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Wesley M. Cohen

Snow Family Distinguished Professor
Fuqua School of Business

Overview


Wesley M. Cohen (Ph.D., Economics, Yale University, 1981) is Professor of Economics and Management and the Frederick C. Joerg Distinguished Professor of Business Administration in the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He also holds secondary appointments in Duke’s Department of Economics and School of Law, is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and serves as the Faculty Director of the Fuqua School’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Before coming to Duke in 2002, Professor Cohen taught at Carnegie Mellon University for 20 years, after having spent a year as Postdoctoral Fellow in Industrial Organization at the Harvard Business School.

With a research focus on the economics of technological change and R&D, Professor Cohen has examined the determinants of innovative activity and performance, considering the roles of firm size, market structure, firm learning, knowledge flows, university research and the means that firms use to protect their intellectual property, with a particular focus on patents. Most recently, he has conducted research on the “division of innovative labor,” investigating the ties across firms, and between firms other institutions that influence innovative performance.

He has published widely in scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Science, and the Strategic Management Journal, and has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, among others. He served for five years as a Main Editor for Research Policy and served on the National Academies’ Committee on Intellectual Property Rights in the Knowledge-Based Economy, the National Academies' Panel on Research and Development Statistics at the National Science Foundation, and, most recently, the National Academies’ Committee on the Management of University Intellectual Property. He was named to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Innovation 100” in 2008. He has taught courses on the economics of technological change, industrial organization economics, policy analysis, organizational behavior, corporate strategy, entrepreneurship, technology strategy and the management of intellectual capital. He has also consulted on legal issues bearing on intellectual property.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Snow Family Distinguished Professor · 2017 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor of Business Administration · 2002 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor of Economics · 2006 - Present Economics, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Core Faculty in Innovation & Entrepreneurship · 2018 - Present Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship, University Initiatives & Academic Support Units

In the News


Published November 7, 2023
Why Companies Should Prioritize Science
Published June 5, 2018
Fostering Innovation through Efficiency

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Recent Publications


Measuring the commercial potential of science

Journal Article Strategic Management Journal · January 1, 2025 Research Summary: We develop an ex ante measure of commercial potential of science, an otherwise unobservable variable driving the performance of innovation-intensive firms. To do so, we rely on large language models and neural networks to predict whether ... Full text Cite

Invention value, inventive capability and the large firm advantage

Journal Article Research Policy · January 1, 2023 Do large firms produce more valuable inventions, and if so, why? After confirming that large firms indeed produce more valuable inventions, we consider two possible sources: a superior ability to invent, or a superior ability to extract value from their in ... Full text Cite

Not in the job description: The commercial activities of academic scientists and engineers

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2020 Scholarly work seeking to understand academics’ commercial activities often draws on abstract notions of the academic reward system and the representative scientist. Few scholars have examined whether and how scientists’ motives to engage in commercial act ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Software and Tools for Assessing the Commercial Potential of Science

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by North Carolina Biotechnology Center · 2024 - 2026

Organizing the Firm for Innovation: A Bridge Between Innovation Strategy and Implementation

ResearchCo-Principal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2016 - 2020

Conferences and Congressional Briefings on the Changing Innovation System

ResearchCo Investigator · Awarded by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation · 2015 - 2017

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Education, Training & Certifications


Yale University · 1981 Ph.D.