Dr. Samantha Zyontz recently received her Ph.D. in Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management (TIES) from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Sam is currently at Stanford Law School as a Research Fellow in Intellectual Property. Her work focuses on the creation, use, and protection of knowledge and technological innovations. She uses quantitative econometric approaches, informed by an in-depth understanding of the phenomena, to explore the strategic decisions of innovative firms and individuals in adopting breakthrough technologies. Sam also studies the role of intellectual property litigation in innovation and how outcomes in different dispute resolution mechanisms affect companies and consumers.
Sam's publications and projects have empirically analyzed a range of topics including breakthrough innovations like the CRISPR DNA-editing system, patent damage awards, business method patents, clusters of related industries, cy pres awards in class action lawsuits, arbitration, and state consumer protection acts. Before starting at Sloan, she worked with Professor Michael Porter and his team at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School on the federally sponsored U.S. Cluster Mapping Project. Sam has also managed a number of policy focused, large-scale empirical law and economics projects for the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth at Northwestern University School of Law and the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University School of Law. Prior to her career in academia, she spent seven years working in intellectual property litigation and valuation consulting for PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP and Navigant Consulting, Inc.
Sam also received a S.M. in Management Research from the MIT Sloan School of Management, a M.S. in Managerial Economics and Strategy from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the College of William & Mary in Virginia with a B.A. in economics and a minor in business marketing.
