Publications

Program

Leading Professional Service Firms

Summary As entry barriers rapidly disappear, competition is accelerating and reshaping the business landscape for professional service firms. Navigating this continual change successfully requires extraordinary leadership abilities. This professional service View Details

Keywords: Professional Services; Professional Services

February 2009 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Shanghai Diligence Law Firm (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles and Catherine Zhang

Shanghai Diligence Law Firm, started in January 2006, is a rapidly growing law firm in China's burgeoning legal services market. In addition to the usual challenges facing all professional service firms (picking and retaining talent and building a desired client... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Legal Services Industry; China

Educators

January 2004
Article

Market Orientation, Innovativeness and Organizational Culture: Thai Firms Adapt to the Asian Economic Crisis

By: Rohit Deshpandé and John U. Farley

Keywords: Markets; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Culture; Financial Crisis; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Ventures; Thailand; Asia

2010
Working Paper

Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations

By: Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr

We study how exploration versus exploitation innovations impact economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework that contains multiple innovation sizes, multi-product firms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in exploration R&D to acquire new product lines... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Decision Choices and Conditions; Economic Growth; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Size; Research and Development; United States

September 21, 2018
Article

Innovation Should Be a Top Priority for Boards. So Why Isn't It?

By: J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Boris Groysberg

Corporate directors and executives alike recognize that today’s pace of change continues to accelerate and that firms need to innovate to stay ahead. But are boards doing enough to support innovation, as they should? We conducted a survey of over 5,000 board members... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Innovation; Technology; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business Strategy

Register to Read

21 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Bio-Piracy: When Western Firms Usurp Eastern Medicine

Novelty is a core requirement for patentability, but patent officers, failing to realize that these herbs are far from novel, go ahead and issue the patents. “When a Western firm goes to a Western exchange, the patent examiner often... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Legal Services; Biotechnology

2008
Other Unpublished Work

Are Private Equity Firms Better Managed?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity,... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Management Practices and Processes; Production; Performance Improvement; Manufacturing Industry; Asia; Europe; United States

2012
Working Paper

IP Modularity: Profiting from Innovation by Aligning Product Architecture with Intellectual Property

By: Joachim Henkel, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Willy C. Shih

In this paper we explain how firms seeking to take advantage of distributed innovation and outsourcing can bridge the tension between value creation and value capture by modifying the modular structure of their technical systems. Specifically, we introduce the concept... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Value Appropriation; Distributed Innovation; Open Innovation; Strategy; Open Source Distribution; Value; Complexity; Intellectual Property

SSRN

2020
Working Paper

Team Learning and Superior Firm Performance: A Meso-Level Perspective on Dynamic Capabilities

By: Jean-François Harvey, Henrik Bresman, Amy C. Edmondson and Gary P. Pisano

This paper proposes a team-based, meso-level perspective on dynamic capabilities. We argue that team-learning routines constitute a critical link between managerial cognition and organization-level processes of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. We draw from the... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Capabilities; Innovation; Strategic Change; Teams; Team Learning; Groups and Teams; Learning; Innovation and Invention; Change; Performance

SSRN

Research Summary

Innovation and Productivity

In this stream of research, Professor Steinwender examines how firms adjust their innovative behavior and productivity in response to changes in the external environment. Analyzing Spanish firm-level data, she finds that two mechanisms proposed in the economic... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Collaborative Architectures for Innovation

By: Gary P. Pisano and Roberto Verganti

Collaborative innovation has become a hot topic in innovation today. Scholars, consultants, and the business press all urge companies seeking to boost innovative performance to become more "collaborative." Too often, however, companies fail to distinguish among the... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Governance Controls; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks

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

2015
Chapter

Innovation and Business Growth

By: William R. Kerr

Innovation and the pursuit of new business opportunities are essential for growth at the firm level; moreover, they provide the foundation for an economy to achieve new levels of technological prowess, productivity, and ultimately prosperity. This chapter describes... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Innovation and Invention

2015
Other Teaching and Training Material

Innovating in Healthcare

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Margo I. Seltzer and Kevin Schulman

With over 71,000 past enrollees, Innovating in Healthcare investigates the issues of health care spending, quality, and access that continue to plague America and global nations alike. With U.S. health care costs trending toward $4 trillion in 2020, the need to... View Details

Keywords: edX; Healthcare; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Business Model

23 Nov 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations

Keywords: by Ufuk Akcigit & William R. Kerr; Technology

December 2014 (Revised August 2015)
Case

Muñoz Group: Sustaining Global Vertical Integration Through Innovation

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Annelena Lobb

Muñoz Group, which supplied supermarket chains and food distribution chains around the world with fruit, flowers, juice and ice cream, was at a strategic crossroads in 2014. CEO Alvaro Muñoz had to choose the best way to achieve profit goals and provide his company... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Supply Chain; Retail; Agribusiness Industry; Globalized Firms and Management; Supply Chain Management; Competitive Advantage; Vertical Integration; Profit; Innovation and Invention; Retail Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; North and Central America

Educators

Program

Disruptive Innovation

With the ability to spot potential threats and opportunities sooner and make the right strategic moves faster, you will be ready to drive innovation and position your organization for long-term success. Details Create and sustain a strong... View Details

Research Summary

Building Capabilities in Professional Service Firms

One of the most distinctive aspects of professional service firms is that the vast majority of the people who work in them are directly involved in serving clients. Long-term success in a professional service firm requires obtaining and developing the right... View Details

2013
Article

Industry Equilibrium with Open-Source and Proprietary Firms

By: Gaston Llanes and Ramiro de Elejalde

We present a model of industry equilibrium to study the coexistence of open-source and proprietary firms. Two novel aspects of the model are (i) participation in open source arises as the optimal decision of profit-maximizing firms, and (ii) open-source and proprietary... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Balance and Stability; Software; Knowledge Management; Supply and Industry; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Cooperation