Gregory (G) Young

I am a strategy researcher studying the digital strategies of firms. Specifically, I investigate how governance structures and organizational boundaries shape incumbent firms’ ability to adapt to technological change and examine why organizations facing similar technological opportunities often experience different adaptation outcomes.

My research develops an information-based view of the firm that integrates transaction cost economics and information processing theory to explain how governance choices create information advantages and constraints that influence technology implementation, digital capability development, and organizational adaptation. Through this perspective, I examine how governance choices shape information visibility, coordination, and adaptation, and how organizational arrangements optimized for efficiency can simultaneously facilitate and constrain future technological change. My current research examines these questions in the contexts of digital infrastructure deployment among U.S. electric utilities and technology adaptation among computer workstation manufacturers during the transition from CISC to RISC computing architectures.

To investigate these questions, I employ a range of empirical approaches, including panel data methods, event history analysis, machine learning techniques, and archival datasets spanning multiple industries and technological settings. Prior to academia, I spent more than a decade leading and supporting digital transformation initiatives across the energy, chemicals, industrial, and technology sectors. Observing organizations pursue similar technological opportunities yet experience markedly different implementation and adaptation outcomes motivated my interest in understanding the organizational factors that shape technological change. My ongoing research extends these ideas across a variety of technological contexts, including digital capability development, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things infrastructures, platforms & ecosystems, and other emerging digital technologies.