Publications

Independent inventors accounted for approximately half of all patents in Britain and Japan by 1930, despite the rise of the corporate economy and the spread of industrial R&D. A mixture of patent renewal and historical citations data reveals that the quality of... View Details

Keywords: Independent Innovation and Invention; Development Economics; Research and Development; Patents; System; Motivation and Incentives; Tokyo; London; United States

01 Oct 1999
News

Banking on Success

outlook for the next fifty years, I would say it's sensational. How would you rate your personal computing skills? I've kept up pretty well, by necessity. You can't get a stock quote today without being able to use a computer. Our ability... View Details

Keywords: Deborah E. Blagg

December 2011
Article

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

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

01 Jan 2005
News

Joseph J. O'Donnell, MBA 1971

than quantitative analysis. Cases and business are also about human beings, and I always keep that human element in mind." ADVICE TO CURRENT STUDENTS "As you set out on your careers, take a long-term view and have a sense of direction as to where you want to end up.... View Details

14 Feb 2019
Blog Post

LOVE At HBS

we are there to support and challenge each other. Even though we aren’t in the same city right now, I’m grateful to be able to share this journey with Tom and know that in the end we’ll end up in the same place. Ariel Yang, Class of 2020... View Details

25 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 25

2017 CA: BVT Publishing Global Marketing Management: A Casebook By: Quelch, John A. Abstract—During the last quarter century, international business was shaken by a revolution in global competition unlike any previously experienced. As... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2017 (Revised August 2018)
Case

Fair Value Accounting at Noble Group (A)

By: Siko Sikochi, Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

Noble Group was a large commodities trader based in Hong Kong and listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange. In 2012, Noble shifted its business strategy towards an asset-light model. Under this model, Noble did not own mines or farms to produce commodities but built... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Policy; Goods and Commodities; Contracts; Valuation

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Web

ARD - Georges F. Doriot : Educating Leaders, Building Companies, Baker Library, Harvard Business School

in the development of new technologies and industries during the war, the US government had assumed significant risk," HBS Professor Tom Nicholas asserts. "The fact that several of these risks paid off–in ways that Doriot had seen... 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

Keywords: Business Startups; Cost vs Benefits; Entrepreneurship; Globalization; Business History; Operations; Risk and Uncertainty; United States

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Article

Clogs to Clogs in Three Generations? Explaining Entrepreneurial Performance in Britain Since 1850

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

How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma

In 1993, four years prior to the publication of Clayton Christensen’s highly influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the Business History Review (BHR) published an article by Christensen titled “The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of... View Details

Keywords: Clayton Christensen; Impact; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Research

25 May 2010
First Look

First Look: May 25

attempting the transformation required to embrace a new, dominant technology—the choice to maintain focus on the old technology. In considering this choice we distinguish between "racing" strategies, which attempt to fight off the rise of the new technology... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 25

shape when and how public agencies implement policies effectively on behalf of marginalized citizens. November 2014 Antitrust Law Journal Are Patents Creative or Destructive? By: Nicholas, Tom Abstract—Current debate over patent... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Profile

Kiran Gandhi

by using both my drumming and business skills to ensure that images released are sex-positive and authentic to a wide array of female experiences. How are you pushing yourself? We had to take TOM [Technology... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment/Media

August 2022
Case

Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry

By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... View Details

December 2011 (Revised February 2019)
Case

The Indian Removal Act and the 'Trail of Tears'

By: Tom Nicholas, Ari Medoff, Raven Smith and Sam Subramanian

Native Americans were subjected to a protracted and painful process of forced removal from their land. The case provides "first hand" evidence on the debate over Indian removal as it took place during the early nineteenth century. The first document is excerpted from... View Details

Keywords: Native Americans; History; Laws and Statutes; United States