Publications
Publications
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(10,818)
- Faculty Publications (2,616)
- March 2010
- Article
The Role of Independent Invention in U.S. Technological Development, 1880-1930
By: Tom Nicholas
Why did independent inventors account for over half of US patents by 1930 and more than three times the number granted to R&D firms? Using new data on patents and historical patent citations, I show that independents supplied high quality innovations to a... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
"Plugging In" the Consumer: The Adoption of Electrically Powered Vehicles in the U.S.
By: Elie Ofek and Polly Ribatt
How will U.S. consumers respond to the proliferation of alternative-fuel vehicles, such as cars powered partially or completely by electricity, in the coming decade? After a century in which fossil fuel-powered vehicles dominated the market, it appeared consumers would... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Applied Research Technologies, Inc.: Global Innovation's Challenges
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Heather Beckham
Applied Research Technologies, Inc. (ART) is a diversified technology company which has used its entrepreneurial culture and encouragement of innovation as an ongoing competitive advantage. The case concentrates on the challenges faced by Peter Vyas, the Filtration... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
Local Motors: Designed by the Crowd, Built by the Customer
By: Michael I. Norton and Jeremy Dann
In the wake of the meltdown among U.S. auto manufacturers in 2009, Jay Rogers, CEO of Local Motors, has a new approach for the automotive industry: decide which models are produced through online design competitions, and then allow customers to "build their own cars"... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Arup: Building the Water Cube
By: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson and Dilyana Karadzhova
Arup, an engineering firm, collaborated with PTW Architects and China Construction Design Institute to develop a design for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Aquatics Center design competition. Their winning concept for the Water Cube combined elements of Chinese... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Go Mobile: The Phirbol Franchise
By: Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred
To grow Phirbol, a telecom retail franchise chain in Delhi, India's underdeveloped markets, its founders were exploring ways to offer more value to the franchisees. In mid-2009, the Phirbol franchise was comprised of some 150 franchisees that had converted their small... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Foxwoods: Turning Data into Insights in the Hospitality Industry
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Deborah L. Soule
This case describes how an IT director identified an opportunity and implemented an innovative business solution designed to enable line managers and executives to convert data to information to insights. The case also details how the company partnered with an emerging... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised November 2013)
- Case
Living PlanIT
By: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, Susan Thyne and Tiona Zuzul
Living PlanIT is a start-up company that has developed a new, innovative business model for sustainable urbanization. This model reflects the software and technology backgrounds of its founders, Steve Lewis and Malcolm Hutchinson, and is in vivid contrast to other... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
Tennant Company
By: Toby E. Stuart, Lynda M. Applegate and James Weber
Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine how to create, finance, structure, staff, govern, measure, and manage a new venture for developing a fundamentally new product line. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative,... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time
By: Stefan H. Thomke and Mona Sinha
Describes the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organization, which achieves very high service performance (6 Sigma equivalent or better) with a low-cost and very simple operating system. The case explores all aspects of their system (mission, information management, material... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors
By: Rebecca Henderson and Richard G. Newell
A combination of concerns about climate change and energy security has recently led to significant increases in public funding for energy R&D. Some commentators are suggesting that these increases need to be sustained, and are advocating for increases of as much as... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages
By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao
This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multi-location firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
SEWA Trade Facilitation Center: Changing the Spool
By: Mukti Khaire and Kathleen L. McGinn
The case is about the decision to convert a not-for-profit organization into a for-profit company. SEWA Trade Facilitation Center (STFC), which is part of a larger non-profit organization—the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)—works to improve the livelihoods of... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised October 2010)
- Background Note
News in the Digital World: Who Pays?
By: Stephen P. Bradley and Nancy Bartlett
Models to monetizing news in the digital landscape, which is real-time, searchable, sharable, multi-sourced, anytime, and any screen, were emerging in 2010. Could content creators get people to pay for what they watched, read, listened to, and shared online? Were news... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised August 2012)
- Background Note
Note on Telemedicine
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Jillian Copeland
This note provides background in all the modalities of telemedicine. It accompanies the cases "Medtronic: Patient Management Initiative" (A) and (B), HBS Nos. 302-005 and 309-064. View Details
- January 2010 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
Transforming ASUSTeK: Breaking from the Past
By: Willy C. Shih, Ho Howard Yu and Hung-Chang Chiu
What happens when an original design manufacturer (ODM) firm tries to transform itself into a branded goods seller? The case traces the evolution of ASUSTeK from a motherboard supplier, to an ODM of desktop and notebook PCs, through its split into three companies that... View Details
- January 2010
- Case
Pratham - Every Child in School and Learning Well
By: Srikant M. Datar, Stacey M. Childress, Rachna Tahilyani and Anjali Raina
The case focuses on how Pratham, a non-governmental organization, provided quality education to underprivileged children in India by collaborating with the government. It focuses on the problem Madhav Chavan, the founder, is trying to solve, the contributing factors... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised May 2012)
- Case
TopCoder (A): Developing Software through Crowdsourcing
By: Karim R. Lakhani, David A. Garvin and Eric Lonstein
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 225,000 developers who... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
The Random House Response to the Kindle
By: Bharat N. Anand and Peter Olson
In early 2010, e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle and Apple's impending iPad, threatened to disrupt the book publishing industry. The case provides an overview of the industry, describes the broader trends regarding e-readers, and asks: how should major publishers like... View Details
- January 2010
- Article
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of U.S. inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent... View Details