Program

Inductive Research with Multiple Case Methods Workshop

Instructor

Jason Davis, INSEAD

Jason Davis is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. He is an expert on digital transformation and innovation in large enterprises and the strategies of startups in digital platform ecosystems. His research has focused on issues of collaboration and adaptation by 'big tech' computing companies in Silicon Valley and Seattle, fast experimentation by mobile app ventures on the iPhone and Android platforms, and the social media strategies of the Fortune 500 companies using Twitter and Facebook...

Inductive research using multiple case research methods has been responsible for many highly influential papers published in top management and organization journals. There is continued excitement to use these methods, particularly in Asia where this multiple case approach is a good fit for theory development around this relatively less-explored research context. Despite this excitement, there is some confusion around which research questions are a good fit for this style of inductive research, how to design a multiple case research project, how to induce a theoretical contribution from the data, and ultimately publish it in a top academic journal like Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, or Organization Science.

In this workshop, participants will learn when and how to conduct inductive multiple case research, focusing on specific skills such as how to read the literature carefully to discover 'gaps', uncover a research question that fits multiple case research, craft a rigorous research design, use theoretical sampling, gain access to companies, collect data and write research cases, conduct within- and cross- case comparisons, induce generalizable insights, and contrast insights to the prior literature to generate a genuine theoretical contribution. The workshop relies on reading and discussion of foundational case methodologies (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2009; Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007), classical research studies (Brown & Eisenhardt 1997; Galunic & Eisenhardt, 1996; Weick, 1993; Sutton and Hargadon, 1996; Siggelkow, 2001) and modern exemplars (Quy and Zott, 2007; Ozcan & Eisenhardt, 2009, Hallen & Eisenhardt, 2012; Graebner, 2009; Davis & Eisenhardt, 2011; Bingham & Davis, 2012; Davis 2016).

This workshop is led by Professor Jason Davis from INSEAD. Jason has over a decade of intensive experience in conducting inductive multiple case research, having appeared in the Administrative Science Quarterly and Academy of Management Journal. He focuses on digital transformation and innovation in large enterprises and the strategies of startups in digital platform ecosystems. His research has focused on issues of collaboration and adaptation by 'big tech' computing companies in Silicon Valley and Seattle, fast experimentation by mobile app ventures on the iPhone and Android platforms, and the social media strategies of the Fortune 500 companies using Twitter and Facebook.

Jason has received multiple research awards including the AOM Academy-Wide Newman Award for Best Paper from a Dissertation (2009), the TIM Division Best Doctoral Dissertation Award (2009), the TIM Division Best Paper Award (2009), the OMT Division Best Paper Award (2008), and the ACAC Competitive Advantage Best Paper Award (2014). Jason also received an Honorable Mention Award for the Granovetter Prize for best article in Economic Sociology from the American Sociological Association (2012). He is also the recipient of the Academy of Management's Technology Innovation Management Emerging Scholar Award (2012). Recently, Jason was selected to receive the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution (2015) given to "the most significant paper published in ASQ five years earlier."