Media Releases

Rotman Professor Receives grant from Sloan Foundation

October 31, 2011

TORONTO, ON — A pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment has received a $976,000 (US) grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foun­da­tion to study the eco­nom­ics of knowl­edge con­tri­bu­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Joshua Gans, who is a pro­fes­sor of strate­gic man­age­ment and the hold­er of the Jef­frey S. Skoll Chair of Tech­ni­cal Inno­va­tion and Entre­pre­neur­ship, will lead the research project with Prof. Fiona Mur­ray of MIT’s Sloan School of Man­age­ment.

The three-year project will encour­age research designed to gen­er­ate under­stand­ing the eco­nom­ic dri­vers of sci­en­tif­ic con­tri­bu­tions and to ana­lyze the impact of dig­i­ti­za­tion on knowl­edge con­tri­bu­tion.  It aims to pro­vide a frame­work for uti­liz­ing social sci­ence evi­dence for key pol­i­cy areas such as open­ness in sci­ence, the pro­mo­tion of infor­ma­tion through dig­i­tal means and guide­lines to assist non-gov­ern­men­tal and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions in fos­ter­ing cre­ativ­i­ty effi­cient­ly.

The main activ­i­ties of the pro­gram will be to fund research in this area around the world as well as dis­sem­i­nate it through a new web-site, a series of work­shops and a pol­i­cy-rel­e­vant sum­mit to be staged in 2013.  An Exec­u­tive Board to guide the pro­gram’s direc­tion has already been estab­lished with ini­tial mem­ber­ship from Pro­fes­sor Martha Gray (MIT), Pro­fes­sor Paula Stephan (GSU), Pro­fes­sor Philippe Aghion (Har­vard) and Ling Wong (Gates Foun­da­tion).

Prof. Gans joined the Rot­man School in July, 2011.  Pri­or to 2011, he was the Foun­da­tion Pro­fes­sor of Man­age­ment (Infor­ma­tion Eco­nom­ics) at the Mel­bourne Busi­ness School, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mel­bourne and pri­or to that he was at the School of Eco­nom­ics, Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales. In 2011, he was a vis­it­ing researcher at Microsoft Research (New Eng­land). Prof. Gans holds a Ph.D. from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and an hon­ours degree in eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land.

At the Rot­man School, he teach­es MBA and Com­merce stu­dents Net­work and Dig­i­tal Mar­ket Strat­e­gy. He recent­ly co-found­ed the blog, Dig­i­topoly, digitopoly.org, that exam­ines com­pe­ti­tion in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my. While his research inter­ests are var­ied Prof. Gans has devel­oped spe­cial­ties in the nature of tech­no­log­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion and inno­va­tion, eco­nom­ic growth, indus­tri­al orga­ni­za­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry eco­nom­ics.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Phone: 416–946-3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool