- 20 Mar 2017
- Book
Why Companies Are Placing Users at the Core of Their Innovation Strategies
In his recent edited volume Revolutionizing Innovation, Karim Lakhani brings together the latest thinking around open innovation, users, and communities. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 15 Mar 2017
- Lessons from the Classroom
More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business
MBA students participating in Harvard Business School’s Climate Change Challenge offer ideas on how companies can negate impacts from a changing environment. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 01 Jun 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Motivating Effort in Contributing to Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence
Results of this experiment involving 1,200 employees shows that workers have multiple underlying motivations to contribute to organizational betterment, consisting of a combination of monetary and altruistic incentives associated with the organization’s mission.
- 19 May 2016
- Research Event
Crowdsourcing, Patent Trolls, and Other Research Insights Highlighted at Harvard Business School Symposium
The 2016 Faculty Research Symposium looked at current and potential collaborations between HBS and Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 17 Dec 2015
- Cold Call Podcast
Designing a Great Community
Threadless has built its sizeable t-shirt retailing business by enabling its users to both design and purchase its products. But its greatest strength once presented its biggest challenge: how do you manage an online community that is 500,000-strong? Professor Karim Lakhani discusses the difficulty of hosting a city’s worth of virtual users and designers, the importance of transparency, and the lessons the Threadless case has to offer on enabling (and funding) innovation. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.
- 02 Apr 2015
- Research & Ideas
Digital Initiative Summit: The Business of Crowdsourcing
Gaining the community's trust is vital to building a successful business with crowdsourcing. Open for comment; 1 Comment(s) posted.
- 02 Apr 2015
- Research & Ideas
Digital Initiative Summit: Freeing Patient Data to Enable Innovation
It's difficult to have innovation without data—which is one reason why the health care industry in the United States is too expensive. One remedy: Make the patient the customer. Open for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.
- 25 Feb 2015
- Lessons from the Classroom
Scholars and Students Unpack the Digital Business Revolution
Harvard Business School's Digital Initiative, led by professors Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani, brings an interdisciplinary approach to studying how digital technology has transformed business and innovation. Open for comment; 2 Comment(s) posted.
- 31 Jul 2014
- Research & Ideas
A Scholarly Crowd Explores Crowdsourcing
At the Open and User Innovation Workshop, several hundred researchers discussed their work on innovation contests, user-led product improvements, and the biases of crowds. Closed for comment; 1 Comment(s) posted.
- 04 Mar 2014
- Sharpening Your Skills
Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation
Sharpening Your Skills curates a wide range of Harvard Business School's research and ideas around vital topics in business management. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 04 Feb 2014
- Working Paper Summaries
From Crowds to Collaborators: Initiating Effort and Catalyzing Interactions Among Online Creative Workers
Online "organizations" are becoming a major engine for knowledge development in a variety of domains such as Wikipedia and open source software development. Many online platforms involve collaboration and coordination among members to reach common goals. In this sense, they are collaborative communities. This paper asks: What factors most inspire online teams to begin to collaborate and to do so creatively and effectively? The authors analyze a data set of 260 individuals randomly assigned to 52 teams tasked with developing working solutions to a complex innovation problem over 10 days, with varying cash incentives. Findings showed that although cash incentives stimulated a significant boost of effort per se, cash incentives did not transform the nature of the work process or affect the level of collaboration. In addition, at a basic yet striking level, the likelihood that an individual chooses to participate depended on whether teammates were themselves active. Moreover, communications among teammates led to more communications, and communications among teammates also stimulated greater continuous levels of effort. Overall, the study sheds light on how perspectives on incentives, predominant in economics, and perspectives on social processes and interactions, predominant in research on organizational behavior and teams, can be better understood. Key concepts include: An individual's likelihood of being active in online collaboration increases by about 41 percent with each additional active teammate. Management could provide communications channels to make the efforts of other members more visible. This is important in the design of systems for online work as it helps members to confirm that others are actively contributing. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 05 Sep 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Performance Responses to Competition Across Skill-Levels in Rank Order Tournaments: Field Evidence and Implications for Tournament Design
Tournaments and other rank-order incentive mechanisms have been used to model a wide range of settings: executive placement, elections, research and development and innovation contests, sports tournaments, and variable sales compensation: situations in which placing at the top of the performance rank-order leads to out-sized payoffs. This article analyzes how the level of competition and size of a tournament affects performance as a result of how strategic interactions affect contestants' incentives to exert high levels of effort. The authors estimate relationships between performance in these contests and competition levels across the full distribution of skill levels. They do this by studying data on software algorithm programming contests in which fine-grained data are available on contestant ability levels and performance over a large number of comparable contests. Findings show that while aggregate and average patterns of performance and effort may decline with increased competition, performance and effort may in fact increase among the highest-skilled contestants. The paper provides guidance to designers of innovation and crowdsourcing tournaments. Key concepts include: Tournaments and contests have a long history as a means of achieving technological advances in a range of industrial settings. For the strongest contestants, adding more contestants can produce effort-inducing rivalry. Increased competition beyond a minimum level may reduce the probability of winning to a level where incentives become depressed. However, the stimulating effect of rivalry may persist at least for highest-skilled contestants. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 18 Jul 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Cumulative Innovation & Open Disclosure of Intermediate Results: Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Bioinformatics
The practice of opening intermediate works such as early results, algorithms, materials, data, and techniques—and disclosing and granting access to them for reuse by others—has been observed in many areas of innovation. In this paper, Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim Lakhani devise an experimental approach in order to investigate effects of an open regime on a challenging problem in bioinformatics that was amenable to cumulative innovation. The authors compared outcomes in this open regime with those in a closed regime in which no solutions were disclosed until the end of the experiment. Results suggest important trade-offs related to incentives, participation, and learning. For example, freer disclosures coincided with drops in participation and development activity, consistent with longstanding theories of economic incentives to make investments in innovation. Particularly striking is the magnitude of drops in incentives and participation. Even so, positive effects on learning outweighed the negative effects on incentives. Overall, the study contributes to analysis of the effect of supporting institutions on cumulative innovation. It also raises important questions for policy makers responsible for innovation. Key concepts include: Open disclosures led to lower participation and lower effort but nonetheless led to higher average problem-solving performance. Closed secrecy produced higher participation and higher effort, while producing less correlated choices of technical approaches that participants pursued. This resulted in greater individual and collective experimentation and greater dispersion of performance. The design of policies that enable both investment in innovation and disclosure to others will be increasingly important for economic growth. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 29 May 2013
- Research & Ideas
Faculty Symposium Showcases Breadth of Research
Faculty present their latest research on the human tendency toward dishonesty, the use of crowdsourcing to solve major scientific problems, and the impact of private equity investments. Closed for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.
- 10 Jan 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
The Novelty Paradox & Bias for Normal Science: Evidence from Randomized Medical Grant Proposal Evaluations
A key task for executives and managers involved with innovation is to evaluate new ideas and proposals. In the sciences, one longstanding hypothesis contends that research ideas outside the mainstream are susceptible to being discounted, rejected, or ignored. These days, expert peer review in academic science is the approach most relied upon for enabling research agendas and providing research funds. Are novel research projects—those deviating from existing research paradigms—treated with a negative bias in expert evaluations? In this paper, the authors investigate how nascent scientific hypotheses are evaluated, specifically looking at the process by which medical research grant proposals are assessed by "gatekeepers": in this case, elite researchers from a leading medical school. Innovation requires novelty—but novelty, as this paper shows, is not appreciated and is in fact penalized. These findings help explain concerns about incrementalism in science and also point at the challenge that most organizations face when dealing with novel topics Key concepts include: Expert peer review of new research proposals in academic science is now a large organized practice in its own right. There are many concerns about the reliability of the peer review process. Novel research proposals are generally discounted—even when accounting for quality and feasibility of ideas. Evaluators also tend to be more critical of proposals that were closer to their area of expertise-and these two effects of novelty and intellectual distance appear to work largely independently of one another. How novel ideas and research hypotheses are treated may be consequential to the organization of innovation in general and peer evaluation in the sciences in particular. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 25 Sep 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
Colocation and Scientific Collaboration: Evidence from a Field Experiment
In recent years there has been considerable interest in the policy arena on fostering collaborative and especially interdisciplinary collaborations. Yet there is scant evidence on how to do this in practice. To learn how team members find each other in the scientific community and decide to collaborate, the authors designed and carried out an experiment involving Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals. Results suggest that matching between scientists may be subject to considerable frictions, even among scientists in relatively close geographic proximity and in the same organizational system. However, even a brief and focused event facilitating face-to-face interactions can be useful for the formation of new scientific collaborations. Key concepts include: Face-to-face interactions play a central role in the initiation of new collaborations. Creating settings where scientists meet face to face and discuss early-stage research ideas can be useful for fostering collaboration. Matching between scientists is not easy. For example, many factors that affect successful collaboration are not easily observed to both parties until collaboration is well underway, such as personal chemistry and scheduling constraints. Time spent in events that facilitate face-to-face interactions also has opportunity costs. The effect of such activities on scientific productivity and welfare more generally is still unclear. This is the first study to bring field experimental methods to a workplace setting in the scientific community. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 23 Aug 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
Field Evidence on Individual Behavior & Performance in Rank-Order Tournaments
Contests abound in everything from amateur and professional sports to arts, architecture, manual labor, and engineering. Just as large-scale online contest platforms that provide ongoing tournament-based work and compensation have emerged, large industrial companies increasingly use them as a complement to in-house research and development. What difference does increased competition make to individual participants? This paper analyzes data from algorithmic programming contests to shed light on the mechanisms that underlie changes in performance in reaction to increased competition. Three mechanisms may account for a performance decline: reduction in effort, increased risk taking, and deterioration in cognitive processing. The study also shows how the ability of competitors affects their reactions to increased competition. Overall, results suggest that a better understanding of behavioral responses in contests can aid both public policy and contest designers. Key concepts include: The authors analyze contest data on individual effort, risk taking, and cognitive errors. On average, competitors react negatively to an increase in the total number of competitors, and react more negatively to an increase in the number of superstars than non-superstars. These negative effects are strongest in a particular subgroup of competitors: those who are highly skilled, but whose abilities put them near to the top rather than at the top in terms of ability. For competitors who are near-to-the-top in terms of ability, there is no evidence that the decline in performance outcomes stems from reduced effort or increased risk taking. Instead, errors in logic lead to a decline in performance. A small group of very high ability competitors (excluding superstars) reacts positively to increased competition from superstars. Very high ability competitors show some evidence of increased effort and no increase in errors of logic, consistent with both economic and psychological explanations. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 22 Aug 2011
- Research & Ideas
Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity
As global competition intensifies, it's more important than ever that companies figure out how to innovate if they are going to maintain their edge, or maintain their existence at all. Six Harvard Business School faculty share insights on the best ways to develop creative workers. Closed for comment; 20 Comment(s) posted.
- 26 Apr 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity: An Open Innovation Analysis
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. Key concepts include: "Absorptive capacity," a term coined in the late twentieth century, refers to the general ability to recognize the value of new information, choose what to adopt, and apply it to innovation. In general, both invention and adoption experience will increase invention capacity and adoption capacity. The effect of adoption experience on invention capacity is especially dramatic; adoption provides alternative ideas that spark new ones. However, inventors with a great deal of prior invention experience have an especially hard time suddenly switching to a new design path, even if that's what the project requires. The researchers believe this is because such inventors are saddled with both their old ideas and their recent ones, and thus need more time to warm up to brand new ideas mid-stream. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
Companies Love Big Data But Lack the Strategy To Use It Effectively
Big data is a critical competitive advantage for companies that know how to use it. Harvard Business School faculty share insights that they teach to executives. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.