Publications

Article

What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation

By: Noubar Afeyan and Gary P. Pisano

Many people believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovations is chaotic, random, and unmanageable. But that view is flawed, the authors argue. Breakthroughs can be systematically generated using a process modeled on the principles that drive evolution in... View Details

Keywords: Breakthrough Innovation; Variance Generation; Selection Pressure; Emergent Discovery; Innovation and Invention; Value Creation; Innovation Leadership

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Article

Financing Innovation

By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

We review the recent literature on the financing of innovation, inclusive of large companies and new startups. This research strand has been very active over the past five years, generating important new findings, questioning some long-held beliefs, and creating its... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Borrowing and Debt; Innovation and Invention

Research Summary

Managing Innovation

I continue to study the disruptive processes by which innovation transforms -- or fails to transform -- industries and companies. There are three elements to these transformations. The first is a technological enabler -- an innovation that makes complicated, expensive... View Details

2016
Working Paper

Does Firm Innovation Affect Corporate Social Responsibility?

By: Rui Shen, Yi Tang and Ying Zhang

This study examines the relationship between firm innovation and CSR. Stakeholders’ concern over transaction-specific investments exacerbates when firms engage heavily in innovation activities. To secure stakeholders’ support, firms adopt CSR effectively as an ex ante... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Firm Innovation; Transaction-specific Investments; Firm Risk; Environmental Munificence; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Innovation and Invention

2020
Working Paper

Immigration Policy Levers for U.S. Innovation and Startups

By: William R. Kerr and Sari Pekkala Kerr

Immigrants account for about a quarter of U.S. invention and entrepreneurship despite a policy environment that is not well suited for these purposes. This chapter reviews the U.S. immigration policy environment that governs how skilled migrants move to America for... View Details

Keywords: Invention; Innovation; Startups; High-tech; Immigration; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Business Startups; Venture Capital; United States

SSRN

September 2012 (Revised March 2015)
Case

CoET: Innovation in Africa

By: Diego Comin, Diana Dimitrova and Yukiko Tsukamoto

Keywords: Innovation; Developing Countries; Technology Commercialization; Entrepreneurship; Africa; Technology Diffusion; Tanzania

Other Article

#HerImpact: Leading the Innovation Lifecycle

By: Lynda M. Applegate

This blog post describes how entrepreneurs can scale their leadership and organization as they scale their business. View Details

Keywords: Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Life-cycle; Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurship; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States

2016
Case

Denver Public Schools 2015: Innovation and Performance?

By: Michael Tushman, Colin Maclay and Kerry Herman

Keywords: Innovation; Education Reform; Education; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Early Childhood Education; Innovation Strategy; Education Industry; Colorado

18 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Innovation Network

Keywords: by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr; Technology

March 2001
Article

Technological Acquisitions and the Innovation Performance of Acquiring Firms: A Longitudinal Study

By: Gautam Ahuja and Riitta Katila

This paper examines the impact of acquisitions on the subsequent innovation performance of acquiring firms in the chemicals industry. We distinguish between technological acquisitions, acquisitions in which technology is a component of the acquired firm's assets, and... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Acquisitions; Knowledge; Strategy; Knowledge Acquisition; Acquisition; Innovation and Invention; Chemical Industry

01 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Financing Innovation

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Ramana Nanda

2018
Teaching Note

Denver Public Schools: Innovation and Performance?

By: Michael Tushman, Kerry Herman and James Barnett

Keywords: Education; Innovation; Education Reform; Education Industry; Colorado

2016
Book

Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Susan Salter Reynolds

Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about—innovation far more audacious... View Details

Keywords: Teaming; Innovation; Leadership; Groups and Teams; Innovation and Invention

March 2020
Case

SRS and the Defense Innovation Unit: Rethinking Procurement

By: Paul A. Gompers and David Lane

SRS and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) follows the process by which SRS, a lean maker of remotely-operated submersible vehicles, navigates the DIU’s acquisition process. Set up in 2015 to speed the U.S. military’s access to promising commercial technologies, the DIU... View Details

Keywords: Procurement; Defense Innovation Unit; Business Startups; Acquisition; Technological Innovation; Investment; Commercialization; United States

Article

Intermediary Functions and the Market for Innovation in Meiji and Taisho Japan

By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu

Japan experienced a transformational phase of technological development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We argue that an important, but so far neglected, factor was a developing market for innovation and a patent attorney system that was... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Japan

Article

Scaling Up Analogical Innovation with Crowds and AI

By: Aniket Kittur, Lisa Yu, Tom Hope, Joel Chan, Hila Lifshitz - Assaf, Karni Gilon, Felicia Ng, Robert Kraut and Dafna Shachaf

Analogy—the ability to find and apply deep structural patterns across domains—has been fundamental to human innovation in science and technology. Today there is a growing opportunity to accelerate innovation by moving analogy out of a single person’s mind and... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Artificial Intelligence; Crowdsourcing; Analogy; Innovation and Invention; Technology; Science

Research Summary

Social Innovation

My intellectual agenda addresses this question: How to innovate to solve the world’s toughest challenges? Out of the earth’s population, about 2 billion can afford good products whereas the remaining 5 billion are poor and therefore are nonconsumers.... View Details

2020
Article

Humanizing Management and Innovation

By: Hirotaka Takeuchi

This article is an excerpt from The Wise Company book that Ikujiro Nonaka and I published in October 2019 from Oxford University Press. It is a sequel to The Knowledge-Creating Company book we published 25 years ago. As our thinking evolved from information to... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Creation; Knowledge Practice; Phronesis; Practical Wisdom; Ba; Continuous Innovation; Fusion Of Analog And Digital; Management As A Way Of Life; Management Style; Emotions; Innovation and Management

September 2019 (Revised September 2020)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)

By: Herman Leonard, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James "Hondo" Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. Overseeing acquisitions in one of the... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Crowdsourcing; Prototyping; Navy; Entrepreneurship; Public Equity; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; United States