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Crowdsourcing & Open Innovation

Karim R. Lakhani and Greta Friar. 2014. Bioinspiration at the San Diego Zoo. Harvard Business School Teaching Plan. Harvard Business School. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This teaching plan describes an 80 minute class plan for the case Bioinspiration at the San Diego Zoo.
Traditionally, human ingenuity has been considered the main source of innovation. However, recent research and the development of new products by firms as diverse as P&G, Speedo and Nike has shown that nature can provide inspiration for new innovative products. The San Diego Zoo, which has established a Center for Bioinspiration, defines bioinspiration as a methodology in which biological systems, processes, and elements are studied to draw analogies that can be applied to human design challenges in a sustainable manner.
Karim R. Lakhani, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, and Michael L. Tushman. 2013. “Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries: Task Decomposition, Knowledge Distribution and the Locus of Innovation.” In Handbook of Economic Organization: Integrating Economic and Organizational Theory, edited by Anna Grandori, Pp. 355-382. Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Open_Innovation_and_Organizational_Boundaries.pdf

This chapter contrasts traditional, organization- centered models of innovation with more recent work on open innovation. These fundamentally different and inconsistent innovation logics are associated with contrasting organizational boundaries and organizational designs. We suggest that when critical tasks can be modularized and when problem- solving knowledge is widely distributed and available, open innovation complements traditional innovation logics. We induce these ideas from the literature and with extended examples from Apple, the National Aeronautics and Astronomical Agency (NASA) and LEGO. We suggest that task decomposition and problem- solving knowledge distribution are not deterministic but are strategic choices. If dynamic capabilities are associated with innovation streams, and if different innovation types are rooted in contrasting innovation logics, there are important implications for firm boundaries, design and identity.

Teppo Felin, Karim R. Lakhani, and Michael L. Tushman. 2017. “Firms, Crowds, and Innovation.” Strategic Organization, 15:2, Special Issue on Organizing Crowds and Innovation, Pp. 119-140. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Firms_crowds_and_innovation.pdf

The purpose of this article is to suggest a (preliminary) taxonomy and research agenda for the topic of “firms, crowds, and innovation” and to provide an introduction to the associated special issue. We specifically discuss how various crowd-related phenomena and practices—for example, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, user innovation, and peer production—relate to theories of the firm, with particular attention on “sociality” in firms and markets. We first briefly review extant theories of the firm and then discuss three theoretical aspects of sociality related to crowds in the context of strategy, organizations, and innovation: (1) the functions of sociality (sociality as extension of rationality, sociality as sensing and signaling, sociality as matching and identity); (2) the forms of sociality (independent/aggregate and interacting/emergent forms of sociality); and (3) the failures of sociality (misattribution and misapplication). We conclude with an outline of future research directions and introduce the special issue papers and essays.

Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti, and Kerry Herman. 2014. Samsung Electronics: TV in an Era of Convergence. Harvard Business School Case. Harvard Business School. Publisher's VersionAbstract

From the late 1990s to 2006/2007, Samsung Electronics moved from one of 170 TV manufacturers to gain dominant TV market share year over year from 2007-2013. As digital technologies increasingly converged in 2013-2014, the industry faced new questions: What was the future of TV? The case considers Samsung Electronics TV Group's product development processes, as the company's mobile and TV offerings increasingly converged and consumer demands and behavior pushed the historically clear boundaries of product, content, engagement and interaction.

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