Frank Nagle

Frank Nagle is an assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. Professor Nagle studies how competitors can collaborate on the creation of core technologies, while still competing on the products and services built on top of them. His research falls into the broader categories of the future of work, the economics of IT, and digital transformation and considers how technology is weakening firm boundaries. His work frequently explores the domains of crowdsourcing, free digital goods, cybersecurity, and generating strategic predictions from unstructured big data. His work utilizes large datasets derived from online social networks, open source software repositories, financial market information, and surveys of enterprise IT usage. Professor Nagle’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the academic journals Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, and Strategic Management Review as well as in the practitioner-oriented publications Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Brookings Institution TechStream. He has won awards and grants from AOM, NBER, SMS, INFORMS, EURAM, the Sloan Foundation, and the Linux Foundation. He is the co-director of the HBS/Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative. At HBS, he is a faculty affiliate of the Digital, Data and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, the Managing the Future of Work Project, and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH).

Professor Nagle serves on the advisory board at Nexleaf Analytics and Alphamatician and advises other big data analytics startups. He currently advises the OECD Working Party on Innovation and Technology Policy and is on the European Commission/ Open Forum Europe Board of Experts for the Impact of Open Source on Technological Independence, Competitiveness, and Innovation in Europe. He has consulted for The World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Social Security Administration, and various companies in the technology, defense, and energy sectors. He is currently a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Prior to his academic career, Frank worked at a number of startups and large companies in the information security and technology consulting industries. In these roles, he researched a variety of topics related to social network privacy and the economics of IT, conducted cybersecurity assessments and breach investigations, and developed and taught a two-week course that all FBI cyber agents must pass before entering the field.

Prior to joining HBS, he was an assistant professor in the Management & Organization Department at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, where he also served as co-director of Marshall Digitopolis, and as a faculty affiliate of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. Frank earned his DBA in Technology and Operations Management from Harvard Business School. He also earned a BS and MS in Computer Science from Georgetown University and an MS in International Business Economics from City University, London.

Peer Reviewed Journal Publications

• Altman, Elizabeth J., Frank Nagle, and Michael Tushman. "The Translucent Hand of Managed Ecosystems: Engaging Communities for Value Creation and Capture." Academy of Management Annals 16, no. 1 (January 2022). View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Florenta Teodoridis. "Jack of All Trades and Master of Knowledge: The Role of Diversification in New Distant Knowledge Integration." Strategic Management Journal 41, no. 1 (January 2020): 55–85. View Details
• Shah, Sonali K., and Frank Nagle. "Why Do User Communities Matter for Strategy?" Special Issue on Open Innovation. Strategic Management Review 1, no. 2 (2020): 305–353. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Open Source Software and Firm Productivity." Management Science 65, no. 3 (March 2019): 1191–1215. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods." Organization Science 29, no. 4 (July–August 2018): 569–587. View Details
• Greenstein, Shane, and Frank Nagle. "Digital Dark Matter and the Economic Contribution of Apache." Research Policy 43, no. 4 (May 2014): 623–631. (Lead Article.) View Details

Book Chapters

• Altman, Elizabeth J., Frank Nagle, and Michael Tushman. "Innovating without Information Constraints: Organization, Communities, and Innovation when Information Costs Approach Zero." In The Oxford Handbook of Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, edited by Christina E. Shalley, Michael A. Hitt, and Jing Zhou, 353–379. Oxford University Press, 2015. View Details
• Altman, Elizabeth J., Frank Nagle, and Michael L. Tushman. "Technology and Innovation Management." In Oxford Bibliographies: Management, edited by Ricky W. Griffin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Electronic. View Details

Peer Reviewed Conference Proceedings

• Nagle, Frank, and Florenta Teodoridis. "Jack of All Trades and Master of Knowledge: The Role of Generalists in New Distant Knowledge Integration." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2019). View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Learning By Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contributing to Public Goods." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2016). View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Christoph Riedl. "Drivers and Dynamics of Online Word of Mouth." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2014): 1326–1331. View Details

Practitioner-Oriented Publications

• Lifshitz-Assaf, Hila, and Frank Nagle. "The Digital Economy Runs on Open Source. Here's How to Protect It." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (September 2, 2021). View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "The Problem of Social Benefit." Stanford Social Innovation Review 19, no. 4 (Fall 2021): 34–39. View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Florenta Teodoridis. "In R&D, Generalists Are More Valuable Than You Think." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (September 28, 2020). View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Why Congress Should Invest in Open-Source Software." Brookings TechStream (October 13, 2020). View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Jennifer L. Hoffman. "The Hidden Vulnerabilities of Open Source Software." Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (February 24, 2020). View Details
• Altman, Elizabeth J., and Frank Nagle. "Accelerating Innovation Through a Network of Ecosystems: What Companies Can Learn from One of the World's Largest Networks of Accelerator Labs." MIT Sloan Management Review 61, no. 4 (Summer 2020). View Details
• Kumar, Ram Shankar Siva, and Frank Nagle. "The Case for AI Insurance." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (April 29, 2020). View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Capturing Value from Free Digital Goods." MIT Sloan Management Review 59, no. 3 (Spring 2018): 16–18. View Details

Technical Reports and White Papers

• Nagle, Frank, David Wheeler, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Haylee Ham, and Jennifer L. Hoffman. "Report on the 2020 FOSS Contributor Survey." Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative, Linux Foundation and Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, 2020. View Details
• Nagle, Frank, Jessica Wilkerson, James Dana, and Jennifer L. Hoffman. "Vulnerabilities in the Core: Preliminary Report and Census II of Open Source Software." Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative, Linux Foundation, February 2020. View Details

Cases and Teaching Materials

• Nagle, Frank, and Abhinav Sah. "The Wallet Wars: MetaMask." Harvard Business School Case 723-358, August 2022. View Details
• Nagle, Frank, Elizabeth J. Altman, and Amy Klopfenstein. "Strategic Innovation at the United Nations: A Network of Ecosystems." Harvard Business School Case 722-363, June 2022. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Nexleaf Analytics: Saving the World Using the Internet of Things." Harvard Business School Case 722-414, March 2022. (Revised July 2022.) View Details

Working Papers

• Seo, Eunkwang, Frank Nagle, and Sonali K. Shah. "Does Who Helps You Impact Your Behavior? Examining the Effects of Social Interactions on Knowledge Sharing in Online Communities." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-026, August 2020. (Revised July 2021.) View Details
• Wright, Nataliya Langburd, Frank Nagle, and Shane Greenstein. "Open Source Software and Global Entrepreneurship." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-139, June 2020. (Revised August 2022.) View Details
• Shah, Sonali K., and Frank Nagle. "Why Do User Communities Matter for Strategy?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-126, June 2019. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Government Technology Policy, Social Value, and National Competitiveness." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-103, March 2019. View Details
• Nagle, Frank, Robert Seamans, and Steve Tadelis. "Transaction Cost Economics in the Digital Economy: A Research Agenda." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-009, July 2020. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Us and Them: Predicting Firm Stock Performance via Social Media Sentiment about Competitors." Working Paper, November 2018. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "The Digital Commons: Tragedy or Opportunity? A Reflection on the 50th Anniversary of Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-060, December 2018. View Details
• Nagle, Frank. "Crowdsourced Digital Goods and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Open Source Software." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 15-062, January 2015. (Revised June 2015.) View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Christoph Riedl. "Online Word of Mouth and Product Review Disagreement." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-091, May 2013. (Revised May 2015, selected for AOM Best Paper Proceedings.) View Details
• Greenstein, Shane, and Frank Nagle. "Digital Dark Matter and the Economics of Apache." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 19507, October 2013. View Details

Computer Science Publications

• Nagle, Frank. "Privacy Breach Analysis in Social Networks." In Mining Social Networks and Security Informatics, edited by Tansel Ozyer, Zeki Erdem, Jon Rokne, and Suheil Khoury, 63–77. Springer Science + Business Media, 2013. View Details
• Nagle, Frank, Lisa Singh, and Aris Gkoulalas-Divanis. "EWNI: Efficient Anonymization of Vulnerable Individuals in Social Networks." Proceedings of the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) (2012): 359–370. View Details
• Ramachandran, Aditi, Lisa Singh, Edward Porter, and Frank Nagle. "Exploring Re-Identification Risks in Public Domains." Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on Privacy, Security, and Trust (2012). View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Michael Sutton. "Economic Models for Software Vulnerability Research." Chap. 1 in Cyber Fraud: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures. 2nd ed. Auerbach Publications, in press. View Details
• Nutt, Chris, and Frank Nagle. "Will Laws That Build Upon PCI-DSS Lead to Greater Security?" Secure Times 5, no. 1 (spring 2010). View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Lisa Singh. "Privacy in Online Social Networks: Empirical Evidence from Facebook." Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining (2009). View Details
• Nagle, Frank, and Michael Sutton. "Emerging Economic Models for Vulnerability Research." Proceedings of the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (2006). View Details

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Nagle studies how competitors can collaborate on the creation of core technologies, while still competing on the products and services built on top of them. His research falls into the broader categories of the futures of work, the economics of IT, and digital transformation and considers how technology is weakening firm boundaries. His work frequently explores the domains of crowdsourcing, free digital goods, cybersecurity, and generating strategic predictions from unstructured big data. His work utilizes large datasets derived from online social networks, open source software repositories, financial market information, and surveys of enterprise IT usage.

Keywords: Information Technology; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Economic Growth; Entrepreneurship; Technology; Internet; Mobile Technology; Online Technology; Technology Adoption; Technology Networks

Teaching

Overview

Prof. Nagle has taught a wide variety of topics to various types of students including everything from computer programming and e-commerce for undergraduates to cyber security for the FBI and HBS Executive Education participants to innovation and technology management for MBAs. He currently teaches the Strategy & Technology elective for second-year MBA students, cybersecurity for Executive Education students, and various methodological and research topics for PhD students.

Awards & Honors

"Jack of All Trades and Master of Knowledge: The Role of Generalists in Novel Knowledge Integration" with Florenta Teodoridis (Strategic Management Journal, January 2020) was selected for inclusion in the 2019 Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.

Received a Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative Grant with Karim Lakhani in 2018.

Winner of the 2018 Best Paper Award from the Innovation Strategic Interest Group at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) Conference for "Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods" (Organization Science, July–August 2018).

Winner of the 2017 LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge with Shelley Li, Milan Miric, Pai-Ling Yin, and Noam Wasserman.

Recipient of a 2017 USC Institute for Outlier Research in Business Funding Grant for "Digital Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Outlier Behavior in the Mobile App Ecosystem" with Shelley Li, Milan Miric, Pai-Ling Yin, and Noam Wasserman.

Winner of the 2017 Best Conference Paper from the Knowledge and Innovation Group at the Strategic Management Society Conference for “Learning By Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods.”

Selected as Outstanding Track Associate Editor at the 2017 International Conference on Information Systems.

Recipient of a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Digitization Grant from the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program.

Nominated for the 2017 Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize for “Learning By Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods.”

Recipient of USC Marshall Seed Funding from the Lord Foundation in 2016 for Marshall Digitopolis.

Runner up for the 2016 INFORMS TIMES Best Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Finalist for the 2016 Grigor McClelland Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and the Journal of Management Studies.

“Learning By Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods” was selected in 2016 for publication in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.

Finalist for the 2016 Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management's Technology and Innovation Management Division for “Learning By Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods.”

Winner of the Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research in 2014.

"Drivers and Dynamics of Online Word of Mouth" with Christoph Riedl was selected in 2014 for publication in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.

Finalist for the 2014 Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize for "Crowdsourced Digital Goods and Firm Productivity."

Additional Information

• Frank Nagle CV
• Twitter
• The Digital, Data, and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard
• Managing the Future of Work
• Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard

Areas of Interest

• information technology
• innovation
• technological change
• technology management
• technology strategy
Additional Topics
• IT strategy
• analytics
• big data
• communities
• competition
• competitive advantage
• competitive strategy
• corporate governance
• corporate strategy
• cyberlaw
• digital economy
• distributed innovation
• electronic commerce
• electronic markets
• global collaboration
• government and business
• industry structure
• infrastructure
• intellectual property
• machine learning
• managing innovation
• modularity
• networks
• open source
• strategy
• strategy implementation
• user-generated content