Publications

July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Vineet Nayar and Sampark Foundation: Frugal Innovation at Scale (A) (Abridged)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2005, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO and Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies, and his wife, Anupama Nayar, committed $100 million of their personal wealth to found Sampark Foundation—a grant-making philanthropy with a mission to transform learning outcomes for 20... View Details

June 2000 (Revised October 2017)
Case

IDEO

By: Stefan Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes IDEO, the world's leading product design firm, and its innovation culture and process. Emphasis is placed on the important role of prototyping and experimentation in general, and in the design of the very successful Palm V handheld computer in particular. A... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Innovation Strategy; Business or Company Management; Time Management; Product Design; Product Development; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Practice; Problems and Challenges; Creativity; Hardware

Al Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the Harvard Business School. His research, teaching, and consulting interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; education industry; health care; information; internet; legal services

Awards

International Dissertation Competition

By: Stefan H. Thomke

First Prize Winner of the 1994 Product Development & Management Association’s (PDMA) International Dissertation Competition for “The Economics of Experimentation in the Design of New Products and Processes” (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology). View Details

October 1996 (Revised April 1997)
Case

Team New Zealand (A)

By: Marco Iansiti and Alan D. MacCormack

The case describes the development process used by Team New Zealand to design their two yachts for the 1995 America's Cup. During development, the team makes extensive use of simulation and physical prototyping to improve the initial design concept. As they approach... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Design; Product Development; Sports; Ship Transportation; Research and Development; Situation or Environment; Decisions; Sports Industry; New Zealand

04 Aug 2016
News

Why Olympic Athletes Shouldn’t Try to Calm Down Before a Big Moment

November 1980 (Revised August 1986)
Case

Progressive Corp.'s Divisionalization Decision (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles Jr.

Describes a company that is considering whether to establish an experimental division as a relatively independent profit center under a general manager. Data relevant to this decision include the company's strategy, markets, products, current structure, size, and the... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Decision Making; Data and Data Sets; Managerial Roles; Organizational Design; Situation or Environment

Find at Harvard

Amit Goldenberg is an assistant professor in the Negotiation Organization & Markets unit, an affiliate with Harvard’s View Details

April 1999
Teaching Note

Managing Experimentation: Module Overview Note for Managing Product Development(Note for Instructor)

By: Stefan H. Thomke

Describes the conceptual foundations and pedagogy for a module on managing experimentation in the development of products and services. The module has been taught in the second-year elective MBA course Managing Product Development. The purpose of the module is to help... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Business or Company Management; Product Development; Personal Development and Career; Science; Technology Adoption

02 Aug 2020
What Do You Think?

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

seed the concept more broadly.” But Ana Frony reminded us to “never forget that even trainees must have some intuition and poetry to develop a hypotheses and design an experiment.” Nick C raised the question of just how far the practice... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

24 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Get People Addicted to a Good Habit

cardiovascular exercise and hydration. It’s not that we are uninformed, unable, or lazy. It’s that we’re just not in the habit. “The idea is that habits are equivalent to addictions” With that in mind, the researchers designed a field... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

23 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Sponsorship Programs Could Actually Widen the Gender Gap

FabioFilzi Key aspects of corporate sponsorship programs, while designed to advance women’s careers, may end up widening the gender gap rather than narrowing it, according to new experimental research.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

03 Jun 2013
Research & Ideas

The Power of Rituals in Life, Death, and Business

Lovers, and Lotteries," forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In one experiment, the researchers set out to determine whether rituals led to an increased sense of control, and whether that sense of control... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

February 2015
Article

'Open' Disclosure of Innovations, Incentives and Follow-on Reuse: Theory on Processes of Cumulative Innovation and a Field Experiment in Computational Biology

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Most of society's innovation systems―academic science, the patent system, open source, etc.―are "open" in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Cumulative Innovation; Incentives; Search; Disclosure And Access; Knowledge Sharing; Motivation and Incentives; Collaborative Innovation and Invention