Publications

fall 2002
Article

Creating Competitive Advantage in the Knowledge Economy

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Thomas J. Tierney

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Knowledge; Economy

December 2014
Article

Location Strategies for Agglomeration Economies

By: Juan Alcácer and Wilbur Chung

Geographically concentrated industry activity creates pools of skilled labor and specialized suppliers, and increases opportunities for knowledge spillovers. The strategic value of these agglomeration economies may vary by firm, depending upon the relative value of... View Details

Keywords: Location Strategies; Location Choices; Agglomeration Economies; Strategy; Value Creation; Geographic Location; Industry Clusters; Microeconomics; Manufacturing Industry; United States

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20 Jun 2013
News

The Jobs of the Knowledge Economy Are Not What You Think

2012
Book

Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. I show that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those... View Details

Keywords: Change; Interpersonal Communication; Learning; Values and Beliefs; Innovation and Invention; Management; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams; Research; Strategy; Complexity; Value

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January–February 2018
Article

More than a Paycheck: How to Create Good Blue-Collar Jobs in the Knowledge Economy

By: Dennis Campbell, John Case and Bill Fotsch

Fifty years ago a good blue-collar job was with a large manufacturer such as General Motors or Goodyear. Often unionized, it paid well, offered benefits, and was secure. But manufacturing employment has steadily declined, from about 25% of the U.S. labor force in 1970... View Details

Keywords: Jobs and Positions; Employee Ownership; Profit Sharing; Organizational Culture

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07 Apr 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Location Strategies for Agglomeration Economies

Keywords: by Juan Alcácer & Wilbur Chung; Technology

2018
Book

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

By: Amy C. Edmondson

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation,... View Details

Keywords: Psychological Safety; Knowledge Economy; Teaming; Management; Organizational Culture; Innovation and Management; Learning

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Web

Topics - HBS Working Knowledge

Satisfaction (23) Customer Value and Value Chain (12) Customers (104) Customization and Personalization (3) Debt Securities (1) Decision Choices and Conditions (43) Decision Making (240) Decisions (10) Demand and Consumers (223) Demography (9) Design (10) Developing... View Details

Research Summary

"Creating Competitive Advantage Through Knowledge Management" (with Elie Ofek)

This project explores how the concept of Knowledge Management (KM) is likely to impact competition among professional services firms (e.g. Consultants, Accounting Firms and Advertising Agencies). Assuming that the "KM technology" exhibits economies of scale, first we... View Details

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

economy as a whole. Micro is about firms and individual actors and how they behave; macro is about aggregate performance of the economy: overall GDP, trade surplus or deficit, inflation. In principle, we should be able to get rid of the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

08 Jun 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Gift of Global Talent: Innovation Policy and the Economy

Keywords: by William R. Kerr

01 Feb 2021
What Do You Think?

Has the New Economy Finally Arrived?

Shutterstock/Thomas Barrat Twenty years ago in this column we discussed whether the economic activity of that time actually represented the New Economy that Time magazine first touted in a 1983 cover article. Some economists picked up the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2025
Working Paper

Generative AI and the Nature of Work

By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate a considerable potential to complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details

Keywords: Generative Ai; Digital Work; Open Source Software; Knowledge Economy; AI and Machine Learning; Open Source Distribution; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Labor

SSRN

02 Apr 2014
What Do You Think?

Has the Post-Capitalist Economy Finally Arrived?

when he said that George Gilder correctly defines knowledge and entrepreneurship as the true driving forces of capitalism. "Airbnb and like companies are accelerating capitalism, not replacing it." As Hugh Quick put it,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Service

2017
Working Paper

A Historical Approach to Clustering in Emerging Economies

By: Valeria Giacomin

Clusters are defined as geographically concentrated agglomerations of specialized firms in a particular domain. The cluster concept in its broader meaning of industrial agglomeration has been the focus of longstanding debates in the social sciences. This working paper... View Details

Keywords: Industry Clusters; Research; Theory; Developing Countries and Economies; History; Analysis; Globalization

Teaching Interest

The Role of Government in Market Economies (RoGME)

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

RoGME is about one question: What is the proper role of government in market economies? We study the role of government as it plays out in the real world, using case studies to examine policies of current interest and importance.... View Details

Web

The True Costs of Gig Work | Working Knowledge

money, exhibit very different spending behavior. The gig economy exploded with the COVID-19 pandemic, technological advances, and the rise of remote work. With inflation predicted to rise amid a turbulent economy, some people might opt to... View Details

2006
Working Paper

Defining the Attributes and Processes that Enhance the Effectiveness of Workforce Diversity Initiatives in Knowledge Intensive Firms

By: Modupe Akinola and David A. Thomas

Workforce diversity continues to be a key focus for organizations, driven by globalization of the U.S. economy and the desire for organizations to more accurately reflect the demographic diversity of the US population. Yet, most research on diversity in organizations... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Globalization; Employees; Retention; Knowledge Sharing; Research; United States