While Winston Churchill was famously supposed to have remarked that we should never waste a crisis, the reality is that during recessions, firms often tighten their belts and reduce the amount they invest in innovation.
Of course, Churchill’s dictum rests on the way in which crises can prompt us to reassess that which we had previously taken for granted and look for new ways of doing things. Research from Kellogg explores whether that is really the case or not.
“We examine innovation following the Great Depression using data on a century’s worth of U.S. patents and a difference-in-differences design that exploits regional variation in the crisis