Corporate Innovation Research for MIT Sloan
Building an auditable 13-year research panel covering 326 companies to support research into corporate innovation.
Context
MIT Sloan needed a rigorous data foundation for a multi-year study of how large incumbent companies organize and sustain innovation. Across three research phases, we built and validated a 13-year panel covering 326 companies and more than 23 financial and innovation measures per company-year.
Approach
The dataset combined financial records, board information, and patent and trademark data. Measures included profitability, revenue growth, intangible assets, R&D spending, market valuation, governance characteristics, and innovation activity.
We also organized acquisitions, restructurings, and product launches into company-year records. To make the sources comparable, we reconciled legal entities, distinguished missing observations from true zeros, documented regional proxies where country-level revenue was unavailable, and maintained dated exports and validation checks. Later phases added competitor, product, and key-professional datasets.
Results
The resulting research panel supported a peer-reviewed publication and enabled analysis of company structure, governance, financial performance, and innovation. Its documented sources and validation procedures provided an auditable foundation that could support further research questions without rebuilding the underlying evidence.
