Publications

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October 2010 (Revised November 2010)
Case

The Export-Import Bank of the United States

By: C. Fritz Foley and Matthew Johnson

In the fall of 2009, Fred Hochberg, chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im), and his team struggled to find a way to help finance the sale of Boeing aircraft to Emirates. Ex-Im responds to the challenges in the credit market with an innovative... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Credit; Financing and Loans; International Finance; Banking Industry; United States

January 2014 (Revised June 2020)
Case

The Rise and Fall of Nokia

By: Juan Alcacer, Tarun Khanna and Christine Snively

In 2013, Nokia sold its Device and Services business to Microsoft for €5.4 billion. For decades Nokia had led the telecommunications (telecom) industry in handsets and networking. By the late 2000s, however, Nokia's position as market leader in mobile devices was... View Details

Keywords: Mobile Phones; Smartphone; Telecommunications; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Emerging Markets; Technological Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Telecommunications Industry; Asia

June 2014
Article

The Capitalist's Dilemma

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Derek C. M. van Bever

Sixty months after the 2008 recession ended, the economy was still sputtering, producing disappointing growth and job numbers. Corporations seemed stuck: Despite low interest rates, they were sitting on massive piles of cash and failing to invest in new initiatives. In... View Details

Keywords: Capital Investments; Creating Markets; Evaluating Business Investments; Innovation; Emerging Markets; Investment; Economic Growth; Capital; Innovation and Invention

Program

Advancing Women of Color in Leadership

Summary Advancing Women of Color in Leadership reflects our belief in inclusion—supporting efforts to increase access to equal opportunity in organizations because it is the right thing to do. Demographic diversity also helps... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Appropriate Entrepreneurship? The Rise of China and the Developing World

By: Josh Lerner, Junxi Liu, Jacob Moscona and David Yang

Global innovation and entrepreneurship has traditionally been dominated by a handful of high-income countries, especially the US. This paper investigates the international consequences of the rise of a new hub for innovation, focusing on the dramatic growth of... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Emerging Markets; Economic Growth; China

22 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

The Speed of New Ideas: Trust, Institutions and the Diffusion of New Products

Keywords: by Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Joel Waldfogel

2022
Book

Leadership to Last: How Great Leaders Leave Legacies Behind

By: Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna

Society tends to glorify the get-rich-quick entrepreneur who builds a company, takes it public and then (maybe) contributes to charity. In Leadership to Last, Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna discuss the interviews they and other Harvard faculty have undertaken... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Corruption; Gender; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Society; India; Pakistan; Bangladesh; Middle East; Africa; Latin America; Philippines

Sep 2015
Report

Business Aligning for Students: The Promise of Collective Impact

This report calls on business leaders to take stock of their efforts to improve pre-K-12 education and commit to an innovative approach called “Collective Impact,” a community endeavor that addresses... View Details

summer 1997
Article

An Empirical Exploration of a Technology Race

By: J. Lerner

An extensive theoretical literature examines technological competition, and in particular whether leaders maintain their standing. These models, however, have received little support. Innovation is examined in the disk drive industry, an environment particularly... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Learning

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February 2007 (Revised March 2012)
Compilation

John D. Rockefeller and the Creation of Standard Oil

By: Nancy F. Koehn and Katherine Miller

Reconstructs the entrepreneurial journey of John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil and one of the most famous business figures in history. Traces his early career as a retailer in Cleveland through his decision to enter the oil industry in the early 1860s to his... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Business History; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Personal Development and Career; Competitive Strategy; Energy Industry

December 2024
Case

Xtalic

By: Joshua Lev Krieger and Jim Matheson

This case study examines the commercialization efforts of Xtalic, a startup founded by MIT scientists based on their discovery of a novel material science method to protect metal substrates. The case focuses on the strategic decisions involved in bringing this... View Details

Keywords: Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Business Startups; Agreements and Arrangements; Science-Based Business; Commercialization

October 2011
Supplement

An Interview with Jack Hughes, Founder and Chairman of TopCoder

By: David A. Garvin

TopCoder's crowdsourcing-based business model, in which software is developed through online tournaments, is presented. The case highlights how TopCoder has created a unique two-sided innovation platform consisting of a global community of over 225,0000 developers who... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development; Technological Innovation; Problems and Challenges; Motivation and Incentives; Competition; Online Technology; Information Technology Industry

04 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

The Business of Life

unusual application of an economic term delighted Christensen, a management professor known around HBS and the globe as both a brilliant business thinker and a deeply religious man. For more than a decade he has been a go-to consultant... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

02 Jul 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Risk-Mitigating Technologies: The Case of Radiation Diagnostic Devices

Keywords: by Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo; Medical Devices & Supplies

September 2024
Article

Standing on the Shoulders of Science

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Monika Schnitzer and Martin Watzinger

Today’s innovations rely on scientific discoveries of the past, yet only some corporate R&D builds directly on scientific output. In this paper, we analyze U.S. patents to investigate how firms generate value by building on prior art “closer” to science. We show... View Details

Keywords: Patent Novelty; Value Capture; Science; Patents; Valuation; Research and Development

2018
Working Paper

Reverse the Curse of the Top-5

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The past 40 years has seen a large increase in the number of articles submitted to journals ranked in the top-5 of their discipline. This increase is the rational response, by faculty, to the overweighting of publications in these journals by university promotions and... View Details

Keywords: Information Publishing; Journals and Magazines; Power and Influence; Research

SSRN

February 2015
Case

TouchTunes and the Connected Digital Jukebox Platform

By: Alan MacCormack and Noah Fisher

The case describes innovation and new product development at TouchTunes, the leader in the Digital Jukebox market. In March 2013, after releasing its innovative "Virtuo" jukebox developed in collaboration with frog design, TouchTunes was at a crossroads. Having... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Design; R＆D; Outsourcing; Platform Strategy; Digital Media; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Music Industry

August 2024 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Commonwealth Fusion Systems: Born at Scale

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson, Kyle Myers, Gunnar Trumbull and Richard Vietor

This case study chronicles the journey of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) on its ambitious mission to commercialize fusion energy and become the world’s leading provider of fusion power plants. Emerging from a “special arrangement” with MIT's Plasma Science and... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear Energy; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial Finance; Energy Generation; Commercialization; Science-Based Business; Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Energy Industry

Summer 2020
Article

Tech Clusters

By: William R. Kerr and Frederic Robert-Nicoud

Tech clusters like Silicon Valley play a central role for modern innovation, business competitiveness, and economic performance. This paper reviews what constitutes a tech cluster, how they function internally, and the degree to which policy makers can purposefully... View Details

Keywords: Clusters; Agglomeration; Innovation; Industry Clusters; Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Patents

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