Essays on the evaluation of novel ideas

In this dissertation, I examine the evaluation of novel ideas in two essays. In the first, I, along with Hong Luo and Jeffrey Macher, study a novel, low-cost approach to aggregating judgment from a large number of industry experts on ideas that they encounter in their normal course of business in the film industry, where customer appeal is difficult to predict and investment costs are high. The Black List, an annual publication, ranks unproduced scripts based on anonymous nominations from film executives. This approach entails an inherent trade-off: low participation costs enable high response rates; but nominations lack standard criteria, and which voters see which ideas is unobservable and influenced by various factors.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Wahlen, Jesse Michael.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126974

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/126974