Yun Fong Lim said he was “thrilled” when the Financial Times reported that his academic paper on last-mile delivery had been cited in e-commerce company eBay’s patent application.
“We had many conversations with companies, including DHL, during our investigation to learn about the issue,” said Mr Lim, a professor of operations management at Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business. “We are happy to see that our research is having some impact.” Lim’s co-authors are Lee Kong Chian’s colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hsin Fan and Qiyuan Deng It was.
economies of scale
Data provided by patent search firm The Lens shows the top papers cited in patent applications and serves as one way to measure the practical value of business school research. Lim and his co-authors’ paper, “Urban integration centers or peer-to-peer platforms? Solutions for urban last-mile delivery,” was published in the journal Production and Operations Management.
Having a central delivery hub known as an urban consolidation center (UCC) in a city is better than using a system where individual drivers respond to customer orders (placed on an app) and pick up goods from stores. We conclude that it may also be superior. We will deliver the food to the restaurant and deliver it to your address. This is known as a peer-to-peer system and increases delivery costs for carriers. This central approach not only saves money but also helps reduce traffic and pollution in the city.
The authors found that the UCC model also allows for better economies of scale through integration, with greater efficiency in mitigating social-environmental impacts when the number of carriers involved is large. However, when variable delivery costs are low, peer-to-peer platforms are advantageous because they reduce overhead and can quickly adapt to changing demands.
“Last-mile delivery is the most challenging area of an online retailer’s business process, and many e-commerce startups cannot survive because the last-mile delivery cost is too high,” Lim explains. . “The margins for last-mile delivery are low, so the question is: which business models can make last-mile delivery both economically and environmentally sustainable?
“That sparked my interest in this field, and knowing that our paper was cited in a patent application is a great motivation to pursue meaningful research that has practical impact. It is always more rewarding to work on a research project based on a context. This increases the opportunities for us to interact with industry and also increases the interest of our students when sharing their research findings in the classroom. ”
Impact on social media
Among the papers The Lens identified as cited in two patents is “Does Social Media Accelerate Product Recalls?” Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Industry,” lectures by Hua Xiarui, Professor of Computer and Information Systems at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, Yang Gao from the Singapore Management University, and Wenjing Duan from the George Washington University. The paper, published in the journal Information Systems Research, concludes that when people discuss drug issues on social media, drug companies can recall those drugs faster.
In this study, we used discrete-time survival analysis of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug recall reports and social media data to identify two key mechanisms by which social media influences the recall process. Side effects also have the publicity effect of pressuring drug companies and regulators to act quickly, since problems can be reported more quickly than the FDA’s own reporting system.
The authors were unaware that their paper was cited in granted patents, including one by credit card company Capital One. “We are glad that practitioners find this research exciting and valuable for their patents, and that our research has an impact beyond traditional metrics such as publications and citations by other papers. It has been proven that it has a positive impact,” says Rui. “I feel like we need more dialogue. I can imagine all the possibilities if ideas and innovations flowed more smoothly and more frequently between academics and practitioners.”
Rui argues that the impact of research is ultimately determined by the intellectual or practical importance of the research questions asked, not where the research is published. “It’s natural for us academics to think about publication when we start a new research project, but we have to put it on the back burner,” he says. “I encourage young people to tackle big questions and difficult problems, which will ultimately create a greater impact.”
Supporting innovation by bridging research and patents
Developed by social enterprise Cambia, The Lens aims to change how academic research connects to industry innovation. “This is an open platform for discovery and analysis across a corpus of patent and academic literature metadata,” said Mark Garlinghouse, director of business development. He believes The Lens is unique in that it is “open, verifiable and privacy guaranteed.”
After more than 20 years of development, The Lens holds data on more than 272 million academic works, more than 155 million global patents, and nearly 500 million patent series. It also records details of the people and institutions that produced this knowledge, and the connections between them. Diverse data sources.
At the heart of The Lens is a “knowledge graph,” according to Garlinghouse. This is a tool that allows users to link academic research with patents and reveal which research paved the way for technological advances.
The Lens aims to foster collaboration and drive innovation between researchers, inventors, and industry by providing tools that enable the sharing of search results and analysis. “It takes more than a single group to turn ideas into impact,” Garlinghouse says.
He said many financial, commercial and information technology patents often cite journal articles by business school academics. Users of The Lens can explore dashboards that visualize these interactions to help understand the technical areas where academic research impacts industry practice.
coupon targeting
Online shopping coupons were the subject of another paper cited twice in the patent. “Dynamic Coupon Targeting Using Batch Deep Reinforcement Learning: Applications to Livestream Shopping,” published in Marketing Science, is by Xiao Liu, associate professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Her research found that using advanced computational techniques such as batch deep reinforcement learning (BDRL) to set up coupons for online shopping can help businesses earn more revenue than traditional coupon techniques. . This new approach allows companies to tailor discounts based on each shopper’s preferences and previous shopping methods, making them more effective.
Specifically, the BDRL approach outperformed static targeting by almost 2x and improved total product value by 63%. Liu’s research addresses the challenge of developing personalized pricing strategies in environments such as livestream shopping. Livestream shopping is used by brands to promote and sell products through livestreams on digital platforms, often in collaboration with influencers. Traditional coupon strategies often fail to capture consumer dynamics and heterogeneity in live streams. She formulated the coupon targeting problem as a Markov decision process and used Q-learning, a model-free reinforcement learning technique, to optimize coupon allocation based on consumer interactions.
Liu’s paper is cited in two patents granted to Maplebear, which trades as online distribution company Instacart. “I didn’t know about this application, but I gave a research presentation on Instacart, so maybe that cited my paper,” she suggests.
efficient travel
Another study published in the journal Operations Research is cited in patents focused on ride-sharing services such as Uber, Bolt and Careem. We found that using smart pricing strategies that vary based on location and time can help ride-sharing services work better and more equitably for drivers and passengers. This approach helps price rides fairly, encourages drivers to accept rides, and improves overall service reliability. This research is cited in two patents granted to U.S. ride-sharing company Lyft.
“Spatio-temporal Pricing for Ride-Sharing Platforms,” written by Hongyao Ma, Fei Fang, and David Parkes from Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Harvard University, respectively, discusses implementing a spatio-temporal pricing (STP) mechanism. We conclude that operational efficiency can be significantly improved. We aim to advance ride-sharing platforms by addressing mispricing issues that lead to market failures. This STP mechanism aligns drivers’ incentives, equalizes travel prices in terms of distance and time, and fosters better decision-making.
This mechanic acts as a “subgame-perfect” equilibrium, ensuring that drivers are incentivized to accept arranged trips rather than taking strategic actions such as picking a ride.
“I started thinking about this issue when I read in the news that some drivers were abusing the system,” said Ma, who interned at Uber. “For example, many drivers get to the stadium just 10 minutes before the end of the game and then go offline, causing prices to skyrocket.”
“I’m grateful for ideas that have a practical impact, change the way people think about issues, and move things forward,” Marr said. His research has implications for other waiting systems, such as organ donation waiting lists.
borrowing needs
“Financial Shocks to Lenders and the Structure of Financial Covenants,” published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, examines how lenders use accounting information in their contracts with borrowers and how lenders’ needs We look at how these terms and conditions may impact you, especially during financially challenging times. This paper is cited in a patent application filed by Tata Consultancy Services.
Contracts are typically based on the financial situation of the borrower, but this study examines how the lender’s own issues that are unrelated to the borrower affect contract terms. The researchers investigated how lenders react to financial shocks, such as corporate defaults and non-corporate delinquencies, and how these events change the type of terms in debt contracts. They find that when lenders face financial distress, they tend to prefer performance-based restrictions that depend on the borrower’s performance rather than equity-based restrictions that focus on the borrower’s assets.
The authors, Hans Christensen and Valeri Nikolaev of Chicago Booth School of Business, Daniele Macciocchi of Miami Herbert Business School, and Arthur Morris of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believe that there are two channels: the capital channel and the learning channel. We discovered that two important factors are involved. The former is seen when non-corporate arrears occur, resulting in lenders tightening contract terms as loan volumes decline. This learning channel will lead lenders to adjust terms based on lessons learned from corporate defaults and use performance pricing to better manage risk.
That is, lenders respond to financial shocks by adjusting their contracts to focus on borrower performance and protect themselves from potential losses. This study suggests that these changes can influence borrowers’ financial decisions.
