Technology and Innovation

Technology and Innovation is a featured research topic at Harvard Business School.

The early works of William Abernathy on roadblocks to innovation and Richard Rosenbloom on technology and information transfers in the 1960's and 1970's started the Technology Strategy field and helped pave the path for our research today, which focuses on value creation of platforms and two-sided markets; use of open architecture and leverage of its collective value; development and execution of innovation strategies; innovative attributes of executives and firms; development of new markets through the creation of disruptive innovations that displace earlier technologies; development of innovations in sectors; and the impact of innovation on economic growth.

Featured Works

Article | Management Science | December 2014
The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization
Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
Empirical studies on information communication technologies (ICT) typically aggregate the "information" and "communication" components together. We show theoretically and empirically that this is problematic. Information and communication technologies have very different effects on the decisions taken at each level of an organization. Better information access pushes decisions down, as it allows for superior decentralized decision making without an undue cognitive burden on those lower in the hierarchy. Better communication pushes decisions up, as it allows employees to rely on those above them in the hierarchy to make decisions. Using an original dataset of firms from the U.S. and seven European countries we study the impact of ICT on worker autonomy, plant manager autonomy, and span of control. Consistent with the theory, we find that better information technologies (Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, for plant managers and CAD/CAM for production workers) are associated with more autonomy and a wider span of control. By contrast, communication technologies (like data networks) decrease autonomy for both workers and plant managers. Treating technology as endogenous using instrumental variables (distance from the birthplace of ERP and heterogeneous telecommunication costs arising from different regulatory regimes) strengthens our results.
Keywords: Communication Technology; Information Technology; Organizational Structure;

Citation:
Bloom, Nicholas, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen. "The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization." Management Science 60, no. 12 (December 2014): 2859–2885. View Details
Cite View Details Find at Harvard Read Now Related
Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2014
Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships
Sen Chai and Willy C. Shih
Scientific research and its translation into commercialized technology is a driver of wealth creation and economic growth. Partnerships to foster the translational processes from public research organizations, such as universities and hospitals, to private firms are a policy tool that has attracted increased interest. Yet questions about the efficacy and the efficiency with which funds are used are subject to frequent debate. This paper examines empirical data from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation (DNATF), an agency that funds partnerships between universities and private companies to develop technologies important to Danish industry. We assess the effect of a unique mediated funding scheme that combines project grants with active facilitation and conflict management on firm performance, comparing the likelihood of bankruptcy and employee count as well as patent count, publication count and their citations and collaborative nature between funded and unfunded firms. Because randomization of the sample was not feasible, we address endogeneity around selection bias using a sample of qualitatively similar firms based on a funding decision score. This allows us to observe the local effect of samples in which we drop the best recipients and the worst non-recipients. Our results suggest that while receiving the grant does bring an injection of funding that alleviates financing constraints, its core effect on the firm's innovative behavior is in fostering collaborations and translations between science and technology and encouraging riskier projects rather than purely increasing patenting.
Keywords: innovation; firm performance; public-private partnership funding; translational research; small and medium enterprises; Partners and Partnerships; Public Sector; Private Sector; Performance; Science-Based Business; Innovation and Invention;

Citation:
Chai, Sen, and Willy C. Shih. "Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-058, January 2013. (Revised July 2014.) View Details
Cite View Details SSRN Read Now Related
Article | Emotion | April 2014
Botsourcing and Outsourcing: Robot, British, Chinese, and German Workers Are for Thinking—Not Feeling—Jobs
Adam Waytz and Michael I. Norton
Technological innovations have produced robots capable of jobs that, until recently, only humans could perform. The present research explores the psychology of "botsourcing"—the replacement of human jobs by robots—while examining how understanding botsourcing can inform the psychology of outsourcing—the replacement of jobs in one country by humans from other countries. We test four related hypotheses across six experiments: (1) Given people's lay theories about the capacities for cognition and emotion for robots and humans, workers will express more discomfort with botsourcing when they consider losing jobs that require emotion versus cognition; (2) people will express more comfort with botsourcing when jobs are framed as requiring cognition versus emotion; (3) people will express more comfort with botsourcing for jobs that do require emotion if robots appear to convey more emotion; and (4) people prefer to outsource cognition-oriented versus emotion-oriented jobs to other humans who are perceived as more versus less robotic. These results have theoretical implications for understanding social cognition about both humans and nonhumans and practical implications for the increasingly botsourced and outsourced economy.
Keywords: Technology; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Emotions; Cognition and Thinking;

Citation:
Waytz, Adam, and Michael I. Norton. "Botsourcing and Outsourcing: Robot, British, Chinese, and German Workers Are for Thinking—Not Feeling—Jobs." Emotion 14, no. 2 (April 2014): 434–444. View Details
Cite View Details Find at Harvard Read Now Related
Article | Harvard Business Review
Digital Ubiquity: How Connections, Sensors, and Data Are Revolutionizing Business
Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
When Google bought Nest, a maker of digital thermostats, for $3.2 billion just a few months ago, it was a clear indication that digital transformation and connection are spreading across even the most traditional industrial segments and creating a staggering array of business opportunities and threats. The digitization of tasks and processes has become essential to competition. General Electric, for example, was at risk of losing many of its top customers to nontraditional competitors—IBM and SAP on the one hand, big data start-ups on the other—offering data-intensive, analytics-based services that could connect to any industrial device. So GE launched a multibillion-dollar initiative focused on what it calls the industrial internet: adding digital sensors to its machines; connecting them to a common, cloud-based software platform; investing in software development capabilities; building advanced analytics capabilities; and embracing crowd-based product development. With all this, GE is evolving its business model. Now, for example, revenue from its jet engines is tied to reduced downtime and miles flown over the course of a year. After just three years, GE is generating more than $1.5 billion in incremental income with digitally enabled, outcomes-based business models. The company expects that number to double in 2014 and again in 2015.
Keywords: Digital Innovation; digitization; industrial internet; Technological Innovation; Production; Competitive Strategy; Engineering; Aerospace Industry;

Citation:
Iansiti, Marco, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Digital Ubiquity: How Connections, Sensors, and Data Are Revolutionizing Business." Harvard Business Review 92, no. 11 (November 2014): 90–99. View Details
Cite View Details Find at Harvard Register to Read Related
Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2014
The Decoupling Effect of Digital Disruptors
Thales S. Teixeira and Peter Jamieson
While the Internet's first wave of disruption was marked by the unbundling of digital content, the second wave, decoupling, promises to generate more casualties in an even broader array of industries. Digital start-ups are disrupting traditional businesses by inserting themselves at every juncture in the customer's consumption chain. By decoupling—the act of separating activities that people are used to co-consuming—new digital businesses are disrupting retailing, telecom and other industries. Decoupling allows consumers to benefit from the value created at a lower cost or effort compared to what is delivered by traditional businesses. For those companies, the only solutions are to either recouple activities or rebalance to create and capture value (i.e., revenues) from both activities separately. Here, digital technologies can be seen as an instrument that will both disrupt traditional business models and potentially preserve them.
Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Information Technology;

Citation:
Teixeira, Thales S., and Peter Jamieson. "The Decoupling Effect of Digital Disruptors." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 15-031, October 2014. View Details
Cite View Details Read Now Related

Recent Publications

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2020
Uber: Competing Globally
Alexander J. MacKay, Amram Migdal and John Masko
This case describes Uber’s global market entry strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors. It details Uber’s entry into New York City (New York), Bogotá (Colombia), Delhi (India), Shanghai (China), Accra (Ghana), and London (United Kingdom). In each instance, the case includes information about Uber’s strategy in that market, existing regulations on taxis and transportation in each market, the reactions of competitors and regulators, and regional information. The case allows for instruction related to competitive strategy, global expansion, nonmarket strategy, regulation, market economics, supply restrictions, and related topics.
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Geography; Geographic Location; Geographic Scope; Globalization; Global Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Law; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Network Effects; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Market Entry and Exit; Market Participation; Supply and Industry; Industry Structures; Planning; Strategic Planning; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Labor and Management Relations; Networks; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Technology; Mobile Technology; Technology Platform; Transportation; Transportation Networks; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Ghana; Asia; China; Shanghai Shi; Shanghai; India; New Delhi; Europe; United Kingdom; England; London; Latin America; North and Central America; United States; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US); South America; Colombia;

Citation:
MacKay, Alexander J., Amram Migdal, and John Masko. "Uber: Competing Globally." Harvard Business School Case 720-404, April 2020. View Details
Cite View Details Educators Related
Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2020
Apple Inc. in 2020
David B. Yoffie and Daniel Fisher
After a decade as CEO, Tim Cook is facing one of his biggest strategic transitions of his tenure. While Apple had performed spectacularly well under Cook, Apple's core business was maturing. Sales of iPhones, iPads, and Mac were flat or down. However, Apple's new hardware - Apple Watch and Airpods - as well as services were growing rapidly. This case explores Apple's history and Cook's strategic options for driving new hardware and services into Apple's mainstream in the next decade.
Keywords: innovation; market positioning; marketing implementation; planning; Product positioning; Products; strategic positioning; Strategy; Technology; Competitive Strategy; Technological Innovation; Competitive Advantage; Communication; Competition; Leadership; Strategic Planning; Computer Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry;

Citation:
Yoffie, David B., and Daniel Fisher. "Apple Inc. in 2020." Harvard Business School Case 720-454, April 2020. View Details
Cite View Details Educators Related
Article | Harvard Business Review | March–April 2020
Building A Culture of Experimentation
Stefan Thomke
Why don’t organizations test more? After examining this question for several years, I can tell you that the central reason is culture. As companies try to scale up their experimentation capacity, they often find that the obstacles are not tools and technology but shared behaviors, beliefs, and values. For every online experiment that succeeds, nearly 10 don’t—and in the eyes of many organizations that emphasize efficiency, predictability, and “winning,” those failures are wasteful. To successfully innovate, companies need to make experimentation an integral part of everyday life—even when budgets are tight. That means creating an environment where employees’ curiosity is nurtured, data trumps opinion, anyone (not just people in R&D) can conduct or commission a test, all experiments are done ethically, and managers embrace a new model of leadership. In this article, I look at several companies that have managed to do those things well.
Keywords: experimentation; culture; innovation; online; customer experience; Organizational Culture; Innovation and Invention; Online Technology; Attitudes; Decision Making; Change; Leadership;

Citation:
Thomke, Stefan. "Building A Culture of Experimentation." Harvard Business Review 98, no. 2 (March–April 2020): 40–48. View Details
Cite View Details Find at Harvard Register to Read Related
Article | JAMA Network Open
Association of the Meaningful Use Electronic Health Record Incentive Program with Health Information Technology Venture Capital Funding
Samuel Lite, William J. Gordon and Ariel Dora Stern
IMPORTANCE
Although the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act has accelerated electronic health record (EHR) adoption since its passage, clinician satisfaction with EHRs remains low, and the association of HITECH with health care information technology (IT) entrepreneurship has remained largely unstudied.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether the passage of the HITECH Act was associated with an increase in key measures of health care IT entrepreneurship.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
This economic evaluation of venture capital (VC) activity in the US from 2000 to 2019 examined funding trends in health care IT, EHR-related companies, and all VC investments before and after the passage of HITECH. A difference-in-differences analysis compared investments in health care IT companies with those of companies in 3 categories: general health care (non-IT), IT (non–health care), and all US VC transactions. Data were analyzed from September 2018 to August 2019.

EXPOSURES
Venture capital funding received by US companies before and after the HITECH Act.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Venture capital investment in health care IT companies and the proportion of those investments going to seed-stage companies, a proxy for very early-stage entrepreneurship and innovation.

RESULTS
The data included 70 982 investments, of which 9425 (13.3%) were seed stage, 10 706 (15.1%) were early stage, and 50 851 (71.6%) were growth stage. After passage of the HITECH Act, investment in both health care IT companies and EHR-related companies increased at a rate much faster (13.0% and 11.4%, respectively) than VC as a whole (6.9%). In addition, the proportion of investments going to seed-stage health care IT companies increased compared with both overall VC investments and non-IT health care investments. Health care IT companies saw increased probabilities of transactions being seed-stage of 5.1% (SE, 2.2%; 95% CI, 0.8% to 9.3%; P = .02) compared with the entire sample of VC transactions and 13.6% (SE, 1.9%; 95% CI, 9.9% to 17.2%; P < .001) compared with non-IT health care VC transactions. Health care IT had essentially 0 increased probability of a transaction being seed stage compared with IT companies outside health care (−0.8% probability; SE, 2.4%; 95% CI, −5.4% to 3.9%; P = .75).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Although widespread clinician dissatisfaction with EHR systems remains a challenge, the HITECH Act’s incentive program may have catalyzed early-stage entrepreneurship in health care IT, suggesting an important role for incentives in promoting innovation.
Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Information Technology; Laws and Statutes; Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital;

Citation:
Lite, Samuel, William J. Gordon, and Ariel Dora Stern. "Association of the Meaningful Use Electronic Health Record Incentive Program with Health Information Technology Venture Capital Funding." JAMA Network Open 3, no. 3 (March 2020). View Details
Cite View Details Read Now 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% and 33%, 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; Acquisition; Technology; Innovation and Invention; Performance Evaluation; Framework;

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
Cite View Details Find at Harvard Read Now Related
Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2020
Intellectual Ventures Update 2020
David B. Yoffie and Daniel Fisher
After raising $6 billion and buying 60,000 patents, Intellectual Venture (IV) was confronted with a changing legal environment. After a number of important legal decisions, including the Supreme Court's so-called "Alice" decision, IV had to shift strategy. IV sold off a substantial portion of its IP portfolio and refocused its efforts on trying to innovate using its acquired technologies.
Keywords: Intellectual Property; Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Technology; Business Model; United States;

Citation:
Yoffie, David B., and Daniel Fisher. "Intellectual Ventures Update 2020." Harvard Business School Case 720-438, February 2020. View Details
Cite View Details Educators Purchase Related
Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2020
Celata Bioinnovations
John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock
In December 2019, Jon Hu (HBS ‘19) and Dr. Samantha Dale Strasser, co-founders of Celata Bioinnovations, were raising $1 million to launch their company. They had founded Celata less than six months earlier with the aim of redefining the drug discovery process. Celata’s platform used novel data types and a unique data integration process to generate hypotheses about proteins that were involved in the formation and progression of disease. They believed the platform was better and faster at identifying actionable biological targets, increasing the speed of discovery and reducing the chances of failure, promising to lower costs and bring drugs to market more quickly. Their platform had achieved proof of concept during Strasser’s PhD research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), when it helped identify and validate a target related to Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in mouse models. However, full validation wouldn’t come until their platform was used to develop a drug that successfully treated a disease in humans, a process that could take several years. In the first instance, Celata’s platform was best suited to identify targets for cancers, inflammatory diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases, which collectively presented a global market opportunity of over $200 billion. However, Hu and Strasser were debating which opportunities to pursue. Should they try to improve the efficacy of current drugs or go for brand new opportunities, indications for which there were no solutions on the market? And if they focused on the latter, should they just look for large market opportunities or include “orphan” diseases, for which there was a relatively small market? Should they look for small-molecule drug candidates or include large-molecule biologics in their search? And where should they operate in the drug development pipeline? At one extreme, they could sell potential drug candidates to established pharmaceutical companies; at the other, they could “go full pharma” and build a new pharmaceutical company themselves.
Keywords: drug development; drug discovery; Drug Trials; Pharmaceutical Companies; Pharmaceutical Company; Pharmaceuticals; therapeutics; Biologics; biotech; biotechnology; biopharmacy company; biochemistry; technology commercialization; technology companies; Drug Testing; Startup; start-up; Startups; start-ups; Startup financing; strategic decision making; strategic decisions; strategic evolution; FDA; Food and Drug Administration; clinical trials; disease management; market attractiveness; Market entry; market opportunities; Health Disorders; Technological Innovation; Technology; Commercialization; Business Startups; Finance; Decision Making; Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Opportunities; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry;

Citation:
Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Celata Bioinnovations." Harvard Business School Case 720-427, January 2020. View Details
Cite View Details Educators Purchase Related
Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2020
The June Oven
Leonard A. Schlesinger and Christian Godwin
The June Oven was a smart oven which was capable of identifying food and cooking it accordingly. This type of smart oven represented the next step in the long history of oven and stove development. Due to the widespread use of traditional ovens, the market for the June Oven was potentially large. The June Oven was primarily a direct-to-consumer product, available through the company’s own website, but it was available through some retail stores. June faced challenges from a relative decline in retail sales, the turn to online shopping, potential smart oven competitors, macroeconomic factors such as the U.S. China trade war, and internal problems such as software malfunctions.
Keywords: Business Ventures; Trends; Customers; Design; Entrepreneurship; Food; Goods and Commodities; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Distribution; Product Development; Sales; Technology; Internet; Software; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Electronics Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States;

Citation:
Schlesinger, Leonard A., and Christian Godwin. "The June Oven." Harvard Business School Case 320-067, January 2020. View Details
Cite View Details Educators Purchase Related
Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Collibra
Lynda M. Applegate, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2008 at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Collibra was a data intelligence company that found product-market fit in the years after the global financial crisis when many companies were under pressure from consumers and governments to improve their data management efforts. Over the years, Collibra expanded its product offering from a Semantic Data Integration tool to a Data Governance Platform with a range of data management and governance tools and also expanded geographically from Belgium to the U.S. and other countries. In 2019, with more than 350 clients, Collibra became a unicorn with a valuation of more than $1 billion. Now, co-founders Felix Van de Maele, Stijn Christiaens, and Pieter De Leenheer needed to decide how to move from “data governance” to “data intelligence.”
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Governance; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Markets; Technology; Information Technology; Software; Technology Adoption; Technology Platform; Semantic Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Expansion; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Europe; Belgium; Brussels; North and Central America; United States; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US);

Citation:
Applegate, Lynda M., Jeffrey F. Rayport, and Julia Kelley. "Collibra." Harvard Business School Case 820-013, November 2019. (Revised May 2020.) View Details
Cite View Details Educators Purchase Related
Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019
TripAdvisor: An Itinerary for Growth
Jeffrey F. Rayport, Spencer Rascoff and Susie L. Ma
In 2019, TripAdvisor was one of the best-known and most-trafficked online travel sites. For nearly 20 years, its founder and CEO Steve Kaufer had steered TripAdvisor through many phases of growth and profitability, but recently the company’s growth had started to slow. TripAdvisor was an aggregator of travel information, including travel listings, third-party content, and a vast array of user reviews. Most of its revenue derived from selling advertising on a cost-per-click basis to online travel agencies (OTAs), such as Expedia and Travelocity, and suppliers, such as Hilton and Starwood. TripAdvisor relied largely on Google for both organic and paid traffic. As Google began to promote its own travel search services and OTAs as well as travel suppliers focused on increasing direct traffic, TripAdvisor sought to diversify its offerings with listings and information for vacation rentals, restaurants, and experiences. In addition, the company had created a new team called Core Experience (CoreX) to forge an integrated product strategy across its business units and to deliver a more seamless user experience. Could Kaufer and his executive team fend off threats and restore the business to its historical pattern of double-digit growth?
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Brands and Branding; Operations; Customer Value and Value Chain; Technology; Travel Industry; Massachusetts;

Citation:
Rayport, Jeffrey F., Spencer Rascoff, and Susie L. Ma. "TripAdvisor: An Itinerary for Growth." Harvard Business School Case 820-039, November 2019. View Details
Cite View Details Educators Purchase Related

See all faculty publications on Technology or Innovation »

Faculty & Research

Featured Works

Initiatives & Projects

Faculty

HBS Working Knowledge

Harvard Business Publishing