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Publications
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- 2025
- Working Paper
New Economic Forces Behind the Value Distribution of Innovation
By: Timothy F. Bresnahan, Shane Greenstein and Pai-Ling Yin
Advances in a general-purpose technology (GPT) enable many firms to invent complementary inventions, or co-inventions, making the GPT more valuable. This study examines the empirical implications of a straightforward model in which firms choose either incremental or... View Details
- August 1, 2025
- Article
When to Innovate and When to Imitate
By: Felipe A. Csaszar, Rebecca Karp and Maria Roche
Innovation is often the gold standard for firms looking to grow profits and become leaders in their industries. But given the steep cost of failure, is a relentless pursuit of innovation always advisable? Or might there be some instances when imitation may be a better... View Details
- July 2025 (Revised July 2025)
- Case
Elon Musk, 2025: The Master of Big Bets?
By: David B. Yoffie
This case explores Elon Musk’s influence across business and politics in 2025, as he navigates the challenges of simultaneously leading multiple companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, while briefly serving in the U.S. government. It examines Musk’s high-stakes bets... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
Toilets for the Underserved: The SURT Commercialization Challenge
By: Maria P. Roche, Anne Marie Knott and Alexander Oettl
In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” initiative stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT), engineered by Dr. Shannon Yee, offered an off-grid, self-contained... View Details
Keywords: Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Social Issues; Social Enterprise; Public Sector; Private Sector; Market Entry and Exit; Strategic Planning; Engineering; Infrastructure; Innovation Strategy; Utilities Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; South Africa; India; France
- July 2025
- Background Note
Ecosystem Disruption: A Multi-Stakeholder View of Disruptive Innovations
By: E. Ofek, Michael Haenlein, Eitan Muller and Roman Welden
The purpose of this note is to offer a more expansive view of how innovations disrupt markets than has been portrayed thus far in the extant literature by taking an ecosystem perspective. This broader outlook allows examining not only the product strategies of the... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
AeroVironment: The MacCready Works Dilemma
By: Willy Shih and Sophie Zimmerman
Scott Newbern, the head of the MacCready Works at AeroVironment (AV) faced a dilemma. The new Strix next-generation drone had just completed a very successful test. AV had launched MacCready Works to focus on transformational innovations that served new markets and new... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
SecureID: Digital Disruptions of Smartcards in Africa
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Raffaella Sadun, Pippa Tubman Amerding and Namrata Arora
This case explores the strategic inflection point faced by Kofo Akinkugbe, founder and CEO of SecureID, a smartcard manufacturing company in Nigeria. With the rise of fintech and digital payment solutions threatening the dominance of physical cards, SecureID must... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
Insilico’s Rentosertib Dilemma: A Star in the Pipeline?
By: Michael Lingzhi Li, Brian Mao Fu and Billy Chan
In 2024, the AI biotech firm Insilico Medicine faced a pivotal decision about its new drug, Rentosertib. Discovered and designed using artificial intelligence to treat a lung disease, Rentosertib had successfully advanced to Phase II trials — a first in global... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
Osteoboost: Go-To-Market Strategy in a Healthcare Startup
Osteoboost focuses on how a health care Medtech startup with a new device for treating osteopenia. The firm decides among alternative go-to-market strategies, including B2B (the firm to healthcare providers), DTC (directly to consumers), or some combination of the two... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
ICARE: Frontline Leadership at Michelin
By: Hubert Joly and Emilie Billaud
In 2025, Michelin CEO Florent Menegaux reflected on the company’s transformation since taking the helm in 2019. Amid a volatile global landscape marked by inflation, rising competition, and geopolitical and sustainability pressures, Michelin had achieved strong... View Details
Keywords: Human Capital; Transformation; Management Practices and Processes; Managerial Roles; Organizational Culture; Leadership; Competency and Skills; Global Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Retention; Employee Relationship Management; Working Conditions; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Groups and Teams; Motivation and Incentives; Well-being; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Europe; China; United States
- 2025
- Chapter
An Appraisal on 'Teaching the Early History of IB at Harvard Business School'
By: Geoffrey Jones
This chapter reviews new research about the origins of International Business as an academic discipline. Contrary to conventional wisdom that it originated in economics departments in the 1960s, this research highlights the importance of teaching at Harvard Business... View Details
- July–August 2025
- Article
Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Engagement with Open Source Communities, Innovation, and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub
By: Annamaria Conti, Christian Peukert and Maria P. Roche
We study the engagement of nascent firms with open source communities and its implications for innovation and attracting funding. To do so, we link data on 160,065 U.S. startups from Crunchbase to their activities on the open source software development platform... View Details
- July 2025
- Article
How Important Is Editorial Gatekeeping? Evidence from Top Biomedical Journals
By: Joshua L. Krieger, Kyle R. Myers and Ariel D. Stern
We examine editors' influence on the scientific content of academic journals by unpacking the role of three major forces: journals' missions, aggregate supply of and demand for specific topics, and scientific homophily via editorial gatekeeping. In a sample of top... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
The Future in Sight: LumineticsCore and the First Autonomous AI for Diagnostics
By: Michael Lingzhi Li and Tinglong Dai
After two decades of research, Dr. Michael Abramoff successfully launched LumineticsCore—the first autonomous AI system authorized by the FDA to diagnose diabetic retinopathy without physician oversight. The case traces his journey across algorithm design, clinical... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Where Discovery Happens: Research Institutions and Fundamental Knowledge in the Life-Sciences
By: Amitabh Chandra and Connie Xu
Fundamental knowledge in the life sciences has consequential implications for medicine and subsequent medical innovations. Using publications in leading life science journals to measure fundamental knowledge, we document large agglomerations in the institutions where... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Parque del Sendero: Repositioning in the Death Care Industry in Chile
By: Jill Avery, Andres Cuneo and Marco Bertini
Facing changing consumer behavior and shifting industry conditions, Parque del Sendero, one of largest networks of cemeteries in Chile, considers repositioning its products to appeal to a broader swath of Chilean customers to fuel growth and a more profitable business... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Redefining the Edge: Jahez’s Strategic Pivot in Saudi Arabia’s Food Delivery Battle
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Ahmed Dahawy
Jahez made its mark in Saudi Arabia’s food delivery market by serving customers willing to pay more for reliable, high-quality service—a segment largely overlooked by other platforms. As the company grew, it expanded into the mass market and developed a network of... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Transforming a Titan (A)
By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene
Dimitri Papalexopoulos, fourth-generation CEO of TITAN Cement, must decide whether to keep leading the 120-year-old, family-controlled firm or hand the reins to new management. Over 26 years he has turned TITAN from a domestic player into an internationally diversified... View Details
Keywords: Digitalization; Digital; Family Firms; Succession Planning; CEO Succession; CEO Role; Decarbonization; Resilience; Innovation; Organizational Transformations; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation; Family Business; Family Ownership; Climate Change; Transformation; Crisis Management; Leadership; Management Succession; Growth Management; Industrial Products Industry; Construction Industry; Greece; Europe; United States
- June 2025
- Supplement
Transforming a Titan (B)
By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene
After a global search the board appoints Marcel Cobuz—ex-LafargeHolcim executive with deep innovation experience—as TITAN’s first non-family CEO. Cobuz co-creates a four-pillar roadmap: sharpen the core cement portfolio, accelerate low-carbon products and aggregates,... View Details
- June 2025
- Supplement
Transforming a Titan (C)
By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene
Three years in his tenure as CEO, Cobuz must decide whether to launch a more than €500 million carbon-capture-and-storage facility. The project—Europe’s largest planned CCS installation—would cut almost 20% of group emissions and unlock a €234 million EU Innovation... View Details