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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(272)
- News (58)
- Research (163)
- Events (3)
- Multimedia (9)
- Faculty Publications (83)
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting
By: Michael Webb, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom and Josh Lerner
Patenting in software, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence has grown rapidly in recent years. Such patents are acquired primarily by large U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, and HP, as well as by Japanese multinationals such as Sony, Canon,... View Details
Webb, Michael, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom, and Josh Lerner. "Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-014, August 2018. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 24793, July 2018.)
- 01 Aug 2011
- Research & Ideas
Immigrant Innovators: Job Stealers or Job Creators?
information about inventors' immigration status or ethnicities, they do contain the inventors' names. By utilizing name-matching software, the researchers could infer the ethnicity of inventors at any given firm. An View Details
- February 2008 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
The Travails of Rubber: Goodyear or Badyear?
By: Tom Nicholas and Andrew Ferguson
Explores the reason why Charles Goodyear, inventor of rubber vulcanization, was unable to profit from his discovery despite securing international property rights over his invention through a patent in 1844. Considers the utility of patents as an incentive for... View Details
Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Motivation and Incentives; Commercialization
Nicholas, Tom, and Andrew Ferguson. "The Travails of Rubber: Goodyear or Badyear?" Harvard Business School Case 808-118, February 2008. (Revised May 2011.)
- Article
Breakthroughs and the 'Long Tail' of Innovation
The largely erroneous perception that breakthroughs are impossible to predict arises from the tendency to focus on just the breakthroughs while ignoring the iterative process of invention and its distribution of outcomes. When all inventions are considered, they... View Details
Keywords: Diversity; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Business Processes; Performance Capacity; Performance Improvement
Fleming, Lee. "Breakthroughs and the 'Long Tail' of Innovation." MIT Sloan Management Review 49, no. 1 (Fall 2007).
- August 2011
- Article
Independent Invention During the Rise of the Corporate Economy in Britain and Japan
By: Tom Nicholas
Independent inventors accounted for approximately half of all patents in Britain and Japan by 1930, despite the rise of the corporate economy and the spread of industrial R&D. A mixture of patent renewal and historical citations data reveals that the quality of... View Details
Keywords: Independent Innovation and Invention; Development Economics; Research and Development; Patents; System; Motivation and Incentives; Tokyo; London; United States
Nicholas, Tom. "Independent Invention During the Rise of the Corporate Economy in Britain and Japan." Economic History Review 64, no. 2 (August 2011).
- March 2020
- Article
Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation
By: Vikas A. Aggarwal, David H. Hsu and Andy Wu
How should firms organize their pool of inventive human capital for firm-level innovation? While access to diverse knowledge may aid knowledge recombination, which can facilitate innovation, prior literature has focused primarily on one way of achieving that: diversity... View Details
Keywords: Knowledge Recombination; Organization Design; Team Boundary; Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Diversity; Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Human Capital; Organizational Design
Aggarwal, Vikas A., David H. Hsu, and Andy Wu. "Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation." Art. 1. Strategy Science 5, no. 1 (March 2020): 1–16. (Lead article.)
- July 2013
- Article
Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity
By: C. Fritz Foley and William R. Kerr
This paper studies the impact that immigrant innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the... View Details
Keywords: Technology Transfer; Innovation; Ethnic Networks; Patents; Diasporas; Ethnicity; Multinational Firms and Management; Competitive Advantage; Research and Development; Foreign Direct Investment; Innovation and Invention; United States
Foley, C. Fritz, and William R. Kerr. "Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity." Management Science 59, no. 7 (July 2013): 1529–1544.
- July 2010 (Revised September 2023)
- Case
Werner von Siemens and the Electric Telegraph
By: Geoffrey Jones and Bjoern von Siemens
This case describes the nineteenth century founding by Werner Siemens of the Siemens electrical business in Germany. Werner's dual role as inventor and entrepreneur is explored as he created one of the world's first multinational enterprises, whose growth initially... View Details
Keywords: Business Organization; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Multinational Firms and Management; Business History; Growth and Development Strategy; Electronics Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Germany
Jones, Geoffrey, and Bjoern von Siemens. "Werner von Siemens and the Electric Telegraph." Harvard Business School Case 811-004, July 2010. (Revised September 2023.)
- March 2022
- Article
Winner Takes All? Tech Clusters, Population Centers, and the Spatial Transformation of U.S. Invention
By: Brad Chattergoon and William R. Kerr
U.S. invention has become increasingly concentrated around major tech centers since the 1970s, with implications for how much cities across the country share in concomitant local benefits. Is invention becoming a winner-takes-all race? We explore the rising spatial... View Details
Keywords: Clusters; Invention; Agglomeration; Artificial Intelligence; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Applications and Software; Industry Clusters; AI and Machine Learning
Chattergoon, Brad, and William R. Kerr. "Winner Takes All? Tech Clusters, Population Centers, and the Spatial Transformation of U.S. Invention." Art. 104418. Research Policy 51, no. 2 (March 2022).
- April 2017
- Article
Prizes, Patents and the Search for Longitude
By: M. Diane Burton and Tom Nicholas
The 1714 Longitude Act created the Board of Longitude to administer a large monetary prize and progress payments for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude. However, the prize did not prohibit patenting. We use a new dataset of marine chronometer inventors to... View Details
Burton, M. Diane, and Tom Nicholas. "Prizes, Patents and the Search for Longitude." Explorations in Economic History 64 (April 2017): 21–36.
- 2017
- Article
High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr, Çağlar Özden and Christopher Parsons
This paper reviews recent research regarding high-skilled migration. We adopt a data-driven perspective, bringing together and describing several ongoing research streams that range from the construction of global migration databases, to the legal codification of... View Details
Keywords: Migration; Talent; Diaspora; Agglomeration; Diasporas; Industry Clusters; Talent and Talent Management; Immigration
Kerr, Sari Pekkala, William R. Kerr, Çağlar Özden, and Christopher Parsons. "High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration." Annual Review of Economics 9 (2017): 201–234.
- September 2009 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
Intellectual Ventures
By: Andrei Hagiu, David B. Yoffie and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Intellectual Ventures creates and acquires intellectual property, which it then seeks to monetize through non-exclusive licensing. In early 2009, as an increasing number of companies were trying to position themselves as leading intermediaries in the market for... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Rights; Service Operations; Research and Development; Technology; Service Industry
Hagiu, Andrei, David B. Yoffie, and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld. "Intellectual Ventures." Harvard Business School Case 710-423, September 2009. (Revised February 2011.)
- 2021
- Working Paper
Winner Takes All? Tech Clusters, Population Centers, and the Spatial Transformation of U.S. Invention
By: Brad Chattergoon and William R. Kerr
U.S. invention has become increasingly concentrated around major tech centers since the 1970s, with implications for how much cities across the country share in concomitant local benefits. Is invention becoming a winner-takes-all race? We explore the rising spatial... View Details
Keywords: Invention; Innovation; Artificial Intelligence; Clusters; Agglomeration; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Applications and Software; Industry Clusters; United States
Chattergoon, Brad, and William R. Kerr. "Winner Takes All? Tech Clusters, Population Centers, and the Spatial Transformation of U.S. Invention." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-027, October 2021. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29456, November 2021.)
- 2022
- Working Paper
Talent Flows and the Geography of Knowledge Production: Causal Evidence from Multinational Firms
By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sara Signorelli and James M. Sappenfield
Leveraging a unique dataset merging patent data with all work-related migration reforms that took place in 15 countries over 26 years, we show that reforms discouraging inventor mobility decrease the patenting of MNE subsidiaries within a country, while reforms... View Details
Keywords: Migration; Technology; Policy Evaluation; Patents; Information Technology; Immigration; Policy; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Globalization
Bahar, Dany, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sara Signorelli, and James M. Sappenfield. "Talent Flows and the Geography of Knowledge Production: Causal Evidence from Multinational Firms." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-047, January 2022. (Revised December 2022.)
- March 2010
- Article
The Role of Independent Invention in U.S. Technological Development, 1880-1930
By: Tom Nicholas
Why did independent inventors account for over half of US patents by 1930 and more than three times the number granted to R&D firms? Using new data on patents and historical patent citations, I show that independents supplied high quality innovations to a... View Details
Keywords: History; Technological Innovation; Patents; Urban Scope; Independent Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; United States
Nicholas, Tom. "The Role of Independent Invention in U.S. Technological Development, 1880-1930." Journal of Economic History 70, no. 1 (March 2010): 57–82.
- Article
On the Division of Profit in Sequential Innovation
By: Jerry R. Green and Suzanne Scotchmer
In markets with sequential innovation, inventors of derivative improvements might undermine the profit of initial innovators through competition. Profit erosion can be mitigated by broadening the first innovator's patent protection and/or by permitting cooperative... View Details
Green, Jerry R., and Suzanne Scotchmer. "On the Division of Profit in Sequential Innovation." RAND Journal of Economics 26, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 20–33.
- 14 Sep 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
Ethnic Innovation and US Multinational Firm Activity
Keywords: by C. Fritz Foley & William R. Kerr
- July 2010
- Article
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention
By: William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln
This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on U.S. technology formation. We use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and... View Details
Keywords: Engineering; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Immigration; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Business and Government Relations; Science; United States
Kerr, William R., and William F. Lincoln. "The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic Invention." Journal of Labor Economics 28, no. 3 (July 2010): 473–508. (Winner of H. Gregg Lewis Prize for Best Paper in Journal of Labor Economics 2010-2011.)
- April 2012
- Article
Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages
By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao
This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multilocation firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details
Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Research and Development; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Technology
Alcacer, Juan, and Minyuan Zhao. "Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages." Management Science 58, no. 4 (April 2012): 734–753.
- August 2002 (Revised July 2003)
- Case
LAE Enterprises Corp.
Jay Entrepreneur had to decide whether it was worth his time to plow through a 12-page term sheet for a Series A round of preferred stock prepared by HBS Investors, a well-established venture capital firm that did seed, early-round, and mezzanine financings. He could... View Details
Keywords: Venture Capital; Contracts; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Startups; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
Bagley, Constance E. "LAE Enterprises Corp." Harvard Business School Case 803-025, August 2002. (Revised July 2003.)