Publications

Educators

December 2017
Article

Is There a Doctor in the House? Expert Product Users, Organizational Roles, and Innovation

By: Riitta Katila, Sruthi Thatchenkery, Michael Christensen and Stefanos A. Zenios

We explore the impact on innovation that professional end-users of a product have as inventors, executives, and board members in a young firm. In contrast to prior literature, which has emphasized technology roles, we put the spotlight on the executive and governance... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; User Innovation; Healthcare; Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurship; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Sep 20 2023
Interview

The Opportunities of Climate Change Innovation

05 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

The Accidental Innovator

do. In their recent working paper "Accident, Innovation, and Expectation in Innovation Process," authors Robert D. Austin and Lee Devin explore the concept of accidental innovation, how it works or... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

01 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Financing Innovation

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Ramana Nanda

May 2013 (Revised May 2014)
Case

Innovation at the Boston Consulting Group

By: Robert G. Eccles, Das Narayandas and Penelope Rossano

This case is about how the Boston Consulting Group has approached innovation from its founding to the present day. It discusses the role of the firm's talent market and client market in developing these innovations. View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Strategy Consulting; Professional Service Firm; Knowledge Management; Client Management; Product Development; Leadership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Value Creation; Consulting Industry

Educators

2013
Chapter

Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal?

By: Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton

In this paper we distinguish different "qualities" of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. We use "quality" to mean the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth. However, this is difficult to establish because it is a function of many different... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Economic Growth; Foreign Direct Investment

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2006
Book

Design-Inspired Innovation

By: James Utterback, Bengt–Arne Vedin, Eduardo Alvarez, Sten Ekman, Susan Walsh Sanderson, Bruce Tether and Roberto Verganti

When an innovation is inspired by design, it transcends technology and utility. The design delights the user, seamlessly integrating the physical object, a service, and its use into something whole. A design-inspired innovation is so simple that it becomes an extension... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Product Design; Product Development

September 2019 (Revised September 2020)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)

By: Herman Leonard, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James "Hondo" Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. Overseeing acquisitions in one of the... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Crowdsourcing; Prototyping; Navy; Entrepreneurship; Public Equity; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; United States

Educators

Article

Gains from Foreign Direct Investment: Macro and Micro Approaches

By: Laura Alfaro

This paper discussed the importance of an “integrated approach” to the study of the effects of FDI on host countries. Macro-level work that examines countries at different stages of development and institutional capacity is needed to surface the role of local... View Details

Keywords: Spillovers; Complementarities; Mechanism; Foreign Direct Investment; Economic Growth

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Research Summary

Building Bridges: The Social Structure of Interdependent Innovation

Multidivisional firms often fail to take advantage of innovations that involve combining resources from distinct divisions. This failure of cross-line-of-business innovation is a consequence of design choices employed to execute the firm’s strategy: in organizing... View Details

Article

Intermediary Functions and the Market for Innovation in Meiji and Taisho Japan

By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu

Japan experienced a transformational phase of technological development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We argue that an important, but so far neglected, factor was a developing market for innovation and a patent attorney system that was... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Japan

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How to create innovations that customers do not expect, but that they eventually love? How to create products and services, that are so distinct from those that dominate the market and so inevitable that make people passionate?

In a context where everyone is... View Details

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

How One Center of Innovation Lost its Spark

How do once-thriving centers of innovation slow down, falter, and in some cases all but grind to a halt? That's a question that fascinates HBS professor Donald N. Sull. In a new working paper describing his... View Details

Keywords: by Donald Sull; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

15 Jun 2018
News

The Importance of Purpose in Technology & Innovation

2007
Other Unpublished Work

Competitiveness at the Crossroads: Choosing the Future Direction of the Russian Economy

By: Michael E. Porter, Christian H.M. Ketels, Mercedes Delgado and Richard Bryden

In early 2006, the Center for Strategic Research (CSR) in Moscow commissioned Professor Michael Porter and his team to conduct a review of the existing evidence on Russian competitiveness. The objective of this report is to synthesize, interpret, and draw implications... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Growth and Development; Russia