In a highly competitive business environment, no company can rest on its laurels for long. To drive shareholder value, companies have to innovate, whether that means developing new products or finding new ways to exploit the ones they already own. Both strategies have their risks. New product development is expensive. However, if you spend too much time fishing in familiar waters, you could be left high and dry when there’s a sudden change in the market. So where should managers focus their attention? As someone who studies organizational growth and behavioral strategy, Dylan Boynton wants to understand how companies navigate choices like these. 

“I’m broadly interested in the interplay of managerial attention and a firm’s use of technology and knowledge,” explained Boynton, a postdoctoral research associate who recently joined Gies. Boynton completed a PhD in management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where his dissertation explored this topic from a few different angles.