Publications

Article

The Perils of Excellence: Barriers to Effective Process Improvement in Product-Driven Firms

By: Rebecca M. Henderson, Jesus del Alamo, Todd Becker, James Lawton, Peter Moran, Saul Shapiro and Dean Vlasak

Keywords: Product; Performance Improvement

19 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Funding Innovation: Is Your Firm Doing it Wrong?

common struggle for firms to get innovation investments right, says Josh Lerner, the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School. On one hand, View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Research Summary

Institutions and Firm Strategy at the Bottom of the Pyramid: The Case of Business Formalization in Vietnam

In this paper, written together with Edmund Malesky (UCSD), we test a series of hypotheses about how institutions shape a strategic decision of significant importance to the evolution of inclusive markets: registration as companies by previously informal businesses at... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Who Is Governing Whom? Executives, Governance and the Structure of Generosity in Large U.S. Firms

By: Christopher Marquis and Matthew Lee

We examine how organizational structure influences strategies over which corporate leaders have significant discretion. Corporate philanthropy is our setting to study how a differentiated structural element—the corporate foundation—constrains the influence of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leadership; Managerial Roles; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; United States

SSRN

1998
Chapter

The Role of Geography in the Process of Innovation and Sustainable Competitive Advantage of Firms

By: M. E. Porter and Orjan Solvell

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Innovation Strategy; Geographic Location

October 2012 (Revised February 2013)
Case

Innova Capital: The Transition

By: Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

The partners at Innova Capital, a leading mid-market private equity investor in Poland, must negotiate a transition of power between the two ex-patriate founders and three talented young Polish partners. If they fail to find an accomodation, the entire firm will... View Details

Keywords: Firm Structure; Career Management; Emerging Market; Succession; Entrepreneurship; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Negotiation; Investment; Restructuring; Transition

Educators

Purchase

March–April 2013
Article

Expected Firm Altruism, Quality Provision, and Brand Extensions

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A setting is considered where consumers keep track of the extent to which brands care about them, which is modeled as altruism of brands towards their target consumers. Consumers who purchase an experience good of high quality reasonably deduce that the supplier of... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Quality; Consumer Behavior; Attitudes; Brands and Branding

27 Feb 2015
News

Why U.S. Firms Are Dying: Failure To Innovate

2014
Working Paper

Linguistic Complexity in Firm Disclosures: Obfuscation or Information?

By: Brian J. Bushee, Ian D. Gow and Daniel Taylor

Prior research argues that the linguistic complexity of a firm’s disclosures reflects managerial obfuscation. However, complex language can be used either to obfuscate or to convey information, with the effect likely depending on the incentives of the source. We... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Financial Reporting

2022
Working Paper

Talent Flows and the Geography of Knowledge Production: Causal Evidence from Multinational Firms

By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sara Signorelli and James M. Sappenfield

Leveraging a unique dataset merging patent data with all work-related migration reforms that took place in 15 countries over 26 years, we show that reforms discouraging inventor mobility decrease the patenting of MNE subsidiaries within a country, while reforms... View Details

Keywords: Migration; Technology; Policy Evaluation; Patents; Information Technology; Immigration; Policy; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Globalization

SSRN

Web

Financial Management of Smaller Firms - Course Catalog

current profitable business model exists (as distinct from many VC-backed developmental businesses), and frequently the businesses are of a scale that they can be acquired and owned by individuals instead of institutions or families.... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Industrial Change, the Boundary of the Firm, and Racial Employment Segregation

By: John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

Racial employment segregation between large workplaces in America has grown over the last generation. We know little about how changes in patterns of employment by economic sector have contributed to this growth, though. While there are many stylized narratives about... View Details

Keywords: Workplace Segregation; Firm Boundaries; Organizations; Employees; Segmentation; Race; Change; United States

2020
Article

Assessing the Impact of Big Data on Firm Innovation Performance: Big Data is not Always Better Data

By: Maryam Ghasemaghaei and Goran Calic

In this study, we explore the impacts of big data’s main characteristics (i.e., volume, variety, and velocity) on innovation performance (i.e., innovation efficacy and efficiency), which eventually impacts firm performance (i.e., customer perspective, financial... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Analytics and Data Science; Performance; Innovation and Invention

30 Aug 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Consumers Punish Firms that Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19

Keywords: by Bhavya Mohan, Serena Hagerty, and Michael Norton

January 2021
Exercise

E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (B): Optimizing Assortment for a New Retailer

By: Ayelet Israeli and Fedor (Ted) Lisitsyn

The E-Commerce Analytics group at the traditional CPG firm was in charge of compiling various online sales reports, as well as making data-driven recommendations for sales and marketing tactics. In a series of exercises, students address different data challenges for... View Details

Purchase

Article

Hiring Teams, Firms and Lawyers: Evidence of the Evolving Relationships in the Corporate Legal Market

By: Ashish Nanda, Michele DeStefano Beardslee, John C. Coates and David B. Wilkins

2006
Working Paper

Where Do Transactions Come From? A Network Design Perspective on the Theory of the Firm

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark

April 2013
Article

Who Is Governing Whom? Executives, Governance, and the Structure of Generosity in Large U.S. Firms

By: Christopher Marquis and Matthew Lee

We examine how organizational structure influences strategies over which corporate leaders have significant discretion. Corporate philanthropy is our setting to study how a differentiated structural element—the corporate foundation—constrains the influence of... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Leadership; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; United States

July 2022
Case

Yinglan Tan: Scaling a Venture Capital Firm in Southeast Asia

By: Josh Lerner and Richard Zhu

Yinglan Tan considered the future of his young Singapore-based venture capital firm. On the one hand, the intuition that was behind the initial creation of Insignia in 2017 had been proven correct. The venture capital market in Southeast Asia had grown rapidly, driven... View Details

Keywords: E-commerce; Scalability; Globalized Markets and Industries; Venture Capital; International Finance; Growth and Development; Expansion