Publications

22 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted

figure. Without open source software and their ubiquitous code-creation networks, firms would pay an estimated 3.5 times more to build the software and platforms that run their businesses, or roughly $8.8... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Computer; Information Technology; Technology

25 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

The Powerful Strategic Tool Companies Should Not Try to Control

they forge relationships with user groups. Danielle Kost: How can companies engage user communities more effectively? What advantages can they provide a firm? Frank Nagle and... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

14 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

The Business Case for Becoming a Jack-of-All-Trades

benefits to not hyper-focusing and having a broader set of knowledge and experience,” Nagle says. Who is the master now? They discovered that when it comes to innovation,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

10 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

How to Get Companies to Make Investments That Benefit Everyone

contributions to society, says Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Frank Nagle. Doing so will encourage companies to spend more time working to make the world a better place, he says. Nagle points to... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

14 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

The Network Effect: Why Companies Should Care About Employees’ LinkedIn Connections

conclusion—professional social networks “may have potential benefits to companies, and not only to the individual,” says Frank Nagle, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School. “What we’re trying to... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

July–August 2018
Article

Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods

By: Frank Nagle

As the economy becomes more information based, firms are increasingly using crowdsourced public goods as inputs for innovation and production. Counterintuitively, some firms pay their employees to contribute to the creation of these goods, which can be used freely by... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Learning; Competitive Advantage

16 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 16, 2019

interrelationships between three distinct parties: payers, providers, and consumers. Each group has its own perspective accompanied by a set of unique incentives, which complicate the adoption of a... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

05 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software

employees on company time to make updates and edits to the software for community use that could be used by competitors? New research by Assistant Professor View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Computer

September 2023
Technical Note

Free and Open Source Software and Hardware

By: Frank Nagle

This technical note surveys the concepts of free and open source software and hardware. It introduces the concepts in general, providing a brief history of their development and numerous examples of how companies employ them in practice. Further, it identifies various... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Nonprofit Organizations; Competitive Strategy; Patents; Information Technology; Business Model; Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry

Educators

2015
Working Paper

Online Word of Mouth and Product Review Disagreement

By: Frank Nagle and Christoph Riedl

Studies of online word of mouth have frequently posited―but never systematically conceptualized and explored―that the level of disagreement between existing product reviews can impact the volume and the valence of future reviews. In this study we develop a theoretical... View Details

Keywords: Online Word Of Mouth; Online Communities; Viral Marketing; Online Product Reviews; Quality; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Reference Programs; Social and Collaborative Networks; Digital Marketing; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

Read Now

March 2019
Article

Open Source Software and Firm Productivity

By: Frank Nagle

As open source software (OSS) is increasingly used as a key input by firms, understanding its impact on productivity becomes critical. This study measures the firm-level productivity impact of nonpecuniary (free) OSS and finds a positive and significant value-added... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Open Source Distribution; Performance Productivity; Information Technology; Strategy

2013
Working Paper

Digital Dark Matter and the Economics of Apache

By: Shane Greenstein and Frank Nagle

Researchers have long hypothesized that spillovers from government, university, and private company R&D contribute to economic growth, but these contributions may be difficult to measure when they take a non-pecuniary form. The growth of networking devices and the... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Internet and the Web; Performance Productivity; Applications and Software; Economic Growth; Research and Development

Read Now

March 2024 (Revised June 2025)
Teaching Note

CoPilot(s): Generative AI at Microsoft and GitHub

By: Frank Nagle and Maria P. Roche

This teaching note is the companion to case N9-624-010 CoPilot(s): Generative AI at Microsoft and GitHub, which takes place in late 2021. The case briefly describes the history of both GitHub and Microsoft with a particular focus on open source software (OSS)—software... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Technological Innovation; Product Launch; Open Source Distribution; Product Development; Commercialization; Competition; Resource Allocation; Technology Industry

June 2025
Technical Note

Open Source Software and Hardware Business Models

By: Frank Nagle and Richie Zitomer

Open source software (OSS) and open source hardware (OSH) have evolved from community-driven projects into mainstream phenomena with diverse commercial business models. In OSS, the source code is freely available for use, modification, and redistribution under open... View Details

Educators