Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries: The Impact of Task Decomposition and Knowledge Distribution on the Locus of Innovation
| Authors: | Karim R. Lakhani and Michael L. Tushman |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 3, 2012 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2012 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Open innovation, enabled by low-cost communication and the decreased costs of memory and computation, has transformed markets and social relations. In contrast to firm-centered innovation, open innovation is radically decentralized, peer based, and includes intrinsic and pro-social motives. In this paper the authors use in-depth examples from Apple, NASA, and Lego to argue that in contexts of increasing modularity and decreased communication costs, open innovation will at least complement, if not increasingly substitute for, more traditional innovation modes. For this reason emerging theories of innovation, organizational design, and leadership for innovation must be informed by these contrasting innovation modes and the implications for governance, incentives, intellectual property, managerial choice, professional and organizational identity, and organizational cultures.
When to Sell Your Idea: Theory and Evidence from the Movie Industry
| Author: | Hong Luo |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 9, 2012 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How completely should an innovator develop his idea before selling it? HBS assistant professor Hong Luo addresses this question in a theoretical framework that links the sales stage to the innovator's "observable quality." She uses the context of Hollywood movie script writing-looking at whether it's better to pitch the mere idea for a film or to write the entire screenplay and then try to sell it "on spec."
Published in 2011
HBS Cases: Clocky, the Runaway Alarm Clock
| Published: | December 12, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Cases |
| Forum: | open for comment; 7 Comments posted |
There had not been an innovative breakthrough in alarm clock design since the snooze button until entrepreneur Gauri Nanda created Clocky. Her runaway hit has been the inspiration for several cases written by Professor Elie Ofek.
It's Alive!: Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research
| Published: | December 5, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 4 Comments posted |
Business researchers are turning increasingly to experiments in the lab and field to unlock the secrets of what motivates CEOs, consumers, and policymakers.
First-Party Content, Commitment and Coordination in Two-Sided Markets
| Authors: | Andrei Hagiu and Daniel Spulber |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 2, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2011 (Revised October 2011) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Two-sided platforms face a challenging coordination problem that consists of attracting both buyers and sellers. Participation by both depends on their expectations of participation on the other side of the market. To improve such coordination, many platforms provide "first-party content," such as games (e.g. Microsoft's Halo on Xbox), objective search results (Google and Bing) or, in the case of Amazon and eBay, product information and payment systems. First-party content makes participation more attractive to one side (typically, users), independently of the presence of sellers. Importantly, first-party content may be either a complement or a substitute for third-party sellers' products. For instance, Halo is a substitute for games provided by Electronic Arts on the Xbox; on the other hand, the Xbox Live online playing system is a complement. Similarly, Amazon's shipping services complements its third-party sellers' offerings, but the products Amazon sells under its own name compete with them. Professors Hagiu and Spulber examine the incentives that two-sided platforms have to invest in first-party content in order to coordinate adoption by both sides. The authors show that the incentives for firms to use first-party content depend crucially on the nature of buyers' and sellers' expectations and the relationship between first-party content and third-party seller participation (complements or substitutes).
Perfecting the Project Pitch
| Published: | August 11, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
| Forum: | open for comment; 8 Comments posted |
Entrepreneurs may be great innovators, but not necessarily great presenters. Associate Professor Thomas Steenburgh teaches them the fine art of product pitching.
How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University
| Published: | July 25, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 19 Comments posted |
In The Innovative University, authors Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring take Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation to the field of higher education, where new online institutions and learning tools are challenging the future of traditional colleges and universities.
Five Discovery Skills that Distinguish Great Innovators
| Published: | July 20, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 18 Comments posted |
In The Innovator's DNA, authors Jeff Dyer , Hal Gergersen, and Clayton M. Christensen build on the idea of disruptive innovation to outline the five discovery skills that distinguish the Steve Jobses and Jeff Bezoses of the world from the run-of-the-mill corporate managers.
Inducement Prizes and Innovation
| Authors: | Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner, and Tom Nicholas |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 3, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Throughout recent history, many foundations have tried to induce innovation through competition, offering massive cash prizes to inventors who meet the challenge of creating world-changing inventions. For instance, in 1996 the X Prize Foundation offered $10 million to the first non-government organization to launch a reusable, suborbital manned spacecraft twice within two weeks. The prize was awarded in 2004 to a project financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The problem is that inventors cannot win these competitions if they cannot come up with funding to realize their inventions, and research and development costs often exceed the amount of the cash prize. So, does the incentive of an eventual prize really induce innovation? In this paper, Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner, and Tom Nicholas look to answer that question, using a data set of prizes awarded by the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) between 1839 and 1939.
Innovating at the World's Crossroads: How Multicultural Networks Promote Creativity
| Author: | Roy Y.J. Chua |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 24, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In this research, HBS professor Roy Y.J. Chua proposes that cultivating a culturally diverse social network helps improve creative problem solving in a multicultural context because it promotes a flow of novel ideas and concepts from cultures other than one's own. New ideas from other cultures can serve as raw materials for recombination or stimulate new thoughts. Combining social network analysis and experimental methods, this research investigates the effects of multicultural networks on individuals' creative performance, identifying when this effect arises, as well as underlying mechanisms.
Embracing Paradox
| Author: | |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 18, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
CEOs are often innovation cheerleaders, hoping that new ventures will eventually help reshape the industry for the better. But in tough economic times, the other senior company executives often choose to ignore innovative ventures and focus instead on the traditional core business, which reliably generate cash flow. This leads to a situation in which the CEO turns into more of a broker than a leader—trying to negotiate deals between the heads of the core units and the new units. That's a recipe for failure, according to Michael L. Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, and Andy Binns, who argue that firms can thrive only if the whole senior management team can embrace the tensions between the new and the old. In this paper, they introduce three guiding principles to help executives grow their core businesses while still nurturing their new ones.
HBS Faculty Comment on Environmental Issues for Earth Day
| Published: | April 26, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Op-Ed |
| Forum: | open for comment; 3 Comments posted |
Harvard Business School faculty members offer their views on the many business facets of "going green."
The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity: An Open Innovation Analysis
| Authors: | Andrew A. King and Karim R. Lakhani |
|---|---|
| Published: | April 26, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Does experience with adopting technology improve a person's capacity for inventing better technology? On the other hand, does invention experience increase the capacity for adoption? This paper explores how adoption and invention affect each other, using data from several programming competitions sponsored by The MathWorks Corporation. Research was conducted by Andrew A. King of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and Karim R. Lakhani at Harvard Business School.
Platform Competition under Asymmetric Information
| Authors: | Hanna Halaburda and Yaron Yehezkel |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 22, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Research by Hanna Halaburda (Harvard Business School) and Yaron Yehezkel (Tel Aviv University) shows how pricing, profits, and market efficiency are affected in two-sided markets, such as with smartphone and video game platforms, when users and developers do not know the utility or costs associated with the platform until they join.
Schumpeterian Competition and Diseconomies of Scope: Illustrations from the Histories of Microsoft and IBM
| Authors: | Timothy Bresnahan, Shane Greenstein, and Rebecca Henderson |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 18, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Firms dominant in one era are often less successful in new technological eras, despite being able to exploit economies of scope and other incumbent advantages. What leads to this Schumpeterian creative destruction? Researchers Timothy Bresnahan (Stanford), Shane Greenstein (Northwestern), and Rebecca Henderson (Harvard Business School) look to IBM and Microsoft for an answer.
The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century
| Published: | February 22, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
HBS Dean Nitin Nohria and faculty look backward and forward at the most important business trends of the young twenty-first century.
The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest
| Authors: | Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 10, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
| Forum: | open for comment; 40 Comments posted |
Anyone who has spent significant time with artists knows that creative genius often comes with a dark side. This paper offers experimental evidence, specifically with regard to the relationship between creativity and unethical behavior. Research involving four experiments with university students was conducted by Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of the Fuqua School of Business.
Sustainable Cities: Oxymoron or the Shape of the Future?
| Authors: | Annissa Alusi, Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, and Tiona Zuzul |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 9, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2010 (Revised March 2011) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
| Forum: | open for comment; 2 Comments posted |
Among the issues looming large in the twenty-first century is a rapid rise in the number of people living in cities and a rapidly growing awareness of our threat to the Earth's environment. In response to both, a number of major corporations and various government bodies have teamed up to explore the idea of "ecocities" —urban communities ideally designed around the idea of environmental sustainability. This paper explores the idea by looking at several ecocities in progress in China, Abu Dhabi, South Korea, Finland, and Portugal. Research by professors Robert G. Eccles and Amy C. Edmondson, doctoral candidate Tiona Zuzul, and HBS research assistant Annissa Alusi.
Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
| Authors: | William R. Kerr and Scott Duke Kominers |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 28, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
HBS professor William R. Kerr and doctoral candidate Scott Duke Kominers develop a theoretical model for analyzing the forces that drive agglomeration, or industrial clustering. It is rare that researchers systematically observe the forces like technology sharing, customer/supplier interactions, or labor pooling that lead to firm clustering. Instead, the data only portray the final location decisions that firms make (for example, firms that utilize one type of technology are clustered over 50 miles, while those using another technology are clustered over 100 miles). The researchers' model identifies how these observable traits can be used to infer properties of the underlying clustering forces.
Modularity for Value Appropriation--How to Draw the Boundaries of Intellectual Property
| Authors: | Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 12, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Many firms have adopted models of "open innovation," in which they seek ideas from external sources such as university labs, independent entrepreneurs, customers, and other companies. While such a business model has the potential to create value, the inherent intellectual property issues can be sticky. This paper discusses how companies can address these issues by adopting a system of modularity, wherein innovation in one part of a project will not require changes in all the other parts. Research was conducted by Joachim Henkel of Technische Universität München and Harvard Business School professor Carliss Y. Baldwin.
