More from the Author

• Article | MIT Sloan Management Review | Spring 2020

  From Disruption to Collision: The New Competitive Dynamics

  Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

  Citation:

  Iansiti, Marco, and Karim R. Lakhani. "From Disruption to Collision: The New Competitive Dynamics." Special Issue on Disruption 2020. MIT Sloan Management Review 61, no. 3 (Spring 2020).  View Details

  CiteView DetailsFind at Harvard

  Related

• Article | Research-Technology Management

  Innovation Contests for High-Tech Procurement

  Jin Hyun Paik, Martin Scholl, Rinat A. Sergeev, Steven Randazzo and Karim R. Lakhani

  Innovation managers rarely use crowdsourcing as an innovative instrument despite extensive academic and theoretical research. The lack of tools available to compare and measure crowdsourcing, specifically contests, against traditional methods of procuring goods and services is one barrier to adoption. Using ethnographic research to understand how managers solved their problems, we find that the crowdsourcing model produces higher costs in the framing phase but yields savings in the solving phase, whereas traditional procurement is downstream cost-intensive. Two case study examples with the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and the United States Department of Energy demonstrate a potential total cost savings of 27 percent and 33 percent, respectively, using innovation contests. We provide a comprehensive evaluation framework for crowdsourcing contests developed from a high-tech industry perspective, which are applicable to other industries.

  Keywords: open innovation; contests; crowdsourcing; nasa; evaluation;

  Citation:

  Hyun Paik, Jin, Martin Scholl, Rinat A. Sergeev, Steven Randazzo, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Innovation Contests for High-Tech Procurement." Research-Technology Management 63, no. 2 (March–April 2020): 36–45.  View Details

  CiteView Details

  Related

• Article | Harvard Business Review | January–February 2020

  Competing in the Age of AI

  Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

  Today’s markets are being reshaped by a new kind of firm—one in which artificial intelligence (AI) runs the show. This cohort includes giants like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba, and growing businesses such as Wayfair and Ocado. Every time we use their services, the same thing happens: Rather than relying on processes run by employees, the value we get is delivered by algorithms. Software is at the core of the enterprise, and humans are moved off to the side. This model frees firms from traditional operating constraints and enables them to compete in unprecedented ways. AI-driven processes can be scaled up very rapidly, allow for greater scope because they can be connected to many kinds of businesses, and offer very powerful opportunities for learning and improvement. And while the value of scale eventually begins to level off in traditional models, in AI-based ones, it never stops climbing. All of that allows AI-driven firms to quickly overtake traditional ones. As AI models blur the lines between industries, strategies are relying less on specialized expertise and differentiation based on cost, quality, and branding and more on business network position, unique data, and the deployment of sophisticated analytics.

  Keywords: artificial intelligence; algorithms; Technological Innovation; Business Model; Competition; Competitive Strategy;

  Citation:

  Iansiti, Marco, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Competing in the Age of AI." Harvard Business Review 98, no. 1 (January–February 2020): 60–67.  View Details

  CiteView DetailsFind at Harvard Register to Read

  Related