Publications

Purchase

August 2018
Article

Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations

By: Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr

We build a tractable growth model where multi-product incumbents invest in internal innovations to improve their existing products, while new entrants and incumbents invest in external innovations to acquire new product lines. External and internal innovations generate... View Details

Keywords: Endogenous Growth; Innovation; Citations; Scientists; Entrepreneurs; External; Internal; Patents; Innovation Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Research and Development; Science

21 Oct 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Market Interest in Nonfinancial Information

Keywords: by Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus & George Serafeim

Summer 2018
Article

Why High-Tech Commoditization Is Accelerating

By: Willy C. Shih

Knowledge embedded within state-of-the-art production and design tools is a powerful force that is leveling the global technology playing field. It democratizes innovation and makes future competition more challenging. This paper describes the knowledge flows through... View Details

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September 2009
Article

Is There a Better Commitment Mechanism than Cross-Listings for Emerging Economy Firms? Evidence from Mexico

By: Jordan I. Siegel

The last decade of work in corporate governance has shown that weak legal institutions at the country level hinder firms in emerging economies from accessing finance and technology affordably. To attract outside resources, these firms must often use external... View Details

Keywords: Commitment; Inter-organizational Relationships; Emerging Markets; Economics; International Political Economy; Economy; Business Ventures; Information; Mexico

September 2015 (Revised July 2016)
Case

Unidentified Industries: Australia 2014

By: Benjamin Esty and William E. Fruhan, Jr.

Helps students to understand how the characteristics of a business are reflected in the firm's financial statements. In this exercise, students are given balance sheet data in percentage form (common-size balance sheets) and other selected financial ratios for a set of... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Finance; Financial Management; Australia

Educators

Purchase

Here is an in-depth guide to the most powerful available benchmarking technique for improving service organization performance — Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The book outlines DEA as a benchmarking technique, identifies high cost service units, isolates... View Details

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

shareholder returns of 150 percent while the S&P 500 has delivered 14 percent. They've also grown their sales 134 percent while the S&P 500 has grown just 53 percent. Clearly, these firms have found something that allows them to... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

2020
Working Paper

Short-Termism, Shareholder Payouts, and Investment in the EU

By: Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang

Investor-driven “short-termism” is said to harm EU public firms' ability to invest for the long term, prompting calls for the EU to better insulate managers from shareholder pressure. But the evidence offered—in the form of rising levels of repurchases and dividends—is... View Details

Keywords: Short-termism; Quarterly Capitalism; EU; Dividends; Equity Issuances; Equity Compensastion; Capital Flows; Capital Distribution; R＆D; Innovation; Investment; Corporate Governance; Investment Return; Acquisition; European Union

SSRN

05 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

How Hormones Foretell Whether People Will Cheat

of whether someone will behave unethically. Two, among those who do cheat, cheating reduces levels of the hormone associated with psychological stress. In other words, people may use cheating as a means of relieving stress. The good news... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

07 Mar 2013
HBS Seminar

Mike Toffel, Harvard Business School

March 2011
Exercise

Customer Intelligence Advantage: Module 2 Assignment

By: F. Asis Martinez Jerez

This exercise directs students to analyze a customer-centric firm by first understanding the elements that characterize a customer-centric organization, then by capturing and comparing this firm's approach to customer-centricity. Students interview three levels in the... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Leadership; Competitive Advantage

August 1999 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Catanese and Vulcan (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Sanjay Pothen

A small CPA firm puts in a new performance measurement system, and profits increase by 350% in less than a year. This case illustrates the reasons for improved profitability as well as the sustainability of levels of growth, the opportunities, and the threats that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Performance Evaluation; SWOT Analysis; Profit

Educators

Purchase

2008
Working Paper

The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention

By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln

This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on US technology formation. Specifically, we use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Fluctuations in H-1B admissions levels significantly influence the rate of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Patents; Ethnicity; Immigration; Innovation and Invention; United States

SSRN

Research Summary

Distributed Innovation in Open Systems—The Role of Modularity

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Distributed innovation in open systems is an important trend in the modern global economy. As education levels rise and communication costs fall, more people have the means and motivation to innovate. Supply chains now stretch around the world as firms outsource... View Details

2007
Working Paper

The Impact of Shareholder Activism on Financial Reporting and Compensation: The Case of Employee Stock Options Expensing

By: Fabrizio Ferri and Tatiana Sandino

In this paper we examine the economic consequences of over 150 shareholder proposals to expense employee stock options (ESO) submitted during the proxy seasons of 2003 and 2004–the first case where the SEC has allowed an accounting matter to be subject to an advisory... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Financial Reporting; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Corporate Governance; Investment Activism; Business and Shareholder Relations

2010
Working Paper

Corporate Governance When Founders Are Directors

By: Feng Li and Suraj Srinivasan

We examine CEO compensation, CEO retention policies, and M&A decisions in firms where founders serve as a director with a non-founder CEO (founder-director firms). We find that founder-director firms offer a different mix of incentives to their CEOs than other firms.... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Retention; Managerial Roles; United States

SSRN

July–August 2018
Article

Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods

By: Frank Nagle

As the economy becomes more information based, firms are increasingly using crowdsourced public goods as inputs for innovation and production. Counterintuitively, some firms pay their employees to contribute to the creation of these goods, which can be used freely by... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Learning; Competitive Advantage

April 2023
Article

Racial Inequality in Work Environments

By: Letian Zhang

This article explores racial stratification in work environments. Inequality scholars have long identified racial disparities in wage and occupational attainment, but workers’ careers and well-being are also shaped by elements of their work environment, including firm... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Race; Equality and Inequality; Working Conditions; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Culture

May 2009
Article

Customer-Based Valuation

By: Sunil Gupta

Customer lifetime value (CLV) has emerged as an important metric to manage and grow customers. Marketing scholars have written many books and articles on this topic. However, most of this research has focused on tactical marketing decisions. While this is important, it... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Valuation