Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(117,452)
- Faculty Publications (101)
- November 2017
- Case
The 'Wonder Drug' That Killed Babies
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Tom Nicholas and Matthew Preble
In the early 1960s, a popular drug taken by patients worldwide for a range of maladies was found to cause severe birth defects and other health problems in babies born to mothers who had taken it during a certain stage of fetal development. As many as 10,000 children... View Details
Keywords: Regulation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business History; Health; Government Legislation; Corporate Accountability; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Pharmaceutical Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States; United Kingdom; Australia; Germany; Europe
- May 2017
- Article
Immigration and the Rise of American Ingenuity
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby and Tom Nicholas
We build on the analysis in Akcigit, Grigsby, and Nicholas (2017) by using U.S. patent and census data to examine the relationship between immigration and innovation. We construct a measure of foreign born expertise and show that technology areas where immigrant... View Details
- April 2017
- Article
Prizes, Patents and the Search for Longitude
By: M. Diane Burton and Tom Nicholas
The 1714 Longitude Act created the Board of Longitude to administer a large monetary prize and progress payments for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude. However, the prize did not prohibit patenting. We use a new dataset of marine chronometer inventors to... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised May 2018)
- Case
Edwin Land: The Art and Science of Innovation
By: Tom Nicholas, Christopher Stanton and Matthew Preble
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Polaroid first invented—and then continuously reinvented—the field of instant photography. Under the leadership of its mercurial founder Edwin Land, the company regularly released new instant cameras and films, often... View Details
Keywords: Instant Photography; Company History; Change Management; Disruption; Forecasting and Prediction; Entrepreneurship; Business History; Innovation Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Intellectual Property; Patents; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Product Development; Chemical Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- February 2017 (Revised May 2018)
- Case
The Flint, Michigan Sit-Down Strike
By: Tom Nicholas, Christopher T. Stanton and Matthew Preble
For roughly six weeks between late December 1936 and February 1937, a major strike at several critical General Motors (GM) plants in Flint, Michigan, essentially halted the corporation’s U.S. production and resulted in significant gains for the nascent United... View Details
Keywords: Industrial Unionism; Craft Unionism; Welfare Capitalism; General Motors; Labor; Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Wages; Working Conditions; Government Legislation; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Community Relations; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Mining Industry; Steel Industry; United States; Michigan
- 2017
- Working Paper
The Rise of American Ingenuity: Innovation and Inventors of the Golden Age
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby and Tom Nicholas
We examine the golden age of U.S. innovation by undertaking a major data collection exercise linking inventors from historical U.S. patents to Federal Censuses between 1880 and 1940 and to regional economic aggregates. We provide a theoretical framework to motivate the... View Details
- 2016
- Chapter
The Origins of High-Tech Venture Investing in America
By: Tom Nicholas
The United States has developed an unparalleled environment for the provision of high-tech investment finance. Today it is reflected in the strength of agglomeration economies in Silicon Valley, but historically its origins lay in the East Coast. Notably, immediate... View Details
- March 2016 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Michael Milken: The Junk Bond King
By: Tom Nicholas and Matthew G. Preble
Michael Milken, an investment banker who dominated the junk bond market in the 1980s, was sentenced to jail in 1990 after pleading guilty to a number of securities and tax-related felonies. In the preceding decade, Milken had helped usher in a new wave of leveraged buy... View Details
Keywords: Junk Bonds; High-yield Bonds; Financial Innovation; Shareholder Value; Bonds; Capital; Capital Structure; Cost of Capital; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Finance; Investment Banking; Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Ownership; Private Equity; Restructuring; United States
- August 2015 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
George Washington and the Foundations of American Democracy
By: Tom Nicholas and Matthew G. Preble
George Washington is perhaps the most well-known of the U.S.'s founding fathers because of his political and military achievements. However, Washington also operated a number of successful business ventures out of his Mount Vernon estate, and he became a landowner on... View Details
- June 2015
- Case
Silicon Fen
By: Tom Nicholas, David Chambers and Matthew G. Preble
- June 2015
- Article
The Organization of Enterprise in Japan
By: Tom Nicholas
Recent research reveals that the joint stock corporation was not a superior form of business organization in many countries historically. In Japan, however, it played a more fundamental role. Between 1896 and 1939 joint stock enterprises accounted for 44 percent of... View Details
Keywords: Japan; Legal Form; Enterprise; Modernization; Business Organization; Entrepreneurship; Japan
- December 2014 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
John D. Rockefeller: The Richest Man in the World
By: Tom Nicholas and Vasiliki Fouka
By the late nineteenth century scale and managerial hierarchies had extended to several major industrial sectors of the U.S. economy. Although the precise mechanisms often varied, this process mainly involved horizontal integration, some form of legal or administrative... View Details
- November 2014
- Case
Napalm: From Soldiers Field to Trang Bang
By: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins
Napalm is one of the most destructive weapons ever to be invented. Yet, at its original inception it was nothing more than a technical challenge, and it was never intended to be used in indiscriminate antipersonnel warfare. The pathway of its development by a Harvard... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Are Patents Creative or Destructive?
By: Tom Nicholas
Current debate over patent aggregation has led to renewed interest in the long-standing question concerning whether patents are a creative or a destructive influence on the process of technological development. In this paper I examine the basic patent tradeoff between... View Details
- Article
Did Bank Distress Stifle Innovation During the Great Depression?
By: Ramana Nanda and Tom Nicholas
We find a negative relationship between bank distress and the level, quality, and trajectory of firm-level innovation during the Great Depression, particularly for R&D firms operating in capital intensive industries. However, we also show that because a sufficient... View Details
- 2014
- Chapter
Technology, Innovation and Economic Growth in Britain Since 1870
By: Tom Nicholas
This chapter examines technological change in Britain over the last 140 years. It analyzes the effects of patent laws and innovation prizes that were designed to promote technical progress. It explores the challenge associated with the changing organizational structure... View Details
- September 2014 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Samuel Colt: An American Gun Maker
By: Tom Nicholas and Casey Verkamp
Samuel Colt not only perfected and patented the technology for a gun that could fire multiple times without reloading, but he also developed and applied early principles of mass production more completely than anyone had done before. Until the nineteenth century,... View Details
- September 2014
- Case
OvaScience
By: G. Felda Hardymon, Tom Nicholas, Toby Stuart and Noah Fisher
In early April 2012, Michelle Dipp, MD, Ph.D, CEO and co-founder of OvaScience, had just received a buyout offer from PG Ventures, a private equit's first promising fertility treatment, AUGMENT (Autologous Germ-line Mitochondrial Energy Transfer), had the potential to... View Details
- July 2014
- Case
Venture Capital at the Harvard Management Company in Historical Perspective
By: Felda Hardymon, Tom Nicholas and Vasiliki Fouka
The compromise between capital preservation and growth has always been central to the performance of the Harvard endowment. Setting an institutional structure for effectively governing this compromise became especially important when the Harvard Management Company... View Details
- April 2014
- Case
Don Valentine and Sequoia Capital
By: Felda Hardymon, Tom Nicholas and Liz Kind
Don Valentine participated in the beginnings of two significant milestones: the birth of the silicon chip and the development of the venture capital industry. From humble beginnings, Valentine became a legendary salesman at Fairchild Semiconductor and National... View Details