Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(705)
- Faculty Publications (133)
- May 2013
- Article
Hybrid Innovation in Meiji Japan
By: Tom Nicholas
Japan's hybrid innovation system during the Meiji era of technological modernization provides a useful laboratory for examining the effectiveness of complementary mechanisms to patents. Patents were introduced in 1885, and by 1911, 1.2 million mostly non-pecuniary... View Details
- February 2013
- Case
18 Months in a Startup: Zaggora.com
By: Tom Nicholas
The founders of Zaggora reflected back on a tumultuous year-and-a-half in which they had generated, from just $40,000 in personal savings, a multi-million dollar sportswear enterprise selling Hotpants to women. These were hotpants not of the 1960s hipster variety, but... View Details
- 5 Feb 2013
- Conference Presentation
Financing Entrepreneurial Growth
By: Tom Alberg, Andrew A. Bogan, Harold Bradley, Robert D. Cooter, Monika Gruter Cheney, Oliver R. Goodenough, William R. Hambrecht, Frank Hatheway, Thomas F. Hellmann, Marianne Hudson, Jared Konczal, Josh Lerner, Robert E. Litan, Diane Mulcahy, Ramana Nanda, Frank Partnoy, Joe Ratterman, Nava Ravikant, Jay R. Ritter, Alicia Robb, David T. Robinson, Allison Schrager, Barry Silbert, E. R. Sirri, Daniel Stangler and Sharon Vosmek
Despite recent innovations in entrepreneurial finance, particularly at the early stage of business creation, many new and young companies continue to face hurdles to acquire capital.
The Kauffman Foundation addressed current challenges and opportunities in... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Pittsburgh
By: Eric Werker, Meg Rithmire, Benjamin Kennedy and Andrew Knauer
The case narrates the development of Pittsburgh from the 1940s to 2012. It analyzes the collapse of the steel industry in the early 1980s, the city's subsequent decline, and the city's later re-emergence as a hub for higher education, the tech sector, and the... View Details
Keywords: Google; Population; City Growth; Shale; PNC; Tom Murphy; Luke Ravenstahl; Public-private Partnership; Tax Increment Financing; Brownfields; Renaissance; Industry Clusters; Industry Growth; City; Business and Government Relations; Taxation; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Nonprofit Organizations; Higher Education; Technology Industry; Health Industry; Steel Industry; Education Industry; Pittsburgh
- December 2012
- Article
Inducement Prizes and Innovation
By: Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner and Tom Nicholas
We examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the Royal Agricultural Society of England at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939. We find that the effects of prizes on competitive entry are large, and we... View Details
- October 2012 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Kleiner-Perkins and Genentech: When Venture Capital Met Science
By: Felda Hardymon and Tom Nicholas
Genentech is a rare success story in the biotechnology industry. Hundreds of billions of dollars of venture capital have been invested without the expected transformational effects. Established in 1976, Genentech was to develop the new science of recombinant DNA into... View Details
- October 2012 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
Whaling Ventures
By: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins
Whaling was a prominent global industry in the nineteenth century and the United States was dominant. By 1850 there were about 900 whaling ships in the world and 700 of these were American. Rates of return on capital were high compared to benchmark investments, at... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Inequality in Knowledge Repository Use in Scaling Service Operations
By: Melissa A. Valentine, Tom Fangyun Tan, Bradley R. Staats and Amy C. Edmondson
To scale service operations requires sharing knowledge across the organization. However, prior work highlights that individuals on the periphery of organizational knowledge sharing networks may struggle to access useful knowledge at work. A knowledge repository (KR)... View Details
- December 2011 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
The Indian Removal Act and the 'Trail of Tears'
By: Tom Nicholas, Ari Medoff, Raven Smith and Sam Subramanian
Native Americans were subjected to a protracted and painful process of forced removal from their land. The case provides "first hand" evidence on the debate over Indian removal as it took place during the early nineteenth century. The first document is excerpted from... View Details
- December 2011
- Article
Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys
By: Tom Nicholas
Matching 2,777 R&D firms in surveys conducted by the National Research Council between 1921 and 1938 with U.S. patents reveals that 59 percent of all firms and 88 percent of publicly-traded firms patented. These shares are much higher than those observed for modern R&D... View Details
- November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
- Case
Healthymagination at GE Healthcare Systems
By: Vineet Kumar and V. Kasturi Rangan
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, introduced a new innovation strategy named "healthymagination" in 2009. With cost, quality, and access as its three pillars, healthymagination ensures a strong focus for new product introduction efforts all around GE. But will this focus... View Details
- 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
- May 2011
- Article
Challenge the Boss or Stand Down
By: W. Earl Sasser
This HBR Case Study includes both the case and the commentary. For teaching purposes, this reprint is also available in two other versions: case study-only, reprint R1105X, and commentary-only, R1105Z. Tom Green, an aggressive young sales executive at self-service... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
The Whiz Kids
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
In October 1945, Henry Ford II received a telegram in his office at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan written by Charles "Tex" Thornton, a U.S. Air Force colonel. The telegram presented an opportunity for Ford to deploy a system of statistical control which... View Details
- March 2011
- Article
Cheaper Patents
By: Tom Nicholas
The 1883 Patents Act in Britain provides perspective for modern patent policy reforms because it radically changed incentives for inventors by reducing filing fees by 84 percent. Patents increased 2.5 fold after the reform, which was evenly distributed across the... View Details
Keywords: Patents; Global Range; Distribution; Demand and Consumers; Organizational Structure; Business Processes; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Policy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Fluctuation; Motivation and Incentives; Distribution Industry; United States; Great Britain
- January 2011 (Revised April 2023)
- Course Overview Note
The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: Overview
By: Tom Nicholas
This is a course overview note for The Coming of Managerial Capitalism. CMC is chronologically organized. It starts in the late eighteenth century when America gained independence, spans the remarkable rise to industrial maturity during the nineteenth and twentieth... View Details
- December 2010
- Case
Leadership, Culture, and Transition at lululemon
By: Michael Tushman, Ruth Page and Tom Ryder
The case examines leadership and organizational change within a strong culture context through a multimedia study of lululemon, a specialty retailer of high-end athletic apparel. Video segments trace the company's history from its founding in 1998 as a single retail... View Details
- December 2010 (Revised March 2015)
- Case
The Wright Brothers and Their Flying Machines
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright were fascinated by the mystery of flight and they built on the ideas of prominent earlier figures such as Octave Chanute (1832-1910) the French-born American who was influential in fostering the free exchange of ideas... View Details
- September 2010
- Supplement
Compass Maritime Services, LLC: Valuing Ships (CW)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Albert W. Sheen
Tom Roberts, a founding partner of Compass Maritime Services, a New Jersey-based shipping research and consulting firm, has been asked by a new potential customer in May 2008 for advice on purchasing a capesize bulk carrier. After identifying a suitable ship with his... View Details
- September 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Case
Compass Maritime Services, LLC: Valuing Ships
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Albert W. Sheen
Tom Roberts, a founding partner of Compass Maritime Services, a New Jersey-based shipping research and consulting firm, has been asked by a new potential customer in May 2008 for advice on purchasing a capesize bulk carrier. After identifying a suitable ship with his... View Details