Publications

July 2018 (Revised December 2018)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command

By: Herman Leonard, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James “Hondo” Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how... View Details

15 Jul 2020
Video

The HBS Health Minute: The Impact of Public Policy on Health Care Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Research Summary

Managing Innovation

I continue to study the disruptive processes by which innovation transforms -- or fails to transform -- industries and companies. There are three elements to these transformations. The first is a technological enabler -- an innovation that makes complicated, expensive... View Details

01 Jun 2000
News

Going Public

sense of excitement on campus these days is palpable as this year's graduates prepare to test their newly acquired skills and ideas in a universe of expanding innovation and opportunity, the likes of which the world has not witnessed for... View Details

September 2013
Article

Prizes, Publicity, and Patents: Non-Monetary Awards as a Mechanism to Encourage Innovation

By: Petra Moser and Tom Nicholas

This paper exploits the selection of prize-winning technologies among exhibitors at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 to examine whether—and how—ex post prizes that are awarded to high-quality innovations may encourage future innovation. U.S. patent data... View Details

Keywords: Prizes; Innovation; Motivation and Incentives; Patents; Innovation and Invention

01 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Financing Innovation

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Ramana Nanda

July 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

India Stack: Digital Public Infrastructure for All

By: Tarun Khanna, Anjali Raina and Rachna Chawla

Amitabh Kant, India Sherpa in the year of India's G20 Presidency, and Nandan Nilekani iconic tech entrepreneur wondered how to share India's model of digital public infrastructure to build social and economic inclusion. 'India Stack', the umbrella term for India's DPI... View Details

Keywords: Digital Transformation; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Asia; South Asia; India

November 2012 (Revised June 2013)
Case

The Levees Repaired, a System Still Broken: Post Katrina Turnaround at the Orleans Public Defenders (A)

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Olivia Leskinen

Law Professor Ronald Sullivan was asked to lead a turnaround of the Orleans Public Defenders as a one-year assignment following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The office was underfunded and had perverse incentives embedded throughout the system. Sullivan's new vision to... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Management; New Orleans

September 2019 (Revised September 2020)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)

By: Herman Leonard, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James "Hondo" Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. Overseeing acquisitions in one of the... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Crowdsourcing; Prototyping; Navy; Entrepreneurship; Public Equity; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; United States

May 2021
Article

Evolution of the Indian LPG Industry: Exploring Conditions for Public Sector Business Model Innovation

By: Renu Agarwal, Neeraj Mittal, Eric Patterson and Michela Giorcelli

July 2013 (Revised July 2015)
Background Note

Innovating in Health Care—Framework

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Contains the framework for the second-year Innovating in Health Care course. Delineates the role of six exogenous forces on new ventures: structure, financing, regulations, consumers, accountability, technology, and public policy and presents the essential elements of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management; Health Industry

14 Oct 2010
News

Harvard Launches Innovation Incubator

April 2019
Article

Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence

By: Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael Menietti

Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit project proposals for organizational improvement. In total, we analyze... View Details

Keywords: Field Experiment; Innovation; Contest; Incentives; Free-rider Problem; Healthcare Organizations; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Invention; Organizations; Performance Improvement; Perspective

May 25, 2016
Comment

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

By: John A. Quelch

Healthcare and education are two issues in which citizens around the world, rich and poor, are passionately interested. It has long been appreciated that the way that a society treats its youngest and oldest members says much about its moral maturity. Economic... View Details

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

13 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Improving Public Health for the Poor

School of Public Health, Project Antares aims to create a system for devising commercial incentives that provide affordable public health initiatives, or "interventions" in healthcare parlance.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

18 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

improving public education. The book is titled Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. According to the authors, "Our goal in writing this book was to dig... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Vineet Nayar and Sampark Foundation: Frugal Innovation at Scale (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2005, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO and Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies, and his wife, Anupama Nayar, committed $100 million of their personal wealth to found Sampark Foundation — a grant-making philanthropy with a mission to transform learning outcomes for 20... View Details