Publications

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Artificial intelligence promises to greatly increase the efficiency of the economy. But it may have an even larger impact on the economy by serving as a new general-purpose “method of invention” that can reshape the nature of the... View Details

28 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

A Dedication to Creation: India's Ad Man Ranjan Kapur

time had a socialistic leaning. Advertising and marketing were not considered good things. You had so many poor people in the country who couldn’t even put a meal on their table and here you were trying to sell Coca-Cola or fancy products... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Advertising

June 2015 (Revised May 2017)
Case

LOYAL3: Own What You Love™

By: Luis M. Viceira and Allison M. Ciechanover

This case features San Francisco–based financial technology startup, LOYAL3. Founded in 2008, the company seeks to disrupt the capital markets and democratize access to those markets for retail investors. By the fall of 2014, LOYAL3 had three products. In the first,... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Stocks; Strategic Planning

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and... View Details

Keywords: Open Platforms; Bottlenecks; Wintel Platform; Disintermediation; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Business History; Digital Platforms; Computer Industry

SSRN

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November 2019
Article

Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment

By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

When do conversations lead people to generate better ideas? We conducted a field experiment at a startup boot camp to evaluate the impact of informal conversations on the quality of product ideas generated by participants. Specifically, we examine how the personality... View Details

Keywords: Peer Effects; Field Experiment; Interpersonal Communication; Creativity; Personal Characteristics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention

Find at Harvard

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October 2000 (Revised March 2001)
Case

Firestone/Ford Tire Controversy, The (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Roger Orosman Nieves

Examines the high-profile Firestone/Ford product recall/investigation that took place in the summer of 2000. Focuses on the management of supplier relationships and incentives. View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Supply Chain Management; Motivation and Incentives; Crisis Management; Corporate Accountability; Product; Service Operations; Auto Industry

03 Mar 2011
Working Paper Summaries

How Firm Strategies Influence the Architecture of Transaction Networks

Keywords: by Jianxi Luo, Daniel E. Whitney, Carliss Y. Baldwin & Christopher L. Magee

January 2016
Case

Open Innovation at Fujitsu (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

This case study examines the open innovation journey at Fujitsu, a global information and communication technology company. The case ends with the location decision between Tokyo, Japan, downtown San Francisco or Sunnyvale, California, regarding establishing a small... View Details

13 Jul 2022
Book

Reimagining the Economy: What Would It Take to Put People First?

toxic many of the cleaning products she was using were to her health and to the environment. So, when she heard about Vida Verde, a worker cooperative organized by Brazilian women immigrants, which sells housecleaning services using... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

January 2014 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Nivea (A)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Johann Fuller, Volker Bilgram and Greta Friar

The case describes the efforts of Beiersdorf, a worldwide leader in the cosmetics and skin care industries, to generate and commercialize new R&D through open innovation using external crowds and "netnographic" analysis. Beiersdorf, best known for its consumer brand... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Innovation Management; Crowdsourcing; Big Data; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Research and Development; Social and Collaborative Networks; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

25 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

Will Machine Learning Make You a Better Manager?

have to be, say, United Airlines to take advantage of these tools. Managers can now purchase off-the-shelf products that can mine Twitter or Yelp and develop a detailed analysis of how sentiment is changing in real time. “It has basically... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Information Technology

05 Aug 2015
What Do You Think?

What Happened to the ‘Innovation, Disruption, Technology’ Dividend?

How Patient Should We Be In Waiting for the Tech Productivity Dividend? Respondents to this month’s column cited a number of factors accounting for the fact that there is no discernable increase in the rate of improvement in human View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Computer; Technology

Research Summary

Overview

Navid has worked with different organizations across various industries, from the Federal Reserve to medical device manufacturers, heavy construction equipment sellers, and B2B software providers, to assemble proprietary datasets in studying organizational buying.... View Details

02 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 3, 2018

countries and industries. In line with the model’s predictions, we find that integration and delegation covary positively, and that producers are more likely to integrate suppliers in input sectors with greater productivity variation.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 1999 (Revised April 2000)
Case

drugstore.com

By: Richard L. Nolan

On a clear day in August 1999 in the new headquarters of drugstore.com, against a backdrop of the Blue Angels flying in formation over Lake Washington practicing for their hydroplane Seafare Cup performance, Peter Neupert was pleased with his company's IPO performance.... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Internet and the Web; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Retail Industry

November 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Summa Equity: Building Purpose-Driven Organizations

By: George Serafeim

In 2015, Reynir Indahl left top Nordic private equity firm Altor Equity Partners to found Summa Equity (Summa). After long contemplation following the financial crisis, Indahl was convinced the financial system was producing negative externalities and that the current... View Details