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- 2020
- Working Paper
The Evolutionary Nature of Breakthrough Innovation: Re-Evaluating the Exploration vs. Exploitation Dichotomy
By: Dominika K. Sarnecka and Gary P. Pisano
Over the past few decades, a consensus has emerged that breakthrough innovations emerge from exploration of novel terrain while more routine innovations are the product of exploitation. In this paper, we revisit this explore versus exploit dichotomy with an analysis...
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- September 2020
- Case
Hot Wheels: Launching The Mixed Play Experience
By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Nicole Tempest Keller
Chris Down, Global Brand General Manager for Hot Wheels, and his team from the Advanced Play Group within Mattel, Inc., had developed an entirely new “mixed play” product experience that blended familiar Hot Wheels play in the physical world with breakthrough play in...
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- September 2020
- Article
Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, and a World of Surprises
In recent years, progress has been made toward AI Creativity, which I define as the production of highly novel, yet appropriate, ideas, problem solutions, or other outputs by autonomous machines. I argue that organizational researchers of creativity and innovation...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation
By: Sabrina T. Howell, Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda and Richard Townsend
Although late-stage venture capital (VC) activity did not change dramatically in the first two months after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., early-stage VC activity declined by 38%. The particular sensitivity of early-stage VC investment to market...
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- 2020
- Book
Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time
Over a decade ago, renowned innovation expert Rosabeth Moss Kanter co-founded and then directed Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. Her breakthrough work with hundreds of successful professionals and executives, as well as aspiring young entrepreneurs, identifies...
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Keywords:
Leaders;
Advanced Leadership;
Advanced Leadership Initiative;
Community;
Change Leadership;
Innovation;
Problem Solving;
Cross-sector Collaboration;
Institutional Change;
Leadership;
Change;
Leading Change;
Communication;
Innovation Leadership;
Collaborative Innovation and Invention;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Business and Community Relations;
Civil Society or Community
- 2020
- Working Paper
Gastrointestinal Endoscopy: Case Histories of Significant Medical Advances
By: Amar Bhidé, Srikant M. Datar and Katherine Stebbins
We describe how endoscopy transformed the diagnosis of ulcers, cancerous polyps and other diseases of the alimentary canal and enabled “minimally invasive” surgeries to treat such diseases. Specifically, we chronicle how: 1) flexible glass fiber endoscopes developed in...
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- March 2018
- Case
X: The Foghorn Decision
In February 2016, Kathy Hannun--a project leader at X, Alphabet Inc.'s so-called "moonshot factory--had to prepare a recommendation for the senior leadership of X regarding the future of Foghorn, a project she was leading to develop a carbon-neutral process for...
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Keywords:
Innovation;
R＆d Project Management;
Radical Innovation;
Clean Technology;
Innovation and Management;
Technological Innovation;
Energy;
Research and Development;
Projects;
Management;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Technology Industry;
Energy Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
California
- Article
The Board's New Innovation Imperative: Directors Need to Rethink Their Roles and Their Attitude to Risk
By: Linda A. Hill and George Davis
As firms scramble for competitive advantage, boards—once the cautious voices urging management to mitigate risk—are now calling for breakthrough innovation. Indeed, avoiding risk is now seen as the riskiest proposition of all. In speaking with CEOs and board members...
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- May 2017 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies: Building Breakthrough Innovations in Crowd-Powered Ecosystems
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Terri L. Griffith and Ann Majchrzak
Dirk Ahlborn, co-founder and CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. (HTT) looks back at the evolving organizational design and community that allows HTT to be crowd-powered. Since the founding in 2013, HTT has dealt with building an organization with less...
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- 2017
- Chapter
Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies
By: William R. Kerr
Entrepreneurship in large and established companies is vital for their long-term success. Incumbent firms face many challenges ranging from global competition to digitization. In times past, being caught flat-footed might have set a company back several years, but it...
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Keywords:
Corporate Entrepreneurship
- December 2016
- Background Note
Reaching Beyond Your Organization: Empowering Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
Forward-thinking established companies utilize new routes for external innovation with start-ups and crowds. The reading reviews strategic partnerships, strategic investments, strategic acquisitions, and crowd-based collaborations. Case examples include Google, SK...
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- 2015
- Book
What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms
Based on decades of collective field experiences, the authors present anecdotal evidence in support of eight things that great service leaders know and do. Great service leaders know that (1) leading a breakthrough service is different, and they take steps to ensure...
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- May–June 2015
- Other Article
The Challenges of Ambidextrous Leadership: An Interview with Michael Tushman
By: Michael Tushman and Jim Euchner
Michael Tushman talks with Jim Euchner about the challenges of managing breakthrough innovation in established companies.
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Keywords:
Innovation and Management
- 2015
- Working Paper
Scale and Innovation During Two U.S. Breakthrough Eras
By: Tom Nicholas
The relationship between scale and innovation is central to R&D-based growth. This paper uncovers new empirical evidence using comprehensive data on U.S. R&D firms active during the interwar and post-WWII eras. Variability in the nature of innovation is shown to be a...
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- Article
Experiments in Open Innovation at Harvard Medical School
By: Eva C. Guinan, Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Harvard Medical School seems an unlikely organization to open up its innovation process. By most measures, the more than 20,000 faculty, research staff and graduate students affiliated with Harvard Medical School are already world class and at the top of the medical...
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- March 2013 (Revised May 2013)
- Case
Omar Ishrak: Building Medtronic Globally
By: Bill George and Natalie Kindred
Omar Ishrak, Medtronic's first non-American CEO, aims to reinvigorate the medical device maker's growth by focusing on emerging markets, therapy innovation, and creative business models. In 2012, budget constraints in mature economies, the lack of new medical therapies...
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Keywords:
Healthcare;
Medical Devices;
Medtronic;
Globalization;
Innovation;
Reverse Innovation;
Leadership;
Multinational Firms and Management;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Management Teams;
Business Model;
Emerging Markets;
Global Strategy;
Health Care and Treatment;
Acquisition;
Innovation and Invention;
Manufacturing Industry;
Medical Devices and Supplies Industry;
China
- 2010
- Chapter
Breakthrough Inventions and the Growth of Innovation Clusters
By: William R. Kerr
This report provides a comprehensive look at the role of innovation in promoting economic and social development. It examines the impact of innovation on the economic growth of developing countries and the future role of technological innovation in international...
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- May 2010
- Column
Block-by-Blockbuster Innovation
Executives often find themselves debating the merits of incremental innovations versus game-changers, but that's a false dichotomy, says HBR columnist Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Even if a company is lucky enough to come up with the next Kindle, Swiffer, or smartphone,...
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- January 2010
- Article
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of U.S. inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent...
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- Article
What Really Motivates Workers
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Steve J. Kramer
This essay appears in "The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010," which is compiled by this journal in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. The ten problems and the innovative solutions are discussed in each essay. This particular essay describes research...
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