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
    CiteView DetailsFind 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
    CiteView DetailsSSRN 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
    CiteView DetailsFind 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
    CiteView DetailsFind 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
    CiteView Details Read Now Related
 

  1. Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2019

    JUUL and the Vaping Revolution

    Michael W. Toffel, John Masko and Sarah Mehta

    In late 2019, San Francisco-based electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) maker JUUL Labs (pronounced “jewel”) faced intense pressure. Sales of JUUL products exceeded $1 billion in 2018, dominating the e-cigarette category. While JUUL Labs’ stated goal was to help current smokers switch from traditional cigarettes to e-cigarettes, the company’s products had become popular with high school and even middle school students, among whom “vaping”—the use of e-cigarettes—was rapidly spreading. Some advocacy groups and policymakers speculated that JUUL Labs had purposefully marketed its products to minors, an allegation the company strongly denied. The debate over JUUL Labs’ marketing and products had made 2019 a difficult year for the company, with a number of states and municipalities imposing bans on the sale of flavored e-liquids, and in some cases, on all e-cigarette products. Given that the company was ostensibly founded to reduce the harm of smoking, what more could JUUL Labs do to prevent misuse of its products, restore its reputation, and grow its business more successfully?

    Keywords: electronic cigarettes; E-Cigarettes; vaping; Nicotine Replacement; JUUL; Juuling; Advertising; Online Advertising; Customers; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Ethics; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Technology; Technology Industry;

    Citation:

    Toffel, Michael W., John Masko, and Sarah Mehta. "JUUL and the Vaping Revolution." Harvard Business School Case 620-069, December 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

  2. Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019

    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.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

  3. Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019

    DeepMap: Charting the Road Ahead For Autonomous Vehicles

    Shane Greenstein and Nicole Tempest Keller

    Founded in 2016, DeepMap developed high definition (HD) mapping software and localization services for Level 4+ autonomous vehicles. Traditional navigational maps were accurate to a few meters, which was sufficient for drivers, but not for machine-driven vehicles which required centimeter level accuracy. Autonomous vehicles required a new form of map that was highly precise, produced a 3D representation of the surrounding area, enabled vehicles to locate themselves within the map, provided information for how to navigate safely using the correct rules of the road, and was updated continuously as road conditions changed. DeepMap was not selling a static mapping database, but rather licensing its software under a software-as-a-service model. As a startup with limited resources navigating a nascent market, DeepMap faced uncertainty across several dimensions: the timing of overall AV market adoption, which countries would adopt fastest, which AV segments would move most rapidly, which sensor technologies would become standard, and what impact regulation would have. They also faced the challenge of serving customers on a global scale. As DeepMap looked ahead, it had to decide how and where to focus and allocate its funding in order to achieve its short and long-term objectives. 

    Keywords: mapping software; autonomous vehicles; Business Startups; Software; Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Service Delivery; Global Range; Resource Allocation; Strategic Planning; Technology Industry; Auto Industry;

    Citation:

    Greenstein, Shane, and Nicole Tempest Keller. "DeepMap: Charting the Road Ahead For Autonomous Vehicles." Harvard Business School Case 620-047, November 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

  4. Article | Organization Science | November–December 2019

    Pivoting Isn't Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures

    Rory McDonald and Cheng Gao

    New ventures often experience deviations from their plans that oblige them to reorient in pursuit of better fit between their evolving products and their target customers. Yet research is largely silent on how managers explain such changes and justify their ventures in the wake of fundamental redirections in strategy. Ventures initially attain legitimacy and amass resources on the strength of aims that audiences find compelling; later, those early claims can complicate course corrections. To shed light on how ventures manage strategic reorientations, we conducted an inductive, comparative-case of software-based financial advisors. The ventures pursued parallel reorientations and produced comparable end products, but diverged conspicuously in managing audiences during transitions. Our process model, inspired by these differences, proposes a sequence of stratagems that may enable entrepreneurs to alter strategy while portraying faithfulness to enduring aims. Our theoretical framework posits that for ventures, reorientation without penalty may depend on how they anticipate, justify, and stage changes to various audiences.

    Keywords: strategic reorientation; technology entrepreneurship; innovation; product development processes; organizational adaptation; qualitative methods (general); Entrepreneurship; Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Communication Strategy;

    Citation:

    McDonald, Rory, and Cheng Gao. "Pivoting Isn't Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures." Organization Science 30, no. 6 (November–December 2019): 1289–1318.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsFind at HarvardRelated

  7. Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2019

    Leading Bank Leumi into the Future

    Joshua D. Margolis, Allison M. Ciechanover, Nicole Keller and Danielle Golan

    An unlikely but highly effective leader of a traditional bank, Rakefet Russak-Aminoach, simultaneously leads a classic change effort and an unconventional effort to innovate. She focuses her initial energy on making the bank more efficient in the face of industry changes and then rolls out a self-disrupting, independent mobile-app bank, aimed at millennials and designed to anticipate the coming transformation from fintech. The case documents the difficult situation she faced stepping into the CEO role, her change efforts, and her distinctive leadership style and how it has evolved. It ends with the enduring question of when to integrate an incubated business unit that was separate intentionally to spark innovation.

    Keywords: mobile banking; digital banking; fintech; Startup; financial services; artificial intelligence; leadership; innovation; efficiency; Organizational change; personal development; female ceo; Banks and Banking; Mobile Technology; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Innovation and Invention; Disruption; Information Technology; Opportunities; Performance Effectiveness; Personal Development and Career; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Israel;

    Citation:

    Margolis, Joshua D., Allison M. Ciechanover, Nicole Keller, and Danielle Golan. "Leading Bank Leumi into the Future." Harvard Business School Case 420-063, October 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchaseRelated

  8. Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019

    Earth Bank of Codes: Making Nature's Biological Assets Visible and Valuable for the Benefit of All

    Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie Ma

    In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the genomic codes of all known species that could be tapped for discovery and innovation, from new medical interventions to more efficient manufacturing processes. He proposed to use blockchain technology to make the data both accessible and trackable so that its use could be monitored. Castilla-Rubio envisioned a time when a company in the U.S. could access a biological asset from the Peruvian Amazon, develop and commercialize a product based on the asset, and have a fraction of the resulting sales land directly in the bank account of various beneficiaries, including the Peruvian government and indigenous communities. Now he was facing major decisions about how to structure EBC to achieve his goals. Should he start at the top and build partnerships with national governments and inter-governmental organizations as the cornerstone of EBC? Or would it be better to forge ahead with a few stakeholders in an entrepreneurial project?

    Keywords: Decision Making; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Weather and Climate Change; Social Enterprise; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Technology; Ownership; Social Psychology; Trust; Society; Biotechnology Industry; South America; Amazon Basin;

    Citation:

    Khanna, Tarun, Raffaella Sadun, and Susie Ma. "Earth Bank of Codes: Making Nature's Biological Assets Visible and Valuable for the Benefit of All." Harvard Business School Case 720-356, September 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

  9. Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019 (Revised September 2019)

    2U: Higher Education Rewired

    Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Karim R. Lakhani

    In its 2019 Partner Symposium, 2U, an online program management provider (OPM), showcased its new vision: “Career. Curriculum. Continuum. A construct for lifelong learning in the 21st century”. 2U, founded in 2008, and went public in 2014, was looking to expand beyond their current degree offerings to include a wider range of programs, such as short courses, bootcamps, and professional certificates. Led by co-founder and CEO Chip Paucek, 2U believed that they were the strongest partner in the OPM market that could enable universities’ digital transformation, allowing them to offer a variety of courses to a changing student profile. The universities, on the other hand, recognized that times were changing and that the appeal of a residential experience might be dwindling. Pressures of offering a more flexible learning format were mounting. Some schools were engaging in partnerships such as with 2U to get themselves online while others saw digital and online as the next evolution of instruction and that it was their responsibility to learn how to master it and own it. The case considers Paucek’s challenge of leading a for-profit OPM. Was 2U growing in a way that risked alienating their most important stakeholders, the brand named universities themselves? Were the university leaders going to change their approach and start investing in the digital transformation themselves to avoid giving 2U a cut of their revenues?

    Keywords: Digital Innovation; digital transformation; architectural innovation; make v. buy; Learning; Higher Education; Online Technology; Innovation Strategy; Transformation;

    Citation:

    Grushka-Cockayne, Yael, and Karim R. Lakhani. "2U: Higher Education Rewired." Harvard Business School Case 620-044, September 2019. (Revised September 2019.)  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

  10. Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019

    Shell: A Company of Opportunity?

    Joseph B. Fuller and Emer Moloney

    The Opportunity Hub was a cloud-based platform that enabled managers to market projects they were working on and associated resourcing needs as ‘Opportunity Owners’ and employees, or ‘Opportunity Seekers’, to browse these statements of need and engage when they had interest and availability. The premise was that the commitment would be no more than 20% of an employee’s time, and could be much less, but it would be highly transparent. The Opportunity Hub was intended to offer a solution to Shell’s business challenge of lacking digital capability. The core objective was to organize and dynamically access internal talent to get work done in a more automated way and at pace.

    Keywords: Business Divisions; Change Management; Competency and Skills; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Energy; Energy Sources; Non-Renewable Energy; Renewable Energy; Human Resources; Employees; Retention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Jobs and Positions; Job Design and Levels; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Labor; Human Capital; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Performance Productivity; Strategic Planning; Projects; Motivation and Incentives; Business Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks; Technology Platform; Chemical Industry; Energy Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Netherlands;

    Citation:

    Fuller, Joseph B., and Emer Moloney. "Shell: A Company of Opportunity?" Harvard Business School Case 320-025, September 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchaseRelated
    11.  
See all faculty publications on Technology or Innovation »

Initiatives & Projects

  • Digital

    The Digital Initiative is a cross-unit venture that unites scholars and practitioners to explore and impact the transformation of business in today’s digital, networked, and media-rich environment.

​​​

Faculty

Seminars & Conferences

MORE »

 

HBS Working Knowledge

Pic
re Shane M. Greenstein
While many countries consider implementing their own versions of privacy and data protection regulations, there are concerns about whether such regulations may negatively impact the growth of the int
PicPic
re Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
For the first time in 100 years, new technologies such as artificial intelligence are causing firms to rethink their competitive strategy and organizational structure, say Marco Iansiti and Karim R.
Pic
re Das Narayandas
Learning happens most reliably and efficiently when it is contextualized, personalized, and socialized. This is important for executive learning in particular and adult learning more generally. Innov

More »

Harvard Business Publishing

Article
by Sunil Gupta
Case
by Debora L. Spar and Olivia Hull

More »

Campus Map
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→ Map & Directions
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College