Karim R. Lakhani
There are 5 articles for this faculty member.
Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation
| Q&A with: | Karim R. Lakhani |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 20, 2009 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
No one organization can monopolize knowledge in any given field. That's why modern companies must develop a new expertise: the ability to attract novel solutions to difficult or unanticipated problems from outside sources around the world. A conversation with Harvard Business School professor Karim R. Lakhani on the keys to managing distributed innovation.
Published in 2008
Parallel Search, Incentives and Problem Type: Revisiting the Competition and Innovation Link
| Authors: | Kevin J. Boudreau, Nicola Lacetera, and Karim R. Lakhani |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 14, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The innovation process is fraught with uncertainty. Managers often do not know ahead of time the ideal mix of individuals and skills needed to solve innovation-related problems. One way around this uncertainty is to have multiple paths, approaches, or designs explored at once. The "parallel search" principle can be used inside the firm just as it may be used more generally by pursuing "open innovation". However, having too many searchers attempting to solve the same problem can undercut the benefits if it leads to less effort and investment. The authors study the outcomes of 645 software development contests, conducted by a software outsourcing vendor, involving over 9,000 coders, to understand the relationship between parallel search and increasing competition and innovation.
Published in 2007
HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn't)
| Published: | July 23, 2007 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
For HBS professor Andrew McAfee, Wikipedia is a surprisingly high-quality product. But when his concept of "Enterprise 2.0" turned up on the online encyclopedia one day—and was recommended for deletion—McAfee and colleague Karim R. Lakhani knew they had the makings of an insightful case study on collaboration and governance in the digital world.
The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving
| Authors: | Karim R. Lakhani, Lars Bo Jeppesen, Peter A. Lohse, and Jill A. Panetta |
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| Published: | February 7, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Scientists are generally rewarded for discoveries they make as individuals or in small teams. While the sharing of information in science is an ideal, it is seldom practiced. In this research, Lakhani et al. used an approach common to open source software communities—which rely intensely on collaboration—and opened up a set of 166 scientific problems from the research laboratories of twenty-six firms to over 80,000 independent scientists. The outside scientists were able to solve one-third of the problems that the research laboratories were unable to solve internally.
Published in 2006
Open Source Science: A New Model for Innovation
| Q&A with: | Karim R. Lakhani |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 20, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Borrowing a practice that is common in the open source software community, HBS professor Karim R. Lakhani and colleagues decided to see how "broadcasting" might work among scientists trying to solve scientific problems. The results? Promising for many types of innovation, as he explains in this Q&A.
