Kristina McElheran

Kristina McElheran joined the University of Toronto in 2014 after six years on faculty at the Harvard Business School. She is fascinated by the changes that information technology fuels in the inner workings of firms and the economy. Trained as an economist, Kristina conducts empirical research on the link between information technology, firm performance, and the organizational and market contexts that enable firms to thrive in the digital age. Her work has been featured in Management Science, American Economic Review, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Forbes, Rotman Magazine, and Communications of the ACM.

Kristina’s teaching focus is on corporate strategy, with an emphasis on the linkages between strategy formulation, strategy execution, and capability development within firms. She has a passion for studying and teaching about innovation and, more recently, how firms are responding to the “Big Data” craze.

Prior to her academic career, Kristina worked for two start-up technology companies in Silicon Valley. The first, Risk Management Solutions, has become a leader in risk-management services for natural disasters. The second, Exemplary Software, provided collaborative web-based supply-chain management solutions.

Kristina’s PhD (2009) in Managerial Economics and Strategy comes from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She also holds a Diploma in Economics (1999) from the London School of Economics, as well as a Master's degree (1994) in International Development Policy and a Bachelor's degree (1993) in Political Science from Stanford University.

She is currently looking for new and creative ways to measure how firms use Cloud-based technologies to collect, manage, and leverage data.

Research Interests

Kristina’s research focuses on the use of IT and data in firms, with an emphasis on organizational design and strategy, including delegation, vertical integration, diversification, competition and supply-chain linkages. She enjoys Special Sworn Status at the U.S. Census Bureau but is constantly looking for new and better data on the types of IT investments and IT-related practices that firms are pursuing and how they structure themselves to take advantage of them.

Research themes: Innovation and technological change, digitization, information technology, corporate strategy, organizational economics, managerial decision-making, industrial organization.

Awards & Grants

• Edmund A. Mennis Contributed Paper Award, National Association for Business Economics (2020)
• Best Paper (Honourable Mention), Strategic Management Society Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN (2019)
• Kauffman Foundation Grant, joint with Erik Brynjolfsson (2019)
• Kauffman Knowledge Challenge Grant, joint with Erik Brynjolfsson (2018)
• Kauffman Knowledge Challenge Grant, joint with James Bessen, Michael J. Meurer, and Robert Seamans (2018)
• NBER Digitization Working Group Research Grant (2018)
• Best paper nominee, Strategic Management Society Special Conference, Oslo, Norway (2018)
• SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017)
• SSHRC Insight Grant (2017)
• NBER Entrepreneurship Working Group Research Grant (2016)
• SSHRC Institutional Grant, University of Toronto (2016)
• Connaught New Researcher Award, University of Toronto (2015)
• Finalist, Best Paper Award, Workshop on Information Systems and Economics WISE
• Finalist, Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper Award, ISNIE Annual Conference (2014)
• U.S. – Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant, joint with Naomi Hausman (2013)
• Finalist, Best Dissertation Award, Technology & Innovation Management (TIM) Division, Academy of Management (2010)
• Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management (2008)
• Finalist, Best Student Paper – TIM Division, Academy of Management (2008)
• Phi Beta Kappa, Stanford University (1993)

Publications

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• “The Rapid Rise of Data-Driven Decision Making,” (with Erik Brynjolfsson), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 2016, 106(5), 133-139.

• “Do Market Leaders Lead in Business Process Innovation? The Case(s) of E-Business Adoption,” Management Science, 61(6) June 2015, 1197-1216. Lead article.

• “Delegation in Multi-Establishment Firms: Adaptation vs. Coordination in I.T. Purchasing Authority,” Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 23(2), Summer 2014, pp. 225-257. Lead article.

Book Chapters

• “Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions: Cognitive Biases and Data-Driven Decision Making” (with Megan MacGarvie), November 15, 2016. The HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers (e-book). Harvard Business Publishing, Cambridge, MA.