Tag Archives: exploitation

How Does AI Change Drug Development? Evidence from Clinical Trial Phases and Drug Types

Kwon, Angela Eunyoung, Jaecheok Park, Gene Moo Lee. “How Does AI Change Drug Development? Evidence from Clinical Trial Phases and Drug Types,” Working Paper.

  • Presentations: KrAIS (2025), CIST (2025), INFORMS (2025), UBC (2025), WISE (2025)

We examine how pharmaceutical firms’ AI capabilities influence drug development outcomes, focusing on clinical trials. Clinical trials progress through three phases that differ in regulatory scrutiny and evidentiary requirements. We measure firm-level AI capabilities using job postings and clinical trial outcomes using the number of trials initiated across phases. We find no significant overall effect of AI capabilities on clinical trial activity. However, this average relationship masks meaningful heterogeneity. AI capabilities are associated with increases in incremental innovation (refinement trials) but not radical innovation (new trials). These effects are stronger for biologics, where market incentives are high, than for small-molecule drugs, where learning hurdles are relatively low. AI capabilities also matter more in early-phase trials, where regulatory barriers are lower, and have no detectable influence in Phase III. This study contributes to the healthcare IS literature by identifying the nuanced and context-dependent business value of AI in drug development. It also offers practical guidance for pharmaceutical firms and policymakers on where AI investments are most likely to enhance R&D productivity.

Exploring the Influence of Machine Learning on Organizational Learning: An Empirical Analysis of Publicly Listed Organizations

Lee, Myunghwan, Timo Sturm, Gene Moo Lee “Exploring the Influence of Machine Learning on Organizational Learning: An Empirical Analysis of Publicly Listed Organizations”, Work-in-Progress.

  • Presentations: JUSWIS 2024, KrAIS Summer 2024
  • Best Short Paper Award at KrAIS Summer Workshop 2024.

With growing computational power and the availability of large-scale data, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a new important driver of organizational learning, yet our understanding of ML’s precise role remains conflicted. To help unpack ML’s role, we examine how ML investments shift organizations’ learning toward exploitation versus exploration and how these shifts influence organizational performance and survival. Drawing on data from 3,383 publicly listed U.S. organizations from 2005 to 2019, our findings suggest that increased ML use generally tends to shift organizations towards exploration. This ML-induced learning tendency mediates the positive relationship between ML investments and organizational survival, with effects particularly pronounced among non-IT organizations with established exploitative tendencies. We further find that ML acts as a catalyst for context-dependent balancing: in stable environments, ML nudges exploitative organizations toward greater exploration, whereas in dynamic environments, ML tempers explorative organizations by reinforcing exploitation. This study provides the first large-scale empirical evidence on how ML reshapes organizational learning and its organizational impacts, contributing new empirical insights to the largely theoretical and contested discourse to help further rethink organizational learning in the age of ML