Publications

Research Summary

Design Driven Innovation

By: Roberto Verganti

Firms, managers and scholars have often balanced between two approaches to innovation: user centered (where incremental innovation is pulled by the market) and technology push (where innovation comes from breakthrough development in technologies). However there is a... View Details

February 2022
Article

Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century

By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva

This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Income Taxes; Corporate Taxation; Firms; Inventors; State Taxation; Business Taxation; R＆D Tax Credits; Taxation; Innovation and Invention; History; United States

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1988
Book

Readings in the Management of Innovation

By: Michael Tushman and William L. Moore

Keywords: Innovation and Management

March 2008
Article

Linguistic Network Configurations: Management of Innovation in Design-intensive Firms

By: Claudio Dell'Era, Alessio Marchesi and Roberto Verganti

In today's business and academic arenas, design is more and more viewed as an important strategic resource. In fact, over the last couple of years, we have seen a real explosion in business and research literature that see scholars and companies alike trying to... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Design; Innovation and Management; Product Development

February 5, 2009
Article

Tasting the Fruits of Effective Innovation

By: Ranjay Gulati and Nitin Nohria

Keywords: Innovation and Invention

2015
Other Teaching and Training Material

Innovating in Healthcare

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Margo I. Seltzer and Kevin Schulman

With over 71,000 past enrollees, Innovating in Healthcare investigates the issues of health care spending, quality, and access that continue to plague America and global nations alike. With U.S. health care costs trending toward $4 trillion in 2020, the need to... View Details

Keywords: edX; Healthcare; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Business Model

April 18, 2022
Article

Will mRNA Technology Companies Spawn Innovation Ecosystems?

By: Christoph Grimpe, Timo Minssen, W. Nicholson Price, II and Ariel Dora Stern

The mRNA technologies that helped rapidly create effective COVID-19 vaccines could become technology platform businesses, which has tremendous implications for players in the world of drug development. These platforms could attract other companies interested in... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Digital Health; Technology; Innovation; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Digital Transformation; Health Industry; United States

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September 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Gun Safety in America: Three Leaders Propose Innovative Solutions

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joseph Paul

Gun violence was a significant problem in America. Three Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows Christy Wood, Russell Sternlicht, and Gareth Glaser each decided to do something about gun safety. They each used their professional and leadership experience to... View Details

Educators

29 Apr 2011
News

Harvard University Announces Appointment of Gordon Jones as Director of Harvard innovation lab

18 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Leading Innovation is the Art of Creating ‘Collective Genius’

sustaining an innovative organization? A new book written with three coauthors attempts to answer the question of why some companies, such as Pixar, are able to invent continuously, while others aren't.... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

Research Summary

Institutions and Innovation

Henry Chesbrough's research interests lie at the intersection of organizations and innovation. His research to date falls into two tracks.

The first track examines the effect of the firm's institutional environment upon its ability to respond to innovation... View Details

2022
Book

The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth

By: Michael J. Andrews, Aaron Chatterji, Josh Lerner and Scott Stern

We live in an era in which innovation and entrepreneurship seem ubiquitous, particularly in regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, and the Research Triangle Park. But many metrics of economic growth, such as productivity growth and business dynamism, have been at best... View Details

Keywords: Productivity Growth; Production Technologies; Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Competition; Organizational Design; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation

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2012
Working Paper

IP Modularity: Profiting from Innovation by Aligning Product Architecture with Intellectual Property

By: Joachim Henkel, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Willy C. Shih

In this paper we explain how firms seeking to take advantage of distributed innovation and outsourcing can bridge the tension between value creation and value capture by modifying the modular structure of their technical systems. Specifically, we introduce the concept... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Value Appropriation; Distributed Innovation; Open Innovation; Strategy; Open Source Distribution; Value; Complexity; Intellectual Property

SSRN

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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

Keywords: Economic Development; Patents; Economic Growth; Innovation and Invention; Demographics

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2019
Book

The Wise Company: How Companies Create Continuous Innovation

By: Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi

High-velocity change is the fundamental challenge facing companies today. Few companies, however, are prepared to continuously innovate—because they focus on the short-term and do not emphasize the wisdom needed to make sure that their interests are aligned with those... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge; Wise Leadership; Leaders; Innovation; Knowledge Management; Leadership; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Change and Adaptation

March 2017 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Edwin Land: The Art and Science of Innovation

By: Tom Nicholas, Christopher T. Stanton and Matthew G. 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

Educators

April 2011
Article

Private Equity and Long-Run Investment: The Case of Innovation

By: Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen and Per Stromberg

A long-standing controversy is whether LBOs relieve managers from short-term pressures of dispersed shareholders, or whether LBO funds themselves are driven by short-term profit motives and sacrifice long-term growth to boost short-term performance. We investigate 495... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Private Equity; Leveraged Buyouts; Investment; Innovation and Invention