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First Look at New Research and Ideas, July 18, 2017

Sean Silverthorne

The creative habits of ordinary people ... Pursuing innovation at Polaroid ... Do we know how to improve bad working conditions?

First Look at New Research and Ideas, June 13

Sean Silverthorne

Focus on a few growth metrics ... Immigrants and ingenuity ... How important is ‘detailing’ to medical sales?

Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity

by Michael Blanding

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.

Sharpening Your Skills: Motivation

Re: Multiple Faculty

Can employers motivate employees to work more creatively, ethically, or productively? Or does that power reside solely within the individual? Recent research at Harvard Business School suggests workers can be motivated by their environment. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Inducement Prizes and Innovation

by Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner & Tom Nicholas

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. Key concepts include: The RASE competitions led to an uptick in the number of new patents awarded in any given year, indicating that offering prizes is good for overall innovation. However, based on the number of contest entries in the hundred-year period, the researchers find that inventors seemed more motivated by the possibility of winning medals than in winning cash prizes. The findings offer guidance for current invention competitions. While the biggest competitions presuppose that inventors are fueled by the possibility of cash prizes, the evidence suggests that they are more fueled by the possibility of publicity--and the idea that winning will make it easier to market the prize-winning product. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Harvard Business School Faculty Comment on Crisis in Japan

Re: Multiple Faculty

Harvard Business School faculty share their views and insights about the challenges that lie ahead for Japan's business leaders and for global companies operating there. Closed for comment; 11 Comment(s) posted.