Publications

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04 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Are the Big Four Audit Firms Too Big to Fail?

the risks of failure. Adding to this concern is that even as the number of mega audit firms has contracted from eight in the 1980s to four today, their combined market share remains formidable, especially in the United States. The View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting

August 2004 (Revised June 2005)
Case

Fate of the Vasa, The

By: Alan D. MacCormack and Richard Mason

In 1628, the royal warship Vasa was launched. It was Sweden's most expensive naval vessel ever built, costing over 5% of GNP. On its maiden voyage, the ship sailed 1,400 yards in its own harbor, heeled over to the side, and then sank. One third of the 150 crew and... View Details

Keywords: History; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Ship Transportation; Product Design; Technology Adoption; Failure; Business and Government Relations; Product Development; Sweden

Article

Policy Implications of Weak Patent Rights

By: James J. Anton, Hillary Greene and Dennis Yao

Patents vary substantially in the degree of protection provided against unauthorized imitation. In this chapter we explore a range of work addressing the economic and policy implications of "weak" patents—patents that have a significant probability of being overturned... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Motivation and Incentives; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Policy; Innovation and Invention; Rights; Monopoly; Business Startups

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10 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

New Medical Devices Get To Patients Too Slowly

While the US Food and Drug Administration has chiseled away pharmaceutical review times over the years to speed innovative drugs to market, the opposite seems to have occurred in the agency's approval of medical devices. Instead of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health; Technology

07 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 7

incumbent attracting and retaining more profitable customers over time. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=39914 Clusters of Entrepreneurship and Innovation By: Chatterji, Aaron, Edward Glaeser, and William Kerr... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

17 Dec 2007
Research & Ideas

The Rise of Medical Tourism

the U.S. medical profession are still large. In India, the same depth of pool of engineering and mathematical talent for software, offshoring, and outsourcing is there for medicine, too. In the 1950s and '60s, the Indian government... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

08 Dec 2015
First Look

December 8, 2015

bank leadership knew it needed to innovate to maintain that reputation in the digital era. The bank's chairman, CEO, and EVP of digital banking unit were evaluating their options. Should they have a separate P&L for the digital... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2002
Case

A Father's Love: Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Bradley Campbell

John Crowley, CEO of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, a start-up biotechnology firm developing an orphan drug to treat a rare lysosomal storage disorder from which his children suffer, must choose between a partnership and a buyout to have sufficient funds and support to get... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Financing and Loans; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Sales; Price; Product Development; Motivation and Incentives; Decision Choices and Conditions; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

March 2008
Case

Novartis AG: Science-Based Business

By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington

Novartis is a science-based drug company, which has important implications for its business strategy. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world with over $38B in sales in 2007. Pharmaceuticals account for slightly over $24B of that total. In 2007,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Partners and Partnerships; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Pharmaceutical Industry

January 2023 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Elon Musk at Tesla

By: George Serafeim and Amram Migdal

This case gives an overview of Elon Musk’s career arc through the lens of the 2003 founding of Tesla and its growth through 2022. Background information is included on Tesla’s unique strategic decisions, its operational and reputational struggles and successes, and the... View Details

October 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Carbon Engineering

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Sid Misra

Dr. David Keith, President of Carbon Engineering, a company based in Calgary, Alberta, is commercializing a technology to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The company plans to market the captured CO2 to produce low carbon transportation fuels in... View Details

04 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 4

investors provide a little funding and limited governance to an increased number of startups that they are more likely to abandon, but where initial experiments significantly inform beliefs about the future potential of the venture. This... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 May 2021
Op-Ed

Why America Needs a Better Bridge Between School and Career

Over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, there are hints of optimism as more people gain access to vaccines and the federal government injects more stimulus money into the economy. Yet, the outlook for workers remains mixed. The crisis has... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph B. Fuller and Rachel Lipson

December 2023
Article

Advances in Power-to-Gas Technologies: Cost and Conversion Efficiency

By: Gunther Glenk, Philip Holler and Stefan Reichelstein

Widespread adoption of hydrogen as an energy carrier is widely believed to require continued advances in Power-to-Gas (PtG) technologies. Here we provide a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of system prices and conversion efficiency for three currently prevalent... View Details

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30 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 30, 2018

the early technical challenges associated with napalm were solved by experimentation under the guidance of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), created to coordinate scientific research into the problems of modern warfare. Because the View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

18 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 18

consistency between instrument, research question, and context. Paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1838538 Working PapersGrowth through Heterogeneous Innovations Authors:Akcigit, Ufuk, and William R. Kerr Abstract We study how exploration... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2012
Chapter

The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Applications and Software; Product Development; Organizations; Employees; Behavior; Competition; Cooperation; Creativity; Information Technology Industry

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2019
Working Paper

Thinking Outside the Box (12): The Benefits of Increased Transparency in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance for the 180 Million Insured

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

Economists have long noted that the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) caused workers to purchase health plans that differ in price and other characteristics from those they would otherwise choose for themselves. We explore the short-term and long-term... View Details

Keywords: After-tax Income; Consumer-driven Health Care; Health Care Costs; Health Insurance; Income Inequality; Tax Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Insurance; Income; Equality and Inequality; Taxation; Policy; United States