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PhD Thesis Defence, Strategy and Business Policy

Congratulations to Dr Elena Plaksenkova who successfully defended her thesis on May 27, 2019. Elena will join Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business (USA) as Assistant Professor.

PhD Elena Plaksenkova

Thesis Topic: Ecosystem Strategies in the Shadow of Nonprofit Actors


Supervisor: Professor Olivier Chatain, HEC Paris

Resume:
My thesis focuses on issues related to value creation and value capture in business ecosystems. I explore how nonprofit and for-profit actors shape these ecosystems and their evolution through the design of relationships with key complements. 

The first chapter uses a formal model to study how a nonprofit actor, by strategically interacting with firms, can facilitate value creation in vertical supply chains. The second chapter studies the strategies that firms employ to shape the ecosystem they compete in and maximize value capture.

Specifically, I look at firms’ decision regarding whether to make their product compatible with multiple complements or keep them exclusive for a specific complement in the context of anti-HIV drug market. I use a proprietary individual-level dataset on drug consumption obtained from the national French healthcare insurance and hand-collected data on clinical trials of anti-HIV drugs. The third chapter bridges the first two chapters and explores how nonprofit actors actively shape the ecosystem by comparing firm-sponsored and nonprofit-sponsored clinical trials on anti-HIV drugs.

To conclude, I seek to understand how firms can maximize value creation and value capture in the contexts where complementary products are important. I strive to include nonprofit actors as an integral part of the ecosystem and understand how the actions of actors who do not seek to maximize profit affect the strategies of for-profit actors towards their complements.

Go to Elena Plaksenkova's website