Suchman presents ‘Law, Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ at Westwood Lecture Series

Mark Suchman, a professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts, presented “Law, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Cycles of Change in Legal and Industrial Fields” at the Westwood Lecture Series on April 14.

“Law, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Cycles of Change in Legal and Industrial Fields”
Mark Suchman
Professor of sociology
College of Liberal Arts

Abstract: This talk links law to two core elements of economic and social change: innovation (new ideas) and entrepreneurship (new ventures). It first maps the legal environment for innovation and entrepreneurship across multiple bodies of law and multiple modes of impact. It then synthesizes frameworks from sociolegal and organizational studies to examine: a) how legal fields translate ambiguous rules into institutionalized organizational practices; and b) how organizational fields evolve through punctuated cycles of innovation and entrepreneurship. The many analogies and linkages between these accounts suggest a broadly generalizable model in which “techno-legal regimes” align, drift and realign through loosely coupled cycles of incrementalism, discontinuity, ferment and consolidation. The thesis throughout is that law operates not as an exogenous constraint, but as an endogenous, co-evolving force within overlapping legal and industrial fields.

Bio: Suchman’s research interests center on the impact of legal institutions on organizational and economic life, with a particular focus on how legal conditions create — or foreclose — opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change. Perhaps best known for his theoretical work on organizational legitimacy, he has also conducted major empirical studies on the role of law firms in Silicon Valley, the governance challenges posed by new information technologies in health care and the sequential structure of the entrepreneurial startup process.

Suchman holds a joint appointment as a professor of sociology at Purdue and a research professor at the American Bar Foundation, where he served as executive director from 2023 to 2025. His research has been supported by major grant-giving organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He has published extensively in leading scholarly journals, such as the Academy of Management Review, the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Law & Social Inquiry, and Law & Society Review. Before joining Purdue’s faculty in 2024, he was a professor of sociology at Brown University, where he led the sociology department’s work, organizations and economy faculty. He has also served as a program director in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure; chaired the American Sociological Association’s sections on Sociology of Law and on Organizations, Occupations, and Work; and served on the Law & Society Association’s board of trustees. He holds a PhD in sociology from Stanford University (’94), a JD from Yale Law School (’89) and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Harvard University (’83).