Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(118,336)
- Faculty Publications (101)
- January 2009
- Article
Spatial Diversity in Invention: Evidence from the Early R&D Labs
By: Tom Nicholas
This article uses historical data on inventor and firm R&D lab locations to examine the technological and geographic structure of corporate knowledge capital accumulation during a formative period in the organization of US innovation. Despite the localization of... View Details
- September 2008
- Article
Does Innovation Cause Stock Market Runups? Evidence from the Great Crash
By: Tom Nicholas
This article examines the stock market's changing valuation of corporate patentable assets between 1910 and 1939. It shows that the value of knowledge capital increased significantly during the 1920s compared to the 1910s as investors responded to the quality of... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised April 2022)
- Background Note
The American Dream in History
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
- February 2008
- Case
Cincom Systems, Inc.
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
Tom Nies, charismatic CEO of Cincom Systems, is considering a public offering of his software enterprise, but the 1987 stock market crash checks his plans. Nies reflects that capital for expansion will keep Cincom at the frontier of technological development in a... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
The Travails of Rubber: Goodyear or Badyear?
By: Tom Nicholas and Andrew Ferguson
Explores the reason why Charles Goodyear, inventor of rubber vulcanization, was unable to profit from his discovery despite securing international property rights over his invention through a patent in 1844. Considers the utility of patents as an incentive for... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Control Data Corporation and the Urban Crisis
By: Tom Nicholas and Laura Gaie Singleton
Control Data Corporation is considering its response to the assassination of renowned civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Four months prior, William Norris, president of the Minneapolis-based computer firm had already committed to building a plant in a low-income... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Maidenform Bras
By: Tom Nicholas
Uses Ida Rosenthal's entrepreneurship in brassieres to explore how economic, social, and demographic changes reshaped gender and business enterprises in early- to mid-20th century America. It shows the importance of timing and geography to Rosenthal's new firm in New... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
The Ice King
By: Tom Nicholas and Sandra Nicholas
Provides an opportunity to examine the risk-reward tradeoff and the travails of entrepreneurial venturing in the nascent U.S. economy. Traces the origins and development of Frederic Tudor's Ice Company, a business which developed during the 19th century to hack chunks... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Trouble with a Bubble
By: Tom Nicholas
Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details
- May 2004
- Article
Was Electricity a General Purpose Technology: Evidence from Historical Patent Citations
By: Tom Nicholas and Petra Moser
- Article
Why Schumpeter Was Right: Innovation, Market Power and Creative Destruction in 1920s America
By: Tom Nicholas
Are firms with strong market positions powerful engines of technological progress? Joseph Schumpeter thought so, but his hypothesis has proved difficult to verify empirically. This article highlights Schumpeterian market-power and creative-destruction effects in a... View Details
- November 2000
- Article
Businessmen and Land Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century Revisited
By: Tom Nicholas
- Article
Clogs to Clogs in Three Generations? Explaining Entrepreneurial Performance in Britain Since 1850
By: Tom Nicholas
Research into culture and entrepreneurship in Britain has been dominated by casual empiricism. This article shows the benefits of using a new method. Lifetime wealth accumulation is specified as a measure of entrepreneurial performance, and applied to data collected... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Performance Evaluation; Biography; Culture; Education; Wealth; Research; Great Britain
- Article
Businessmen and Land Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century
By: Tom Nicholas
This article analyses the proportions of personal to real estate wealth for a group of 295 businessmen profiled in the Dictionary of business biography. It shows that businessmen who owned land on a large scale in the late nineteenth century were a comparatively small... View Details
- Article
Wealth-Making in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain: Industry v. Commerce and Finance
By: Tom Nicholas
This paper refutes the hypothesis put forward by W.D. Rubinstein that a disproportionately large share of Britain's wealth makers were active in commercial and financial trades in London. We use a data set of businessmen active in nineteenth- and early... View Details
Keywords: Trade; Finance; Commercialization; Mathematical Methods; Wealth and Poverty; Great Britain; London
- December 1998
- Article
Entrepreneurs and Business Performance in Nineteenth Century France
By: Tom Nicholas, Elisa Boccaletti and James Foreman-Peck
A popular explanation for the supposed "delayed industrialisation" of the nineteenth century French economy has been the inappropriate attitudes and actions of the managerial classes and family firms. To address these claims we model the supply and demand for... View Details