Publications

01 Oct 2011
News

Resistance Is Futile

18 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Innovation Network

Keywords: by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr; Technology

18 Sep 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Female Inventors and Inventions

Keywords: by Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila, and John-Paul Ferguson; Health; Biotechnology; Medical Devices & Supplies

Teaching

Overview

By: Lauren H. Cohen

Family Enterprises - Family Offices - FinTech - Innovation - Patent Landscape - Asset Pricing - Behavioral Finance - Asset Management View Details

Is It Time to Let Employees Work from Anywhere?

While working from home (WFH) has become relatively commonplace, a new form of remote work is emerging: working from anywhere (WFA), in which employees can live and work where they choose. Managers often worry about remote employees working less, or multitasking,... View Details

2008
Working Paper

The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors

By: William R. Kerr

The ethnic composition of US scientists and engineers is undergoing a significant transformation. This study applies an ethnic-name database to individual patent records granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to document these trends with greater... View Details

Keywords: Inventors; Scientists; Engineers; Information Technology; Patents; Ethnicity; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Immigration; China; United States; India

December 1993 (Revised August 1998)
Case

Bitter Competition: The Holland Sweetener Company versus NutraSweet (A)

The NutraSweet Co. has very successfully marketed aspartame, a low-calorie, high-intensity sweetener, around the world. NutraSweet's position was protected by patents until 1987 in Europe, Canada, and Japan, and until the end of 1992 in the United States. The case... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada; Japan; United States; Europe

Educators

Purchase

26 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

The Power of the Noncompete Clause

compete with their current employers. We also found that "star" inventors—those whose patents are highly cited in other patent applications—are also more strongly affected by noncompetes. Q: What... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

November 2007
Article

Innovation and Incentives: Evidence from Corporate R&D

By: Josh Lerner and Julie Wulf

Beginning in the late 1980s, American corporations began increasingly linking the compensation of central research personnel to the economic objectives of the corporation. This paper examines the impact of the shifting compensation of the heads of corporate research... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Research and Development; Patents; Employee Stock Ownership Plan

Research Summary

National Innovative Capacity and the Ideas Production Function

By: Michael E. Porter

Joint research with Scott Stern (MIT) is exploring the determinants of innovative capacity across countries using time series/cross-section data ("Measuring the "Ideas" Production Function: Evidence from International Patent... View Details

27 Aug 2019
News

New US Trademark Rules Raise Concerns About Immigration Enforcement

11 Sep 2020
HBS Seminar

Janet Freilich, Fordham University, School of Law

18 Jul 2019
News

U.S. Targeting of Chinese Scientists Fuels a Brain Drain

December 2011
Article

Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys

By: Tom Nicholas

Matching 2,777 R&D firms in surveys conducted by the National Research Council between 1921 and 1938 with U.S. patents reveals that 59 percent of all firms and 88 percent of publicly-traded firms patented. These shares are much higher than those observed for modern R&D... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Patents; Surveys; Innovation and Invention; Geographic Location; United States

October 11, 2016
Article

Innovation Network

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr

Technological progress builds upon itself, with the expansion of invention in one domain propelling future work in linked fields. Our analysis uses 1.8 million U.S. patents and their citation properties to map the innovation network and its strength. Past innovation... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Networks; Patents

2016
Working Paper

Innovation Network

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit and William Kerr

Technological progress builds upon itself, with the expansion of invention in one domain propelling future work in linked fields. Our analysis uses 1.8 million U.S. patents and their citation properties to map the innovation network and its strength. Past innovation... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Growth; Networks; Patents; Industry Growth; Technology Industry

25 Aug 2015
First Look

First Look Tuesday

Working Papers Patent Publication and the Market for Ideas By: Hegde, Deepak, and Hong Luo Abstract—In this paper, we study the effect of invention disclosure-through patent publication-on the market for... View Details

Awards

Selected as one of the best Business and Economics Books of the Year

By: Josh Lerner

Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System Is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What To Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2004), with Adam Jaffe, was selected by The Economist as one of the Best Business and Economics Books... View Details

winter 2000
Article

Assessing the Impact of Venture Capital to Innovation

By: Samuel Kortum and Josh Lerner

We examine the influence of venture capital on patented inventions in the United States across twenty industries over three decades. We address concerns about causality in several ways, including exploiting a 1979 policy shift that spurred venture capital fundraising.... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention