Anil Doshi, an Assistant Professor at UCL School of Management, has been given an honourable mention by the Strategic Management Society.

After attending the Society’s Annual Conference in Houston at the end of October, Anil’s paper, ‘How Firms Frame Catastrophic Innovation Failure,’ which was coauthored with Sen Chai (ESSEC) and Luciana Silvestri (HBS), received the mention in the ‘best conference paper’ category.

The paper looks at how two firms in the private space industry, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, frame catastrophic innovation failures for external audiences. The team highlight a tension for firms that are undertaking highly novel and uncertain innovative activities in their initial crafting of their narrative: between being optimistic and portraying a successful outcome and incorporating the possibility of failure. 

Upon receiving the mention, Anil said: “We are thrilled to have received an honorable mention for the Best Conference Paper award at SMS this year. We are very excited about the paper and its relevance for firms engaging in novel, but uncertain, activities.”