In Alliances, Information Firewalls Can Backfire

Innovation suffers when strategic partners restrict information flow

University of Texas at Austin

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From the Wright brothers’ first flight to the speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines, collaboration has been key to innovation. Paradoxically, even competitors can benefit from collaboration — when they hold different pieces of the same puzzle.

But these companies must strike a delicate balance, according to new research from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Ramkumar Ranganathan, associate professor of management, offers some principles for managing the balance between competition and collaboration — particularly when it involves sharing information.

Ranganathan studied strategic alliances in which one focal company collaborates with multiple other companies that also compete with one another. It’s a double-edged relationship.

On the one hand, the allies’ knowledge bases can fill in missing pieces for the focal company. On the other hand, competitors fear proprietary discoveries getting into the hands of rivals.

As a result, collaborators create firewalls for the focal company’s internal use of information. Those restrictions, such as confidentiality agreements, can inhibit innovation by limiting internal inventors from sharing knowledge with one another.

“This assumption that you’re free to recombine knowledge from rival partners inside your firm and then create something new — we are not sure that assumption always holds,” says Ranganathan.

Costs of Firewalls

To assess how much firewalls might reduce innovation, Ranganathan collaborated with Navid Asgari of Fordham University, Deepak Nayak of Ohio State University, and Vivek Tandon of Temple University. They analyzed patent data for 95 companies between 1996 and 2007 in a highly innovative industry: pharmaceuticals.

The study examined:

• An invention’s quality, shown by citations in other companies’ patents.
• Innovations it led to, measured by citations in the focal company’s patents.
• Intensity of competition among allied companies, gauged by being in the same technological domains. 
• How connected the focal company’s inventors were, indicated by overlapping names in its patents.

For example, in 2003, the patents of Sangamo BioSciences named 18 inventors, all overlapping in the company’s patent portfolio. The following year, inventors split into two groups with no connections, which suggests that firewalls were erected.

The analysis of patent data confirmed that firewalls had negative effects:

• Competition creates firewalls. For every 1% increase in competition among alliance partners, there was 0.16% less connectedness among a focal company’s inventors.
• Firewalls hamper innovation. A 1% decrease in connectedness meant a 1.33% drop in invention quality and a 1.53% drop in the ability to generate future innovation.

“Internal firewalls reduced the quality of innovations for the firm and reduced the firm’s ability to build on these innovations,” Ranganathan says.

Bargaining Power Matters

The researchers also found one factor that can boost innovation: bargaining power. If a focal company possessed knowledge that allies coveted, it had more leverage to set rules. The stronger a company’s bargaining power, the more connected its inventors were, suggesting fewer firewalls.

Ranganathan doesn’t suggest that companies forgo innovation alliances. Rather, he encourages them to minimize firewalls while they’re putting partnerships together. They should consider their own bargaining power and whether they can structure alliances so that competitors don’t overlap.

“Firms need to pay attention to these longer-term issues,” he says. “It’s very easy to look at the short term and think, ‘This alliance partner is giving me X amount of money to co-develop this technology. So, what if I don’t let this person talk to this other person for a few months? That shouldn’t matter, right?’ But it does matter.”

“Knowledge Behind Firewalls: How Rivalry Among Partners Constrains Innovation Inside Firms” is published in Organization Science.

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Journal

Organization Science

DOI

10.1287/orsc.2022.17230 

Article Title

Knowledge Behind Firewalls: How Rivalry Among Alliance Partners Constrains Innovation Inside Firms

 

DOME, world’s first nuclear reactor test bed, ready for privately developed advanced reactors

DOE/Idaho National Laboratory

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The DOME, constructed around Idaho’s Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II), will support future nuclear innovation.

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Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

(IDAHO FALLS, Idaho) – The highly anticipated National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) test bed is open for business.

DOME, located at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), is a first-of-its-kind microreactor test bed that will enable rapid development, testing and demonstration of privately developed advanced nuclear reactors. The test bed will play a role in reinvigorating the American nuclear energy industry and meeting the nation’s need to produce abundant, affordable and reliable power.

DOME was developed as  a hands-on demonstration pathway for industry, recognizing that the nation’s growing demand for advanced nuclear energy required a dedicated, world-class testing environment that only a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory could provide. In support of the administration’s nuclear executive orders, construction of the test bed was accelerated by nearly a year to enable industry to meet the urgent need for advanced nuclear energy in the United States.

Officials from INL and the Department of Energy gathered at the Materials and Fuels Complex at INL to officially celebrate DOME’s grand opening on April 8.

“The DOME test bed will be a cornerstone of the Department of Energy’s comprehensive strategy to re-establish U.S. leadership in advanced nuclear technologies,” said Dr. Rian Bahran, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Reactors. “By providing essential infrastructure for testing and validation of new reactor designs, DOME directly supports our programmatic goals, accelerating the development and deployment of innovative solutions vital for energy security and economic growth for the United States. It is a testament to our commitment to a robust nuclear future.”

“DOME represents the kind of bold and creative infrastructure investment that America’s nuclear resurgence demands,” said INL Director John Wagner. “We are accelerating the next generation of nuclear innovators from concept to demonstration at a pace the industry has not seen in decades.”

Built from the repurposed Experimental Breeder Reactor-II dome, a former reactor facility at INL, the 80-foot-diameter, 100-foot-tall test bed provides a safe, flexible and capable environment for testing experimental reactor concepts and gathering performance data. Reactor developers will use that data to support design verification and future licensing. By offering real-world operating conditions and expert support, DOME is poised to significantly reduce the time and cost required to deploy next-generation nuclear technologies. It is designed to host microreactor experiments generating up to 20 megawatts of thermal energy.

“NRIC built this test bed to answer the need of industry to have a facility that would enable them to swiftly convert their innovative concepts into practical demonstrations,” said NRIC Director Brad Tomer. “With the information gathered from their testing at DOME, reactor developers will turn pioneering ideas into validated technologies to advance nuclear energy. We are extremely proud to offer this capability and cannot wait to see the impact it has on the nuclear industry.”

DOME experiments will be scheduled through an annual competitive application process. The sequencing of experiments is based on several criteria, including technology readiness, fuel availability and a regulatory approval plan. Applicants will fund their testing campaigns.

INL is preparing for DOME’s inaugural experiment, using nuclear fuel, this year. Radiant’s Kaleidos Demonstration Unit plans to start a year-long testing program this spring.

The DOME’s construction was expedited by almost a year to support nuclear Administration’s Executive Orders signed in May 2025. It will help boost the American nuclear energy sector and provide abundant, affordable and reliable power.

Credit

Idaho National Laboratory

NRIC’s DOME is a purpose-built test bed at INL for real-world testing and development of advanced microreactor technologies, enabling industry to validate designs and collect data that support verification and licensing.

Credit

Idaho National Laboratory

 

Compulsory sex-marking as a threat to personal autonomy

University of Chicago Press Journals

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Do our norms around sex presentation uphold a constrictive gender regime? In a new article in Ethics, Ophelia Vedder writes that the abolition of hegemonic gender roles must involve the elimination of “compulsory sex-marking,” or the coercive social practice of signaling sexual identity through conventional means like clothes, hairstyles, and personal pronouns. Ultimately, Vedder writes, sex-marking not only perpetuates heterosexist oppression, but also represents a threat to individual autonomy.

In “Getting Free from Gender: The Case Against Compulsory Sex-Marking,” Vedder writes that sex-marking organizes compulsory heterosexuality by classifying people into two distinctive groups. This system has been defended on the grounds that it eases social coordination by facilitating procreation, demarcating work into “male” and “female” professions, and providing templates for social interactions.  However, under this system, one group—women—is typically singled out for subjugation. Moreover, sex-marking poses an additional harm: “it gives rise to an ascribed identity, funneling individuals into social roles on the basis of unchosen characteristics—namely, the sex to which they were assigned at birth.”

This intrusion upon autonomy is most clearly articulated through the transgender experience, as the perceived deviation from gender norms by trans people often results in severe social repercussions. And it is through the lens of trans liberation, Vedder writes, that a world without compulsory sex-marking must be visualized. Since “some ways of realizing trans embodiment embrace sex-marking,” is a gender free future one that cannot accommodate trans identity? On the contrary, Vedder argues that dismantling our hegemonic gender regime will involve ensuring that sex-signaling practices are flexible, pluralized, and freely chosen. The retreat from compulsory sex-marking will lead to more autonomy for trans individuals, and “will open up a greater space of personal freedom for us all.”

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Journal

Ethics

DOI

10.1086/739662 

Article Title

Getting Free from Gender: The Case Against Compulsory Sex-Marking

 

Restored ecosystems could help defend borders, study suggests

Researchers propose using terrain to deter conflict while delivering environmental benefits

University of East London

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Restoring forests, wetlands and peatlands could help defend national borders as well as tackle climate change, according to new research from the University of East London (UEL).

The study introduces the concept of “defensive rewilding” - the intentional, pre- or mid-conflict restoration of ecosystems to shape terrain in ways that can slow, redirect or impede military advances, while delivering environmental benefits.

The research responds to what the authors describe as a growing “guns versus climate” dilemma, where investment in military capability can come at the expense of action on climate change and biodiversity loss. It reframes the environment as a potential “force multiplier” in national defence.

Rather than treating environmental policy and defence as competing priorities, the research suggests the two can be closely aligned. Unlike temporary battlefield measures such as minefields or field fortifications, defensive rewilding operates at a strategic scale, shaping terrain across entire regions before conflict begins.

Examples include restoring wetlands to create waterlogged ground that is difficult for armoured vehicles to traverse, planting forests to restrict visibility and movement, and re-naturalising rivers to complicate crossing operations. Alongside these defensive effects, such interventions also support carbon storage, flood mitigation and biodiversity recovery.

The authors argue this approach can act as a form of “deterrence by denial”, making attacks more difficult or costly and therefore less likely.

The research draws on both historical and contemporary examples to show how terrain shapes conflict, from the deliberate flooding of landscapes during the First World War to more recent examples from Ukraine, where rivers and saturated floodplains have slowed and redirected armoured advances.

Sam Jelliman, researcher at UEL’s Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) and co-author of the study, said, “Rather than seeing defence and climate action as competing priorities, our research shows they can reinforce one another. You can invest in landscapes that are both more resilient environmentally and more secure militarily.”

Peatlands are a particularly strong example. Their low ground-bearing capacity makes them difficult for even light armoured vehicles to cross, while also acting as some of the most effective long-term carbon stores.

“Peatlands are probably the most challenging terrain to cross, and they’re also one of the most effective natural carbon stores. That makes them a particularly powerful focus - they deliver both defensive and climate benefits at the same time,” Jelliman added.

While the concept offers long-term advantages, the researchers note it would need to be carefully balanced against land use, governance and environmental considerations, and implemented as part of a broader defence strategy.

Research Impact Leader at UEL Alan Chandler, who co-authored the study, said, “Nature-based solutions like this challenge us to rethink what infrastructure really means. By working with natural systems rather than against them, we can build resilience that is both sustainable and strategic. It also shows how integrating ecosystem restoration into national security planning could offer a cost-effective and forward-looking approach to defence in an era of growing geopolitical and climate pressures.”

The study also highlights that restored ecosystems can be more cost-effective and longer-lasting than conventional defensive infrastructure, while delivering additional environmental benefits.

The study, Defensive Rewilding: A Nature-Based Solution for National Security, by Sam Jelliman, Brian Schmidt and Alan Chandler, was published in The RUSI Journal.

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Journal

The RUSI Journal

DOI

10.1080/03071847.2026.2646067 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Defensive Rewilding: A Nature-Based Solution for National Security

Article Publication Date

7-Apr-2026

 

Underwater architects: How do shell-dwelling cichlids build the perfect nest?

The individual steps of nest-building are instinctive, but only through practice do the fish become true masters.

Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence

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Cichlids build nests from abandoned snail shells. A new study shows that while this behavior is instinctive, the fish become increasingly skilled at it with practice.

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Credit: © MPI for Biological Intelligence / Swantje Grätsch

We associate nests with shelter, warmth, and a safe retreat – and usually picture a bird's nest made out of twigs, grass and feathers. Yet many other animals take advantage of such refuges, with nests being built by a diversity of species ranging from termites to great apes, which impress with their hugely varied forms and the wide array of materials used to construct them.

For fish, nest-building comes with an added challenge as they must put together their underwater nests equipped with ‘only’ their fins. Yet fish too have developed a remarkable variety of nest-building innovations, burrowing into sandy lake beds, creating masses of floating bubbles on the water’s surface, or setting up camp in abandoned snail shells repurposed as nests – as is the case with the shell-dwelling cichlid Lamprologus ocellatus.

Endemic to Lake Tanganyika in Africa, these cichlids use empty snail shells for shelter and to raise their young. To do so, the snail shell is positioned and covered in sand in a very specific way, leaving just the opening exposed – only then does it become the perfect home.

And this is precisely where fascinating questions arise from a biological perspective: How do cichlids know what the nest should look like and how to build one? Is this knowledge innate, or must it first be learned? A team from Herwig Baier’s department at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence has now investigated these questions in a new study.

Working with 3D-printed shells, the team showed that nest-building follows a set sequence of different behavioral motifs and takes the fish around three hours on average. After encountering a snail shell, the fish dig a pit using their body and mouth. Then they grasp the shell with their mouth and maneuver it clockwise into the pit, repeating this until the shell sits tip-down in the sand, with its opening protruding upward. Finally, rapid body movements are used to flick sand over the shell, covering the nest.

To test whether this behavior is innate, the team raised cichlid fish in aquaria without snail shells. When these fish were later introduced to shells as adults, they instinctively began displaying typical nest-building behaviors. At first the unpracticed animals were rather clumsy about it, taking an average of around 12 hours to finish making a nest out of a shell.

However, this clumsiness didn't last. When exposed to shells in two more sessions (each separated by ten days), they created their nests noticeably faster and with more skill, completing their third round of nest building in around four and a half hours.

This shows that the individual steps in nest building are innate, but cichlids only become master nest builders through practice. Remarkably, fish that were given another chance at nest building after a whole year without access to snail shells still displayed the skills of practiced architects and did not have to start from scratch – they were able to remember what they had learned even after this long period.

The researchers also explored whether the fish could adapt to unexpected challenges to their nest-building program. They exposed the fish to 3D-printed, sinistral snail shells. These shells are extremely rare in nature and are a mirrored version of the natural shell of right chirality. Amazingly, after just a short time the fish learned to simply change direction, rotating the shell counterclockwise rather than clockwise into the sand as they do for dextral shells.

“For a long time, it was assumed that nest building consisted of purely innate behavioral patterns. But studies in birds and our own research show that cognitive abilities such as learning, remembering and adapting also play important roles,” says Swantje Grätsch, project leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and first author of the study. “Accordingly, we were able to show that during nest building in cichlids, brain regions homologous to the mammalian hippocampus are active, which is known to be responsible for precisely these abilities. We are only just beginning to understand how complex this goal-directed behavior and the underlying processes in the brain really are.”

 

Nest-building follows a set sequence of different behavioral motifs, which are shown here.

Credit

© MPI for Biological Intelligence / Christina Bielmeier

Flexible response to variables during nest building [VIDEO] 

During the nest-building program, the fish are able to respond flexibly to variables: If they are provided with a sinistral shell instead of a dextral one, they will turn it the other way around in the sand.

Credit

© MPI for Biological Intelligence / Swantje Grätsch

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Journal

Current Biology

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Cognitive ethology of nest building in a shell-dwelling cichlid

Article Publication Date

10-Apr-2026

 

UC San Diego study links flavored tobacco bans to lower youth vaping in California

Analysis of more than 2.8 million students across California finds reductions in youth vaping use emerging several years after local flavor bans took effect, with no evidence that bans increased cigarette smoking

University of California - San Diego

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Researchers from the University of California San Diego have found that local sales bans on flavored tobacco in California are associated with reduced youth vaping over time without increasing cigarette smoking. The findings, based on an analysis of more than 2.8 million middle and high school students, were published April 10, 2026 in JAMA Health Forum.

“Our findings suggest that local flavored tobacco bans can be an effective strategy for reducing youth e-cigarette use,” said Eric Leas, PhD, MPH, assistant professor at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and senior author of the study. “Importantly, we did not find evidence that these policies led young people to switch to cigarettes, which has been a major concern raised in policy debates.”

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), commonly known as e-cigarettes or vaping products, have been widely used by adolescents in the U.S. National data show that youth vaping peaked in 2019 when more than a quarter of high school students reported using e-cigarettes, though prevalence has since declined. Despite this decrease, frequent use remains common among current users, raising concerns about nicotine dependence and long-term health risks.

One approach policymakers have used to reduce youth vaping is restricting the sale of flavored tobacco products, which often include fruit, candy or mint flavors that appeal to young users. Prior research has shown that flavored products are a major driver of youth e-cigarette use. 

To better understand the impact of these policies, the research team analyzed responses from 2,805,708 students who participated in the California Healthy Kids Survey between 2017 and 2022. The survey includes students in grades 7, 9 and 11 and asks about past-month use of tobacco products.

The researchers compared tobacco use among students attending schools in jurisdictions with flavored tobacco bans to those in areas without such policies. The study used a dynamic difference-in-differences design to account for variations in when different cities adopted the bans and to track how outcomes changed over time. The dynamic difference-in-differences design method allowed researchers to see whether youth vaping changed after flavored tobacco bans were adopted in different cities — and whether those changes grew over several years, rather than just looking at a simple before-and-after comparison.

Youth vaping rates were lower in areas with flavored tobacco bans. In jurisdictions with a ban, 6.2% of students reported current e-cigarette use, compared with 7.7% in areas without one. Over time, the study found these policies were associated with sustained declines in youth vaping. 

By contrast, the study found no meaningful association between flavored tobacco bans and cigarette smoking among youth. Cigarette use remained roughly the same in jurisdictions with and without the policies.

The delayed reductions in vaping may reflect how policies evolve and are enforced over time. Many local jurisdictions gradually strengthened their rules after initial adoption, for example by expanding definitions of flavored products or adding enforcement provisions. Resources and support for enforcing these laws also grew over time, particularly after California’s statewide ban took effect, helping local communities better implement the restrictions.

California voters approved a statewide flavored tobacco sales ban in 2022, which took effect in 2023. Because many cities had implemented their own restrictions years earlier — some as early as 2011 — the researchers say these local policies provide an opportunity to study longer-term impacts of flavor bans.

The authors note that the study focused on California, a state with historically strong tobacco control policies and relatively low youth smoking rates compared with other states. As a result, the magnitude and timing of the effects may differ in places with different policy environments.

Future research will be needed to understand the long-term impact of statewide bans and how similar policies affect youth tobacco use across different regions and communities.

“Local policies gave us a valuable window into how flavored tobacco restrictions may influence youth behavior over time,” said Giovanni Appolon, MPH, first author of the study who conducted this research as part of experiential learning as doctoral candidate in the UC San Diego - San Diego State University Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health. “As more jurisdictions adopt these policies, continued monitoring will help determine how enforcement, policy design and community context shape their public health impact.”

Link to full study: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2026.0631

Additional co-authors on the study include: David Strong, PhD, Dennis R. Trinidad, PhD, from UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. Heather A. Pines, PhD, S. Wilton Choi, PhD, and Eyal Oren, PhD, from San Diego State University. 

The study was funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (Grant # T34DT8325).

Authors disclose no competing interests.

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Journal

JAMA Health Forum

DOI

10.1001/jamahealthforum.2026.0631