirm Inventor Networks

Argyres, N., Rios, L.A., & Silverman, B.S. · Strategic Management Journal

Formal R&D authority changes propagate through informal inventor networks over a multi-year lag. Centralization increases inventor connectedness, which in turn broadens innovation impact and technological search — revealing organizational structure as an active lever on research behavior.

SMJ

2014

Make, Buy, Organize: The Interplay Between Research, External Knowledge, and Firm Structure

Arora, A., Belenzon, S., & Rios, L.A. · Strategic Management Journal · 342 citations

Develops a patent-assignment-based measure of R&D decentralization to demonstrate that organizational structure dictates the mode of innovation: centralized firms extract value from internal R&D; decentralized firms rely on external knowledge. Structure and innovation strategy must be studied together.

SMJ

2013

Capital Markets and Firm Organization: How Financial Development Shapes European Corporate Groups

Belenzon, S., Berkowitz, T., & Rios, L.A. · Management Science · 178 citations

Using firm-level data across 15 countries, demonstrates that underdeveloped external capital markets drive corporate group formation — establishing the macro-environmental origins of firm boundary decisions before strategy scholars have a chance to observe them.

Under Review

R&R

Early Environmental Shocks and Organizational Reconfiguration in High-Growth Ventures

Dutta, S., Nahm, J., & Rios, L.A. · Organization Science — Third-Round Revise & Resubmit

Natural disaster exposure during a venture's formative period imprints it with structural fluidity — enabling precise IPO market timing, but at the cost of significantly elevated long-term mortality risk. The same reconfiguration capacity that creates early advantage becomes a survival liability at scale.

R&R

Persistent Strategies and Performance: The Moderating Role of the Environment

Jena, D., McGrath, P., & Rios, L.A. · Preparing for Strategy Science

Group-based trajectory modeling across thousands of firms uncovers a fundamental macro-tradeoff: firms locked into persistent transactional reconfiguration patterns achieve the highest survival rates while suffering the steepest market valuation penalties. Survival and value creation pull in opposite directions.

Core vs. Periphery Inventors: Differential Contributions to the Exploration/Exploitation Dilemma

Argyres, N., Rios, L.A., & Silverman, B.S. · Preparing for Strategic Management Journal

Peripheral inventor networks function as the firm's vital experimental space. "Temporal brokers" — inventors who move across network boundaries over time — are the critical transport mechanism for injecting exploratory novelty into the core, resolving the core-periphery innovation paradox.

Organization Design and Learning in the Remote Era

Pham, D.N., Rios, L.A., & Workiewicz, M. · Strategic Management Journal — Invited Reject & Resubmit

Computational modeling demonstrates that remote work improves outcomes in simple, stable environments but degrades organizational learning severely in complex, turbulent ones — requiring fundamental structural reorganization to mitigate, not surface-level policy adjustment.

R&R

LuisA. Rios