Publications

2008
Simulation

Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay Battery

By: Willy C. Shih and Clayton Christensen

This online simulation allows students to play the role of a business unit manager at Back Bay Battery Company who faces the dilemma of balancing a portfolio of investment strategies across products in the rechargeable battery space. Players have to manage R&D... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Investment; Product Development; Research and Development; Battery Industry

Teaching Interest

Field Course: Social Innovation Lab

By: Brian L. Trelstad

Co-taugh with Prof. John Kim

This course provides students an opportunity to use the discipline of entrepreneurial... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Social Enterprise

07 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

August 2012 (Revised August 2024)
Module Note

Evaluating the Viability of Innovative Technology-Commercializing Ventures

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

A guide for how a person who is not an expert in either technology nor business can, nevertheless, exaluate whether two promising innovative medical technologies are technically and/or financially feasible. Hint: I would not invest in either. View Details

Keywords: Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

09 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

A Diagnostic for Disruptive Innovation

customers by providing them adequate functionality in return for lower prices. The technology of this sort of disruptive innovation offers "good enough" performance along traditional metrics and is supported by a business model... View Details

Keywords: by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson & Matt Eyring

March 2011 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Fraunhofer: Innovation in Germany

By: Diego A. Comin, J. Gunnar Trumbull and Kerry Yang

Fraunhofer is one of the largest applied research organizations in the world. With 17,000 employees and a 1.6 billion euros budget, Fraunhofer has 60 institutes in Germany that cover most fields of science. The case examines the consequences that Fraunhofer has for the... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Entrepreneurship; Financial Markets; Government and Politics; Labor; Markets; Outcome or Result; Research and Development; Competitive Strategy; Germany

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Subprime Meltdown: American Housing and Global Financial Turmoil

By: Julio Rotemberg

This case focuses on the financial difficulties faced in the U.S. from August to December 2006 as well as their roots in subprime lending. After briefly discussing how mortgages were structured and traded in the pre-1990 period, it describes subprime mortgage lending,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Central Banking; Financial Markets; Mortgages; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; United States

29 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

Financial Crisis Caution Urged by Faculty Panel

was to highlight the relation between financial innovation and crisis. "Is there a structural relation between innovation and crisis? I think there has to be," Merton... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

2010
Chapter

The Financing of R&D and Innovation

By: Bronwyn H. Hall and Josh Lerner

Evidence on the “funding gap” for investment innovation is surveyed. The focus is on financial market reasons for underinvestment that exist even when externality-induced underinvestment is absent. We conclude that while small and new innovative firms experience high... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Venture Capital; Corporate Finance

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Teaching Interest

Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation

By: Brian L. Trelstad

Combining the tools of philanthropy, business and advocacy (or mission, margin and mandate), social entrepreneurs have tackled long-standing societal issues like teacher training, college access, global public health, renewable energy and sanitation. Social... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Organizations; Social Enterprise; Civil Society or Community; System

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

living through. Many boards are also still struggling to improve their oversight. Preventing future Enron-type disasters will require the kind of attention to board oversight, financial incentives, and ethical discipline that I address in... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

March 2016 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Michael Milken: The Junk Bond King

By: Tom Nicholas and Matthew G. Preble

Michael Milken, an investment banker who dominated the junk bond market in the 1980s, was sentenced to jail in 1990 after pleading guilty to a number of securities and tax-related felonies. In the preceding decade, Milken had helped usher in a new wave of leveraged buy... View Details

Keywords: Junk Bonds; High-yield Bonds; Financial Innovation; Shareholder Value; Bonds; Capital; Capital Structure; Cost of Capital; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Finance; Investment Banking; Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Ownership; Private Equity; Restructuring; United States

10 Dec 2024
Interview

A New Model for Funding Healthcare Innovation

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Duke Rohlen

Ajax Health founder Duke Rohlen (HBS MBA 2001) and HBS Professor Regina Herzlinger join host Brian Kenny to discuss the key success factors for both start-up and established medical technology firms. The case “Ajax Health: A New Model for Medical Technology Innovation”... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Business Model; Private Equity; Health Industry

23 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings

barriers to a lack of savings. What other barriers make saving money difficult? A: One of our papers, "Using Financial Innovation to Support Savers: From Coercion to Excitement," [PDF] is an attempt to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

25 Sep 2017 - 27 Sep 2017
Lecture

Three-Day Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Africa

By: Euvin Naidoo

Africa and the 4th Industrial Revolution: Innovation, leapfrogging and the promise and challenges of the Demographic Dividend Optional pre-seminar viewing: 2017 MasterClass on Digital Innovation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Monday, September 25, ... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Africa

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2016
Book

Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation

By: Dietmar Harhoff and Karim R. Lakhani

The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary growth of new models of managing and organizing the innovation process, which emphasize users over producers. Large parts of the knowledge economy now routinely rely on users, communities, and open innovation... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Transformation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

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