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Derek Bunn has led a research programme on understanding competition, market evolution, and prices in electricity markets. He and other researchers in the LBS Energy Markets Group have modelled production facilities in detail, their explicit ownerships, and the price-formation process. Their use of computational learning provides subtle insights which have eluded conventional approaches. The LBS group was the first to do this, and the approach is now widely applied. Relevance of the work is recognised via funding from major energy companies and research organisations. In terms of external impact, this work has informed extensive advice to several government inquiries, stimulated further research, and is actively used by commericial businesses.
Costas Markides undertook several studies on two broad topics related to corporate innovation: (a) business model innovation; and (b) radical product innovation. His work has been published in top academic and practitioner journals, and has been broadly disseminated in several best-selling books. His ideas and findings have made an impact in several large multinational companies who have adopted his ideas in their practices; his research has also had an impact through executive education and keynote speeches. His work on innovation has led to his membership of the Thinkers 50 management guru list every time the list has been compiled since 2005.
Julian Birkinshaw published a series of studies on the subject of corporate entrepreneurship—how people within large companies can take initiative to develop new products, services, or internal improvements in how they work, and how those companies use internal structures and processes to help or to hinder such entrepreneurial endeavours. His research has had significant impact for large established companies that seek to become more agile and innovative in a rapidly-changing business environment. A specific instance of this is his development of the InnoMeter for Tata.
Julian Franks has studied corporate governance with reference to international experiences. He has revealed that free-rider problems in the dispersed ownership model (large corporations with many small shareholders) generate dysfunctional outcomes; concentrated ownership models (such as family businesses) fare better. Activist investors have a role to play, and corporate governance practices should reflect this. Via the Corporate Governance Centre at LBS he has conveyed these key evidence-based messages to business leaders and regulators in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In summary: this research has enabled corporate leaders to make better governance decisions and has alerted regulators to the governance risks which require most scrutiny.
Lynda Gratton has examined how the transformational forces of globalization and technology are changing the nature of work and how organizations can prepare for this transformation. This has been particularly infb02uential for multinational corporations that are seeking to become more innovative and productive in the face of the extraordinary transformation of their external context. Gratton's research has achieved substantial and far-reaching impact via her highly infb02uential books and practitioner-orientated articles; its signifb01cance is recognized by major prizes and awards from the business community; and it illustrates the use of specifb01c channels (Gratton's Hot Spots Movement; and The Future of Work Consortium) to convert academic research into real-world impact.
The Dimson-Marsh-Staunton study of long-run global asset returns involved (i) the construction of a unique database of long-run returns on stocks, bonds, bills, inflation, currencies, GDP and population growth for 22 countries since 1900; and (ii) interrogation of this resource to answer contemporary questions in investment, finance, and regulation. It underpins a worldwide reappraisal of the size of the equity risk premium. The project has informed the strategy of the world's largest investors; influenced cost of capital estimates and real investment decisions in leading corporations; and guided regulation of financial institutions, utilities, and other businesses.
Now-casting is the prediction of the present, the very near future, and the very recent past. It has been developed within a research programme led by Lucrezia Reichlin at LBS. It is relevant because key economic statistics, particularly quarterly measures such as GDP, are available only with a delay. Now-casting exploits information which is published early and at higher frequencies than the target variable and generates early estimates before the offb01cial fb01gures become available.
Now-casting has signifb01cant infb02uence and impact. The techniques reported in this case study are in widespread use by central banks and policy institutions. Furthermore, this research has achieved successful commercial impact via Now-Casting Economics Limited.
Telstra is an Australian telecommunications company. In the late 1990s, Telstra was faced by a new entrant, which would be competing against it with modern technology and a lower cost structure. Telstra needed to know how much share it would lose to undertake its resource planning. More importantly, Telstra also had to understand which customers it could retain and the actions it needed to take to retain them in terms of service design and delivery, pricing, and communications.
The underpinning research was conducted in conjunction with Telstra, and met their needs. This project generated published academic research output, and in parallel had a valuable impact on the client company. This impact was estimated, by Telstra, to exceed US$146 million.
In summary: this study reports research that was prompted by the direct need of a potential beneficiary, and which successfully achieved a signifb01cant fb01nancial impact for that beneficiary.
The home bias is the observation that investors systematically hold far too many domestic assets, and consequently far too few foreign assets, than is justified by economic models. Ian Cooper, Evi Kaplanis, Richard Portes, and Heĺene ` Rey, developed the theory of and evidence for the home bias phenomenon. This research has had a substantial impact on investment managers (via additional value from increasing the global diversification of their portfolios), and on central banks and regulators (via accounting for the excessive concentration in domestic debt).
Andrew Scott and co-authors have examined how government debt should respond to economic shocks. Their research shows incomplete debt markets should show large and long-lasting re-sponses: a 3-4 year financial crisis should generate a swing in debt over 20-30 years. This work has impacted European governments, Finance Ministers and Permanent Secretaries of the G7, the UK Debt Management Office, and others. In summary: cutting-edge research has impacted the contemporary thinking of policymakers as they formulate government debt management.