Hans Rawhouser
University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management
Regulatory modularity in industry creation: Evidence from the carbon offsets industry
Originally from Wyoming, I lived in Las Vegas, where I attended UNLV and worked as a civil engineer during the housing boom (before the housing bubble). Seeking to have a more direct impact on major social and economic problems I then attended Thunderbird School of Global Management, living for a year near Geneva, Switzerland. This experience inspired me to join academia. I am interested in industry creation, how markets are structured to accomplish social and environmental goals, and entrepreneurship and innovation as a process. I value in-depth knowledge of specific industries and contexts that are interesting for theory and practice. I focus on the carbon offsets industry in my dissertation.
Regulatory modularity in industry creation: Evidence from the carbon offsets industry
In emerging industries, firms and regulators jointly influence the creation of new regulations. Regulations, like products produced by more than one firm in a supply chain, can vary in levels of modularity between the processes specified by the regulation and the processes of firms that have contributed to creating the regulation. Drawing on the modularity and strategy literatures, I argue that modularity reduces complexity and promotes both imitation and innovation, especially for entrepreneurial firms. I hypothesize that firms that create moderately modular regulations are able to maintain competitive advantage within an innovation area. I propose to test these claims in the emerging global carbon offsets industry, in which entrants are allowed to develop regulations that govern entry. I specifically observe the influence of regulatory modularity on the diffusion of over 224 innovations from 2005 until June 1010) in 76 developing countries in the United Nation's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).