Firm Innovation - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Summit Explores the New Economy

economy, traditional firms must adapt new ways of doing business, but not forget how they achieved success in the first place. the Business Of Crowdsourcing Gaining the community's trust is vital to building a successful business with... View Details

06 Oct 2003
What Do You Think?

Is “the Innovator’s Solution” to Sustained Corporate Growth an Unnatural Act?

spending your time on disruptive innovations!" M. P. Singh, a manager in the public sector, suggests, "Expecting corporate culture to tolerate or encourage radical change or innovation is like expecting a country to encourage... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 May 2016
Research Event

Crowdsourcing, Patent Trolls, and Other Research Insights Highlighted at Harvard Business School Symposium

cash. “The main determinant is the amount of cash a firm has and whether the firm recently came into cash,” Cohen said. All of this litigation has a wearing effect on its victims: It ends up stifling View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman & Carmen Nobel

19 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: “The Architecture of Innovation”

The key to managing innovation starts, and probably ends, with incentives. In his new book, The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations, Harvard Business School Professor Josh Lerner puts it this way:... View Details

Keywords: by Josh Lerner; Financial Services

10 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Amazon Web Services Changed the Way VCs Fund Startups

to recent research. Enter the era of “spray and pray,” where venture firms over the last decade have seeded more firms than previously, but with less upfront investment of time and money. As someone who... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Banking; Financial Services; Information Technology

24 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Do National Security Secrets Hold Back National Innovation?

Instead of seeking patents, many inventors and firms choose to keep the details of their innovations secret, out of the public view. But what are the implications of keeping important new ideas locked away... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

29 May 2013
Research & Ideas

Faculty Symposium Showcases Breadth of Research

hosting contests to find solutions to problems ranging from automotive design to cleaning up oil spills. Karim R. Lakhani has spent the past five years working with NASA, Harvard Medical School, and TopCoder to determine the most effective ways to solve View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

01 Apr 1999
News

Q & A: Confronting New Technologies: When Doing Right Is Wrong

Recently featured on the cover of Forbes with Intel chairman Andrew Grove, Associate Professor Clayton M. Christensen is the author of The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. His research on "disruptive... View Details

22 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

Recessions Push Some Entrepreneurs to Launch Too Soon

founders. Similarly, the odds that founders were previously employed at small firms increases by 29 percent. Examining venture performance in the first few years after creation, we find that startups founded by individuals most sensitive... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

29 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors

Six degrees of separation seems to work well for B-list actors—but does it have anything to say about innovation and business? HBS associate professor Lee Fleming believes it does, and his work looks specifically at how ideas and View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Publishing

29 Sep 2011
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Leveraging Intellectual Property

the inherent intellectual property issues can be sticky. This paper discusses how firms can address these issues by adopting a system of modularity, wherein innovation in one part of a project will not... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

27 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

What Happens When Ordinary People Get Creative?

economy continues to make it easier for users to share new ideas with companies, society, and each other. Large firms routinely host open innovation contests to solve problems big and small, and forums like... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

10 Nov 2008
Research Event

Social Media Leads the Future of Technology

capital firm Accel Partners; Susan L. Decker (HBS MBA '86), president of Yahoo! Inc.; and Eric Kim (HBS MBA '81), senior vice president and general manager of Intel Corporation's Digital Home Group. The first computer, the ENIAC, cleared... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

10 Apr 2006
Research & Ideas

Lessons from the Browser Wars

between 1995 and 1999. Understanding the complex interaction between the two technologies and how a second mover was able to unseat the incumbent market champion will help innovators of all stripes learn how new technology gets diffused... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Computer; Consumer Products; Technology

22 Mar 2010
Research & Ideas

One Strategy: Aligning Planning and Execution

each with a remarkable track record of innovations that built on past capabilities. The same assets, processes, and capabilities that make established firms complex and hard to manage also make them... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Web Services

01 Apr 2002
News

Q&A - Mark Fields

Japan’s fifth-largest automaker and employer of more than 38,000 people, Fields was named 2001 Asian Business Innovator of the Year (by CNBC Asia Pacific and TNT, a business logistics company).. A New York and New Jersey native, Fields... View Details

Keywords: auto; Mazda; Ford; Mark Fields; Machinery Manufacturing; Manufacturing

20 Aug 2024
Book

Why Competing With Tech Giants Requires Finding Your Own Edge

The following is an excerpt that was adapted and lightly edited from chapter nine of Smart Rivals: How Innovative Companies Play Games That Tech Giants Can't Win, written by Feng Zhu and Bonnie Yining Cao and published August 20, 2024. In... View Details

Keywords: by Feng Zhu; Technology; Information Technology

01 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Immigrant Innovators: Job Stealers or Job Creators?

specifically for beneficiaries who have received advanced degrees in the United States.) "It's a lightning rod for a very heated debate," says William Kerr, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies how immigration affects View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology

03 Jan 2017
News

Using Technology to Tailor Learning to Each Child

Heather Staker (MBA 2001) is president of Ready to Blend, a firm that works with K-12 teachers to combine educational technology solutions with classroom instruction to accelerate children’s ability to learn and achieve. In this... View Details

22 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century

survivors, the future of e-commerce and other info tech industries seemed perilous. BusinessWeek.com recently ranked Amazon #6 in its annual list of most innovative companies; four of the other five are internet or computer businesses. In... View Details