Essays on Mathematical Modeling and Empirical Investigations of Organizational Learning in Cancer Research

After numerous renewals and reignitions since the initiation of the "War on Cancer" more than five decades ago, the recent reignition of "Moonshot to Cure Cancer" points to the systemic persistence of cancer as a major cause of loss of life and livelihood. Literature points to the diminishing returns of cancer research through time, as well as heterogeneities in cancer research centers' innovation strategies. This dissertation focuses on the strategic decision by cancer research centers to invest their resources in conducting early phases of clinical trials on new candidate drugs/treatments (resembling exploration) or late phases of clinical trials that push established candidates towards acquiring FDA approvals (resembling exploitation). The extensive clinical trials data suggests that cancer research centers are not only different in their emphasis on exploratory trials, but also in how their emphasis is changing over time. This research studies the dynamics of this heterogeneity in cancer research centers' innovation strategies, how experiential learning and capability development interact to cause dynamics of divergence among learning agents, and how the heterogeneity among cancer research centers' innovation strategies is affected by the dynamics of learning from experience and capability development. The findings of this dissertation shows that endogenous heterogeneities can arise from the process of learning from experience and accumulation of capabilities. It is also shown that depending on the sensitivity of the outcome of decisions to the accumulated capabilities, such endogenous heterogeneities can be value-creating and thus, justified. Empirical analysis of cancer clinical trials data shows that cancer research centers learn from success and failure of their previous trials to adopt more/less explorative tendencies. It also demonstrates that cancer research centers with a history of preferring exploratory or FDA trials have the tendency to increase their preference and become more specialized in one specific type (endogenous specialization). These behavioral aspects of the cancer research centers' innovation strategies provide some of the tools necessary to model the behavior of the cancer research efforts from a holistic viewpoint.