Publications

2008
Article

Market Leadership and Strategic Investments in Innovation: The Adoption of E-Business Capabilities

By: Kristina Steffenson McElheran

This study focuses on whether more-productive firms are more likely to adopt process innovations and why. The empirical context is the adoption of e-business practices among U.S. manufacturing plants in early 2000. Based on detailed data from the U.S. Census of... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Innovation Strategy; Leadership; Motivation and Incentives; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Manufacturing Industry; United States

18 Apr 2024
Lecture

Innovation Opportunities Created by COVID-19 Can Help: And How to Make Them Happen

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

The crush of patients created by COVID enabled the creation of sites for care outside the traditional hospital, such as retail pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care centers, telemedicine, and wireless sensors. Public policy mirrored these changes by... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; Insurance Industry

2023
Working Paper

Can Digitalization Improve Public Services? Evidence from Innovation in Energy Management

By: Robyn C. Meeks, Jacquelyn Pless and Zhenxuan Wang

This paper examines how digitalization impacts public service provision through a study of the U.S. power sector. We exploit the staggered timing of electric utilities’ investments in “smart” meters and find that electricity losses per unit sold decrease by 3.6%. This... View Details

Keywords: Electric Utility; Energy Management; Smart Meters; Energy; Climate Change; State Ownership; Private Ownership; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; United States

February 2003 (Revised August 2005)
Case

UCB (A): Managing Information for Globalization and Innovation

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Brian DeLacey

This case presents a complex total MIS strategy case for a $3 billion European pharmaceutical/chemicals company based in Brussels. It covers corporate strategy alignment of IT portfolio, IT operations issues, and global coordination of IT. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Operations; System; Corporate Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Globalization; Pharmaceutical Industry; Information Technology Industry; Brussels

Forthcoming
Article

Catching Outliers: Committee Voting and the Limits of Consensus When Financing Innovation

By: Andrey Malenko, Ramana Nanda, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Savitar Sundaresan

We document that investment committees of major VCs use a voting rule where one partner `championing' an early-stage investment is sufficient to invest. Their stated reason for this rule is to `catch outliers'. The same VCs use a more conventional `majority' rule for... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Voting Rules; Innovation and Invention; Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making; Voting

SSRN

23 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Product Disasters Can Be Fertile Ground for Innovation

to answer: Would negative publicity from the accident affect future innovation in that segment of the medical device industry? Would people’s perception of safety issues reduce demand for products using radiation? Do accidents chill... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

Article

The Payoff of Pay-for-Success

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Lisa Chase

Pay-for-success contracts also known as social impact bonds, have been widely touted as a clever way to fill the funding gap plaguing social programs by attracting a tranche of the trillions of dollars in private return-seeking capital. This article takes an in-depth... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Social Impact Bonds; Public Innovation; Social Enterprise; Investment; Innovation and Invention

02 Mar 2016
What Do You Think?

Is Apple’s Real Privacy Challenge Technology Innovation Itself?

families, presidential candidates, and some citizens on the other. But is this just as much a struggle in which Apple is facing the inexorable consequences of IT innovation itself? For those who may have just returned from a jungle trip,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

15 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

These VC Partners May Make Your Firm Less Innovative

much-needed cash but also expertise and advice. In a perfect world, everyone benefits. The VC firm takes an equity stake and makes money when the company succeeds, rewarding limited partners who have invested in the VC firm. But what... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Banking

October 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Social Finance, Inc.

By: Shawn Cole and Fanele Mashwama

This case begins in February 2019 as Tracy Palandjian, co-founder and CEO of Social Finance Inc., prepares for a board meeting that will determine the future strategy of the social enterprise. Social Finance is a non-profit in the impact investment space founded in... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions

2014
Working Paper

Entrepreneurship as Experimentation

By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Entrepreneurship research is on the rise but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

12 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

When Experts Play It Too Safe: Innovation Lessons from a NASA Experiment

When evaluating whether to invest in a new idea, senior executives often rely on experts. But these advisers often favor ideas that are easy to execute over tough-to-pull-off but potentially groundbreaking plans. The risk for companies:... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Aerospace

02 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Technology Innovation and Diffusion as Sources of Output and Asset Price Fluctuations

Keywords: by Diego A. Comin, Mark Gertler & Ana Maria Santacreu; Technology

March 2004 (Revised July 2004)
Case

UCB: Managing Information for Globalization and Innovation (A) (Abridged)

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Brian DeLacey

A medium-size European manufacturer of pharmaceuticals and chemicals faces a number of information strategy issues. The case focuses on the issues of coordinating international IT activities and day-to-day operations as well as balancing the company's IT applications... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Information Technology; Operations; System; Corporate Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Globalization; Pharmaceutical Industry; Information Technology Industry; Brussels

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

Keywords: Prizes; Innovation; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives

April 1998 (Revised July 1998)
Teaching Note

RogersCasey Alternative Investments: Innovative Response to the Distribution Challenge TN

By: Josh Lerner

Teaching Note for (9-296-024). View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Investment

February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

OpenInvest

By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Impact Investing; Investment Portfolio; Customization and Personalization; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Overview

The research activity of Stefano Denicolai regards the management of innovation and technology. His recent works investigate if and how the investment in intangible assets (IA) - especially knowledge assets, such as patents or copyright - impacts on the firm... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Management; International Entrepreneurship; Intangible Assets; Open Innovation; Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Web Services Industry; Tourism Industry

June 2017
Article

The Political Economy of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Local Governments

By: Christophe Pérignon and Boris Vallée

We examine the toxic loans sold by investment banks to local governments. Using proprietary data, we show that politicians strategically use these products to increase chances of being re-elected. Consistent with greater incentives to hide the cost of debt, toxic loans... View Details

Keywords: Financial Innovation; Political Elections; Financing and Loans; Innovation and Invention