Publications

17 Jun 2021
News

Too Few Women Get to Invent – That’s a Problem for Women’s Health

May 2014 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Intellectual Property Strategy at North Technology Group—Sailing Downwind

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and William W. Fisher III

North Sails is the world's leading sailmaker. The company commands a global market share of more than 50% and is largely responsible for the rapid technological progress in the sailmaking industry over the past 30 years. CEO Tom Whidden needs to consider how to best... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Intellectual Property

29 Jan 2021
News

Half of New Orleans City Hall employees to work remote in move to Municipal Auditorium

April 2020
Article

Technological Leadership (de)Concentration: Causes in Information and Communication Technology Equipment

By: Yasin Ozcan and Shane Greenstein

Using patent data from 1976 to 2010 as indicators of inventive activity, we determine the concentration level of where inventive ideas originate and then examine how and why those concentrations change over time. The analysis finds pervasive deconcentration in every... View Details

Keywords: Deconcentration; Technological Innovation; Innovation Leadership; Patents; Market Entry and Exit; Telecommunications Industry

Read Now

The U.S. economy is driven by innovation, but unwelcome “patent trolls” are gunking up the system. Patent reform bills sit idle in Congress as the “trolls” set up companies for the sole purpose, critics say, of shaking down inventors while never creating... View Details

April 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Southern States Communications

By: Constance E. Bagley and Michael B. Keating

Managers receiving letters claiming that their products or services violate the intellectual property rights of another sometimes have a tendency to ignore them after their technical staff advises them that the claims have no merit. Illustrates the perils of that... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation

01 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Immigrant Innovators: Job Stealers or Job Creators?

Kerr says. Patent Effects To determine whether an increase in H-1B visas led to an increase in innovation, the researchers looked at data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, examining View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology

December 2014
Article

Clusters, Convergence, and Economic Performance

By: Mercedes Delgado, Michael E. Porter and Scott Stern

This paper evaluates the role of regional cluster composition in regional industry performance. On the one hand, diminishing returns to specialization in a location can result in a convergence effect: the growth rate of an industry within a region may be declining in... View Details

Keywords: Clusters; Economics; Industry Clusters; Economy; Growth and Development; United States

January 1996
Case

Palm Computing, Inc. (A)

By: Myra M. Hart

Discusses patents, licenses, and deal making in a start-up venture. The entrepreneur, Jeff Hawkins, holds a patent on Palm Print, a pattern recognition algorithm. After licensing Palm Print to his employer, he led three years of development of commercial products for... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Patents; Agreements and Arrangements; Negotiation Deal; Business Startups; Management Teams

Juan Alcacer is the James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He joined HBS in 2007 and has taught the required MBA strategy course, an elective on Global Strategy and PhD courses in Strategy and International Business. Within... View Details

Keywords: consulting; management consulting; telecommunications

11 Apr 2016
HBS Seminar

Pian Shu, Harvard Business School

February 2016
Article

Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships

By: Sen Chai and Willy C. Shih

Partnerships that foster the translation of scientific advances emerging from academic research organizations into commercialized products at private firms are a policy tool that has attracted increased interest. This paper examines empirical data from the Danish... View Details

Keywords: Economic Development; Technological Change; Government Policy; Technological Innovation; Research and Development; Information Technology; Policy; Technology Industry; Denmark

February 1994
Case

Alpha-Beta Technology, Inc.: Pioneering Carbohydrate Technology

Alpha-Beta was founded in 1988 by two scientist-entrepreneurs with ten patents on carbohydrate technology. In 1991, the company faces critical questions about how to focus its product definition from among several promising, but risky, choices. How should they analyze... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Product Design; Entrepreneurship; Product Development; Biotechnology Industry

05 May 2020
News

What if You Don’t Want to Go Back to the Office?

12 Mar 2020
News

5 Tips for Staying Productive and Mentally Healthy While You’re Working From Home

July 2022
Article

Estimating Spillovers from Publicly Funded R&D: Evidence from the US Department of Energy

By: Kyle Myers and Lauren Lanahan

We quantify the magnitude of R&D spillovers created by grants to small firms from the US Department of Energy. Our empirical strategy leverages variation due to state-specific matching policies, and we develop a new approach to measuring both geographic and... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Energy; R＆D; Grants; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Patents; Performance; United States

2021
Working Paper

The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States

By: Shai Bernstein, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade and Beatriz Pousada

We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation, both through their direct productivity as well as through their indirect spillover effects on their native collaborators. To do so, we link patent records to a database containing the first five digits of... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Economic Growth; Immigrants; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Patents; Innovation Strategy