Articles About Technology — HBS Working Knowledge

The Agglomeration of U.S. Ethnic Inventors

Author:	William R. Kerr
Published:	August 14, 2008
Paper Release Date:	July 2008
Feature:	Working Papers

The higher concentration of immigrants in certain cities and occupations has long been noted. There has been very little theoretical or empirical work to date, however, on the particular agglomeration of U.S. immigrant scientists and engineers. This scarcity is disappointing given the scale of these ethnic contributions and the importance of innovation to regional economic growth. William R. Kerr's study contributes to our empirical understanding of agglomeration and innovation by documenting patterns in the city-level agglomeration of ethnic inventors (e.g., Chinese, Indian) within the United States from 1975 through 2007. It is hoped that the empirical platform developed in this study provides a foothold for furthering such analyses.

Diffusing Management Practices within the Firm: The Role of Information Provision

Authors:	Michael J. Lenox and Michael W. Toffel
Published:	April 17, 2008
Paper Release Date:	March 2008
Feature:	Working Papers

Managers face a range of options to diffuse innovative practices within their organizations. This paper focuses on one such technique: providing practice-specific information through mechanisms such as internal seminars, demonstrations, knowledge management systems, and promotional brochures. In contrast to corporate mandates, this "information provision" approach empowers facility managers to decide which practices to actually implement. The authors examine how corporate managers diffused advanced environmental management practices within technology manufacturing firms in the United States. The study identifies several factors that encourage corporate managers to employ information provision, including subsidiaries' related expertise, the extent to which the subsidiaries were diversified or concentrated in similar businesses, and the geographic dispersion of their employees.

On Best-Response Bidding in GSP Auctions

Authors:	Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Benjamin G. Edelman, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna R. Karlin, Claire Mathieu, and Michael Schwarz
Published:	February 6, 2008
Paper Release Date:	January 2008
Feature:	Working Papers

Keyword auctions have become a critical source of revenue for Google and Yahoo!, among others. This new form of advertising has provided a new way for advertisers to reach customers. But advertisers also face the complex task of optimizing bids to increase their exposure while avoiding unnecessary costs. HBS professor Benjamin Edelman and colleagues analyzed a class of bidding strategies that attempt to increase advertiser utility under limited assumptions about other players' behavior. Under a strategy they call Balanced Bidding (BB), advertisers converge to the advertiser-preferred equilibrium—achieving stability of bids and reducing advertisers' costs relative to other possible outcomes.

The Changing Face of American Innovation

Q&A with:	William R. Kerr
Published:	November 5, 2007
Feature:	Research & Ideas

Chinese and Indian scientists and engineers have made an unexpectedly large contribution to U.S. technology formation over the last 30 years, according to new research by HBS professor William R. Kerr. But that trend may be ebbing, with potentially harmful effects on future growth in American innovation.

HBS Cases: The Evolution of Apple

Published:	July 25, 2007
Feature:	Lessons from the Classroom

Apple's continuing development from computer maker to consumer electronics pioneer is rich material in a number of Harvard Business School classrooms. Professor David Yoffie discusses his latest case study of Apple, the 5th update in 14 years, which challenges students to think strategically about Apple's successes and failures in the past, and opportunities and challenges in the future.

Managing Proprietary and Shared Platforms: A Life-Cycle View

Author:	Thomas R. Eisenmann
Published:	July 11, 2007
Paper Release Date:	June 2007
Feature:	Working Papers

The challenges facing platform managers vary systematically depending on (1) whether the platform is proprietary or shared and (2) the stage of platform development. This article summarizes the results of a multiyear research project on platform strategies, including interviews with 30 companies. It describes 3 stages of the platform life cycle—platform design, network mobilization, and platform maturity—and reviews in depth the strategic decisions and management issues for each stage.

Platform Envelopment

Authors:	Thomas Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne
Published:	July 10, 2007
Paper Release Date:	June 2007
Feature:	Working Papers

Established platform providers can be difficult to displace. This paper explores a path to platform leadership change that does not rely on breakthrough innovation or Schumpeterian creative destruction: a phenomenon the authors call "platform envelopment." In practical terms, envelopment entails one platform provider adding another platform's functionality to its own, and then offering a multiplatform bundle. Eisenmann and his colleagues describe a variety of envelopment attacks based on the relationship between the attacker's platform and its target's, and then discuss the economic and strategic motivations for each attack type.

Multi-Sided Platforms: From Microfoundations to Design and Expansion Strategies

Author:	Andrei Hagiu
Published:	June 21, 2007
Paper Release Date:	May 2007
Feature:	Working Papers

The term "platform" is increasingly popular among executives today. Platforms, and multi-sided platforms (MSPs) in particular, serve the needs of interdependent constituents. Although MSPs have existed for centuries in the form of matchmakers and village markets, information technology has increased tremendously the opportunities for building larger, more powerful, and more valuable platforms. At the same time, by expanding the potential scope of platforms, information technology has also increased the number and complexity of factors, both economic and technical, that drive the strategic design of MSPs. Surprisingly, few companies rigorously analyze the underlying drivers of their MSPs, and the emerging business and economics literature on two-sided markets has not been very helpful in this direction, either. This article provides a general framework to help organize managerial thinking about MSPs.

Merchant or Two-Sided Platform?

Author:	Andrei Hagiu
Published:	June 21, 2007
Paper Release Date:	May 2007
Feature:	Working Papers

With ever more sophisticated logistics and the rise of information technologies, intermediaries and market platforms have become increasingly ubiquitous and important agents in the digital economy. While market intermediation is not a new phenomenon, the digital economy has revealed that there can be two polar types of intermediaries: "merchants," which acquire goods from sellers and resell them to buyers, and "two-sided platforms," which allow affiliated sellers to sell directly to affiliated buyers. As examples, retailers like Walmart.com and Amazon.com are (mostly) merchants; eBay is a pure two-sided platform; and Apple's iTunes digital music store exhibits both merchant and platform features. This research is a first pass at delineating the economic tradeoffs between the merchant and two-sided platform modes.

Electronic Hierarchies and Electronic Heterarchies: Relationship-Specific Assets and the Governance of Interfirm IT

Authors:	Andrew McAfee, Marco Bettiol, and Maria Chiarvesio
Published:	February 13, 2007
Paper Release Date:	January 2007
Feature:	Working Papers

Scholars have long been interested in the impact of information technology on the organization of work. As Andrew McAfee and colleagues argue in this study, the appropriate governance mechanism for an IT-facilitated collaboration depends on the type of IT being deployed: When an enterprise technology is required, so is an electronic hierarchy. The paper explores the issue of relationship specificity of IT assets, proposes a categorization of information technologies based on their levels of relationship specificity, and uses data from more than forty Italian industrial districts to test three hypotheses around governance of interfirm IT. These districts typically have close ties, both horizontal and vertical, and have historically worked in close collaboration with each other.

The Immigrant Technologist: Studying Technology Transfer with China

Q&A with:	William R. Kerr and Michael J. Roberts
Published:	January 22, 2007
Feature:	Research & Ideas

Immigrants account for almost half of Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers in the U.S., and are prime drivers of technology development. Increasingly, however, Chinese technologists and entrepreneurs are returning home rather than staying in the U.S. to pursue opportunities. Professor William Kerr discusses the phenomena of technology transfer and implications for U.S.-based businesses and policymakers. From New Business.

The Industry R&D Survey: Patent Database Link Project

Authors:	William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu
Published:	December 8, 2006
Paper Release Date:	November 2006
Feature:	Working Papers

The development and diffusion of new innovations are central to economic growth, and understanding the firm-level underpinnings of technology progress is important to academics, policymakers, and business managers. While many researchers have examined (either separately or together) corporate research and development and technology diffusion, they run into two significant data constraints. William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu describe how they developed a new dataset for studying corporate innovation that encompasses three important existing datasets. This paper summarizes the Industry R&D Survey for researchers who want to study innovation through the Census Bureau's data.

Surviving Success: When Founders Must Go

Published:	October 4, 2006
Feature:	Lessons from the Classroom

At some point, a start-up's founder usually cedes CEO responsibilities to a seasoned manager. But what roles does the founder assume next? Professor Noam Wasserman discusses a recent case study and what students learn from it in the classroom. From HBS Alumni Bulletin.

Scale without Mass: Business Process Replication and Industry Dynamics

Authors:	Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Michael Sorell, and Feng Zhu
Published:	September 28, 2006
Paper Release Date:	August 2006
Feature:	Working Papers

Over the past ten years there's been a clear link between IT investment and productivity growth in the U.S. economy. But what impact has IT had on competition? This paper identifies several recent changes in the competitive dynamics of U.S. industries and shows that they are associated with IT intensity; the more IT and industry has, the greater the changes. Using case studies, previous research, and a simple model, the authors offer a theory that explains these patterns in the data. They argue that IT allows the rapid spread of business process innovations, which in turn leads to more turbulent and concentrated industries.

How Software Platforms Revolutionize Business

Published:	September 25, 2006
Feature:	Research & Ideas

Cell phones, the Game Boy, and PCs are examples of products based upon software platforms—ecosystems where independent companies can provide products and services tied to the core technology. Playing in a software platform world can make you rich—ask ringtone creators—but it also demands special management skills that emphasize cooperation over competition. Professor Andrei Hagiu discusses his new book, Invisible Engines.

Capturing Benefits from Tomorrow's Technology in Today's Products: The Effect of Absorptive Capacity

Author:	Daniel Snow
Published:	August 23, 2006
Paper Release Date:	July 2006
Feature:	Working Papers

It seems clear that firms with an existing R&D function are better able to use related outside research than firms without an R&D function. But can specific products also "absorb" a firm's knowledge of related technologies? Using patent data and the example of automobile carburetors, Daniel Snow studied how companies may adapt a component of a "radical innovation" technology for their own current-technology products. He also poses a far-reaching question for companies: Can they capture the returns of these inventive activities?

Career Advancement Without Experience

Published:	August 9, 2006
Feature:	Research & Ideas

Lacking experience, contract workers find it difficult to advance to a job with expanded responsibilities. But it can be done. Siobhan O'Mahony discusses research into the concept of "stretchwork" and the increasing complexity of career management.

Lessons from the Browser Wars

Q&A with:	Pai-Ling Yin
Published:	April 10, 2006
Feature:	Research & Ideas

The first-mover advantage is well chronicled, but it didn't help Netscape when Microsoft launched Internet Explorer. What drives technology adoption, and do browser upstarts such as Firefox stand a chance? A Q&A with professor Pai-Ling Yin.

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

Q&A with:	Andrei Hagiu
Published:	March 13, 2006
Feature:	Research & Ideas

Dating clubs, credit cards, and video games are all examples of multi-sided markets, where firms need to get two or more distinct groups of customers on the same platform. Professor Andrei Hagiu discusses this new field of business research—and why it matters to you.