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• Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2019 (Revised August 2019)

  KangaTech

  Karim R. Lakhani, Patrick J. Ferguson, Sarah Fleischer, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo

  On a warm January afternoon in 2019, Steve Saunders, Dave Scerri, Carl Dilena, and Nick Haslam (see Exhibit 1 for biographies), co-founders of KangaTech, wrapped up the latest round of discussions about the future direction of their sports-technology start-up. Focused on injury prediction and prevention in elite sport, the Melbourne, Australia-based KangaTech prepared to launch a new model of their core product, an integrated exercise frame and software system that used strength exercises to identify and mitigate the risk of soft-tissue and ligament injuries (see Exhibit 2 for overview of product). The team was excited about the new product and was confident that it improved upon many of the features of the previous model. However, Saunders and his co-founders couldn’t help but think about the long-term strategy of the company.
  Spun off in 2015 out of an internal R&D initiative at the North Melbourne Football Club, KangaTech spent the past four years squarely focused on product development and gaining early traction in the elite sports markets in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia (see Exhibit 3 for company timeline). As of 2019, KangaTech had users across 15 different sites, including professional teams in the National Basketball Association, the English Premier League, and the Australian Football League. The company also underwent a successful round of financing recently, and the proceeds of which were used to fund the new version of the KangaTech product.
  Off the back of this recent success, the co-founders were focused on how they might be able to navigate the future ahead of them. Dilena explained, “We are going through a pretty robust strategy discussion at the moment. It is one of those decision points for us as to how we best proceed.” Dilena continued, “We’ve been largely product-based and product-development-based until now. How do we scale up? How do we take that next quantum leap as an organization? So part of that has been looking at where do we see the market opportunities?” Specifically, KangaTech weighed up three options for unlocking the full commercial value of the company’s technology: 1) Going deeper into the sports market; 2) Expanding into the allied health market; or, 3) Pursuing contracts in the defense industry. Evaluating the merits of each of these options was not clear. Which market had the greatest upside? Which market would expose the firm to the greatest risk? Which of these opportunities held the most promise for KangaTech?

  Keywords: Startup; technology commercialization; prototype; Business Startups; Technological Innovation; Sports; Health; Commercialization; Research and Development; Decision Making; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; Sports Industry; Health Industry; Australia;

  Citation:

  Lakhani, Karim R., Patrick J. Ferguson, Sarah Fleischer, Jin Hyun Paik, and Steven Randazzo. "KangaTech." Harvard Business School Case 619-049, February 2019. (Revised August 2019.)  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? Field Experimental Evidence from Scientific Peer Review

  Misha Teplitskiy, Hardeep Ranu, Gary Gray, Michael Menietti, Eva Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani

  Organizations in science and elsewhere often rely on committees of experts to make important decisions, such as evaluating early-stage projects and ideas. However, very little is known about how experts influence each other’s opinions and how that influence affects final evaluations. Here, we use a field experiment in scientific peer review to examine experts’ susceptibility to the opinions of others. We recruited 277 faculty members at seven U.S. medical schools to evaluate 47 early stage research proposals in biomedicine. In our experiment, evaluators (1) completed independent reviews of research ideas, (2) received (artificial) scores attributed to anonymous “other reviewers” from the same or a different discipline, and (3) decided whether to update their initial scores. Evaluators did not meet in person and were not otherwise aware of each other. We find that, even in a completely anonymous setting and controlling for a range of career factors, women updated their scores 13% more often than men, while very highly cited “superstar” reviewers updated 24% less often than others. Women in male-dominated subfields were particularly likely to update, updating 8% more for every 10% decrease in subfield representation. Very low scores were particularly “sticky” and seldom updated upward, suggesting a possible source of conservatism in evaluation. These systematic differences in how world-class experts respond to external opinions can lead to substantial gender and status disparities in whose opinion ultimately matters in collective expert judgment.

  Keywords: social influence; expert judgment; evaluation; Performance Evaluation; Judgments; Gender; Status and Position; Power and Influence;

  Citation:

  Teplitskiy, Misha, Hardeep Ranu, Gary Gray, Michael Menietti, Eva Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? Field Experimental Evidence from Scientific Peer Review." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-107, April 2019.  View Details

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• Article | Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization | April 2019

  Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence

  Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael Menietti

  Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit project proposals for organizational improvement. In total, we analyze 1,237 employees, 118 proposals, and quality evaluations for more than 12,000 evaluator-proposal pairs. The analysis shows that solicitations offering a personal reward for top submissions boost participation rates without affecting submission quality. We show that this is due to workers partially internalizing the positive effects of their submissions on the other individuals in the workplace. We also find that offering employees project funding to implement their own proposals potentially backfires, undermining participation. And solicitations emphasizing mission-oriented goals, like improving patient care, are sensitive to the solicited person’s gender, with women responding more than men. These results shed light on the factors that drive employees’ engagement in organizational tasks, beyond regular duties, and provide insights on how to design incentives to foster contributions to public goods inside organizations.

  Keywords: field experiment; innovation; contest; incentives; free-rider problem; healthcare organizations; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Invention; Organizations; Performance Improvement; Perspective;

  Citation:

  Blasco, Andrea, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani, and Michael Menietti. "Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 160 (April 2019): 214–229.  View Details

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