Postdoc Danielle Bovenberg Honored for Research on Technical Knowledge Diffusion

Danielle Bovenberg, a postdoctoral research associate in organizational behavior, has won the 2024 Giarratini Rising Star Best Paper Award from the Industry Studies Association (ISA) for her working paper “Sharing Solutions without Spilling Secrets: The Role of Technicians in the Diffusion of Knowledge at Innovation Frontiers.”

The award recognizes a paper by an early-career scholar that demonstrates “significant personal investment” in researching a particular industry’s institutions and markets.

The diffusion of technical knowledge is important for innovation at innovation frontiers such as green energy and pharmaceutical development. But competition among companies can disincentivize individual researchers from collaborating.

In a multi-year ethnographic study, Bovenberg focused on three semiconductor R&D facilities used by different organizations including startups, universities, and Fortune 500 companies. She found that these facilities' staff technicians and engineers, who possess expertise in shared equipment but are not affiliated with specific innovators, are able to provide solutions to common problems without compromising the proprietary knowledge and strategies of individual researchers. While technical support occupations are often overlooked in scholarship on high-tech innovation, Bovenberg argued that they play a vital role in accelerating industry-wide advancements.

Bovenberg, who came to Yale SOM after earning her PhD in technology management from the University of California, Santa Barbara, was recently named a Rising Star by Stanford’s Management Science and Engineering Department. She is also a finalist for the ISA’s annual dissertation award. Her research focuses on the diffusion of knowledge in technologically complex industries.