Publications

Educators

24 Oct 2017
News

The Board’s New Innovation Imperative

October 2020
Article

The Supply Chain Economy: A New Industry Categorization for Understanding Innovation in Services

By: Mercedes Delgado and Karen G. Mills

An active debate has centered on the importance of manufacturing for driving innovation in the U.S. economy. This paper offers an alternative framework that focuses on the role of suppliers of goods and services (the “supply chain economy”) in national performance. We... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Industries; Business-to-consumer Industries; Services; Innovation; Economy; Framework; Supply Chain; Service Operations; Innovation and Invention; Economic Growth; United States

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2017
Working Paper

Tort Reform and Innovation

By: Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo

Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians’ behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We develop a theoretical model which predicts that the... View Details

Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Innovation and Invention; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

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18 May 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Organization Design for Distributed Innovation

Keywords: by Carliss Y. Baldwin

October 2010
Article

Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams

By: Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles A. O'Reilly III

This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams—incremental innovation in existing products as... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Innovation and Invention; Management Teams; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement

Article

Frame Flexibility: The Role of Cognitive and Emotional Framing in Innovation Adoption by Incumbent Firms

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Mary Ann Glynn and Michael Tushman

Why do incumbent firms frequently reject nonincremental innovations? Beyond technical, structural, or economic factors, we propose an additional factor: the degree of the top management team's (TMT) frame flexibility, i.e., their capability to cognitively expand an... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Adoption; Cognition; Framing; Emotional Resonance; Incumbent Inertia; Innovation and Invention; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management

2024
Working Paper

The Value of AI Innovations

By: Wilbur Xinyuan Chen, Terrence Tianshuo Shi and Suraj Srinivasan

We study the value of AI innovations as it diffuses across general and application sectors, using the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) AI patent dataset. Investors value these innovations more than others, as AI patents exhibit a 9% value premium,... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Valuation; Technological Innovation; Open Source Distribution; Patents; Policy; Knowledge Sharing; Technology Industry

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01 May 2013
News

Jobs and Social Innovation

January 2009 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple

By: Stefan Thomke and Barbara Feinberg

Describes Apple's approach to innovation, management, and design thinking. For several years, Apple has been ranked as the most innovative company in the world, but how it has achieved such success remains mysterious because of the company's obsession with secrecy.... View Details

Keywords: Design; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Product Design; Product Development; Research and Development; Creativity; Technology Industry

Educators

01 Dec 2013
News

Innovation as Antidote

that can't afford any lost time. You know—the perfect kind of challenge for the HBS community. Last year, HBS and Harvard Medical School's Forum on Healthcare Innovation brought together everyone from biotech execs to policymakers in an... View Details

Keywords: Health, Social Assistance

Article

Drive Innovation with Better Decision-Making

By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Taran Swan

Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today’s discovery-driven innovation processes involve... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Register to Read

09 Dec 2015
News

Towards interdisciplinary medical innovation

Web

Innovation & Innovative Capacity - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

HBS ISC Research Areas Research Areas Antitrust & Competition Policy CEO Leadership Environmental Quality Innovation & Innovative Capacity Philanthropy Social Progress Index View Details

01 Mar 2012
News

Where Innovation Rules

Kiva Systems Intuit Angie’s List Rakuten athenahealth Pandora Bloomingdale's and Gilt Groupe Social Finance Innovation is the real business of Harvard Business School. It begins with the School’s bias toward action, as embodied in its... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg;Garry Emmons;Julia Hanna;Roger Thompson; Corporate Services; Educational Services; Management

01 Jun 2022
News

'Rooted' In Innovation

in 2019 that is already creating jobs and expanding economic opportunities in his home country of Cameroon. In May, CassVita was honored with a Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge Award funded by the Bertarelli Foundation. Cassava is... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg

08 Feb 2019
Video

Why do innovation initiatives fail?

March 1998 (Revised June 1999)
Teaching Note

Linking Strategy and Innovation TN

By: Clayton M. Christensen

An overview note to guide instructors in teaching the third module of the Managing Innovation course. Describes how managers can use aggregate project planning to manage the resource allocation process in new product development. View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Managerial Roles; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Planning; Projects; Strategy

November 2024
Case

Innovation at Master Kong Beverages

By: David E. Bell and Shu Lin

Hong-Chen Wei (HBS MBA 2014), Chairman of KSF Beverage Holding Co., Ltd. (KSFB), was steering the company toward the premium segment with the launch of “InheriTea,” a premium, sugar-free tea product. Traditionally, KSFB’s flagship brand, Master Kong, catered to the... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Trends; Behavior; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Product Launch; Product Development; Segmentation; Organizational Culture; Product Positioning; Food and Beverage Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Asia; China