Lauren Lanahan's research primarily focuses on public economics as it relates to innovation and entrepreneurship. With a passion for evidence-based analysis, her work investigates the role of public institutions in understanding the evolving, multifaceted R&D enterprise. She examine this phenomenon in numerous contexts that span early-stage venture activity within high-technology industries, local government research and development (R&D) policy activity, and early career research productivity within science and engineering (S&E) disciplines in academic higher education institutions. Her initial interest in this line of research began prior to her graduate academic career while working at the National Science Foundation. Working in NSF’s Social, Behavioral & Economics Directorate gave her a distinct insight into the process by which academia governs and evaluates itself. Through this experience, she became interested in research questions that extend beyond R&D within higher education toward questioning what institutions and reward structures are most efficient at producing new scientific knowledge and consequent economic growth.
Currently, she is working on two projects. The first takes a novel approach by examining the professional path of emerging researchers – an often overlooked, yet essential population of the U.S. science and engineering (S&E) workforce. These researchers are at an earlier point in their career during graduate training. Prior studies have focused on research activity among more senior scholars in the university research environment, with more recent attention focused on the dynamics of innovation within labs and scientific teams. While universities serve as engines for basic and applied scientific research, importantly, these institutions also serve as the focal point for training the S&E innovative workforce. This population defines the next generation of innovators with significant economic potential – a topic with great policy significance. At the core, this research project redirects attention to this understudied population and examines a series of antecedents and outcomes that define success among emerging S&E scholars. This project is in collaboration with Alexandra Graddy-Reed at the University of Southern California. They have received funding from the National Science Foundation (SciSIP 1548288; SciSIP 1661157).
The second project focuses on subnational policy in supporting the early-stage R&D activity of small businesses. While globalization is shifting the comparative advantage of traditional inputs of production, the input of knowledge and the agglomeration economies produced through innovative activity are spatially proximate. This places state governments in a fortuitous position to invest in innovative and entrepreneurial programs and leverage the local economic benefits. She directs attention to the role of local governments, an integral, yet often overlooked source of early-stage support for entrepreneurs. In addition, she has been working with a team of researchers to classify the breadth of U.S. technology-based economic development (TBED) state-level policy activity from 1996-2015. They have relied on the State Science and Technology Institute as the primary resource and have triangulated the results with state legislative records and interviews. This dataset provides information to examine how local institutional indicators – as measured by state TBED policies, market-orientation factors, regulatory incentives, and scientific capacity – influence the vibrancy of local, high-tech entrepreneurial ecosystems. These set of projects are in collaboration with Daniel Armanios at Carnegie Mellon University; the research is funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
During her tenure as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the direction of Maryann Feldman, she worked on a range of research projects related to national cluster initiatives and job accelerator programs, the research capacity of university institutes and centers, North Carolina’s high tech activity in the Research Triangle region, the agglomeration of federal innovation programs for regional economies, and clarifying the logic of economic development. She has also devoted attention to improving performance and evaluation metrics used to quantify the effectiveness of R&D investments.
Currently, she is working on two projects. The first takes a novel approach by examining the professional path of emerging researchers – an often overlooked, yet essential population of the U.S. science and engineering (S&E) workforce. These researchers are at an earlier point in their career during graduate training. Prior studies have focused on research activity among more senior scholars in the university research environment, with more recent attention focused on the dynamics of innovation within labs and scientific teams. While universities serve as engines for basic and applied scientific research, importantly, these institutions also serve as the focal point for training the S&E innovative workforce. This population defines the next generation of innovators with significant economic potential – a topic with great policy significance. At the core, this research project redirects attention to this understudied population and examines a series of antecedents and outcomes that define success among emerging S&E scholars. This project is in collaboration with Alexandra Graddy-Reed at the University of Southern California. They have received funding from the National Science Foundation (SciSIP 1548288; SciSIP 1661157).
The second project focuses on subnational policy in supporting the early-stage R&D activity of small businesses. While globalization is shifting the comparative advantage of traditional inputs of production, the input of knowledge and the agglomeration economies produced through innovative activity are spatially proximate. This places state governments in a fortuitous position to invest in innovative and entrepreneurial programs and leverage the local economic benefits. She directs attention to the role of local governments, an integral, yet often overlooked source of early-stage support for entrepreneurs. In addition, she has been working with a team of researchers to classify the breadth of U.S. technology-based economic development (TBED) state-level policy activity from 1996-2015. They have relied on the State Science and Technology Institute as the primary resource and have triangulated the results with state legislative records and interviews. This dataset provides information to examine how local institutional indicators – as measured by state TBED policies, market-orientation factors, regulatory incentives, and scientific capacity – influence the vibrancy of local, high-tech entrepreneurial ecosystems. These set of projects are in collaboration with Daniel Armanios at Carnegie Mellon University; the research is funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
During her tenure as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the direction of Maryann Feldman, she worked on a range of research projects related to national cluster initiatives and job accelerator programs, the research capacity of university institutes and centers, North Carolina’s high tech activity in the Research Triangle region, the agglomeration of federal innovation programs for regional economies, and clarifying the logic of economic development. She has also devoted attention to improving performance and evaluation metrics used to quantify the effectiveness of R&D investments.
