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Organization & Processes

Optimal Prize Structure

One of the strongest design parameters for contests is the prize structure, i.e., the number and level of prizes. In developing best practices, we are working to provide guidance to practitioners to optimize the use of prize funds. Optimal selection of prizes is a complex task. For tasks with diminishing returns to effort (the 100th hour of work improves the output less than the 1st hour),... Read more about Optimal Prize Structure

Best Management Practices

LISH is working to develop testable systems and methods to help open innovation (OI) practitioners explore techniques for best practices. To date, the lab has spent extensive time studying both contests and communities with profit companies, governments, academic research centers, and platforms. Research in these areas explore... Read more about Best Management Practices

Misha Teplitskiy, Hardeep Ranu, Gary Gray, Michael Menietti, Eva Guinan, and Karim Lakhani. Working Paper. “Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? Field Experimental Evidence from Scientific Peer Review.” HBS Working Paper Series. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Organizations in science and elsewhere often rely on committees of experts to make important decisions, such as evaluating early-stage projects and ideas. However, very little is known about how experts influence each other’s opinions and how that influence affects final evaluations. Here, we use a field experiment in scientific peer review to examine experts’ susceptibility to the opinions of others. We recruited 277 faculty members at seven U.S. medical schools to evaluate 47 early stage research proposals in biomedicine. In our experiment, evaluators (1) completed independent reviews of research ideas, (2) received (artificial) scores attributed to anonymous “other reviewers” from the same or a different discipline, and (3) decided whether to update their initial scores. Evaluators did not meet in person and were not otherwise aware of each other. We find that, even in a completely anonymous setting and controlling for a range of career factors, women updated their scores 13% more often than men, while very highly cited “superstar” reviewers updated 24% less often than others. Women in male-dominated subfields were particularly likely to update, updating 8% more for every 10% decrease in subfield representation. Very low scores were particularly “sticky” and seldom updated upward, suggesting a possible source of conservatism in evaluation. These systematic differences in how world-class experts respond to external opinions can lead to substantial gender and status disparities in whose opinion ultimately matters in collective expert judgment.
Eva C. Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani, and Kevin J. Boudreau. 2013. “Experiments in Open Innovation at Harvard Medical School.” MIT Sloan Management Review 54 (3). Publisher's VersionAbstract

This article examines an experiment in open innovation applied to scientific research on Type 1 diabetes at Harvard Medical School. In the traditional research process in academic medicine, a single research team typically carries through each stage of the process — from generating the idea to carrying out the research and publishing the results. Harvard Catalyst, a pan-Harvard agency with a mission to speed biomedical research from the lab to patients' bedsides, modified the traditional grant proposal process as an experiment in bringing greater openness into every stage of research. Participation was successfully extended to nontraditional actors. With support from Dr. William Chin, the executive dean for research at Harvard Medical School and a former vice president of research at Eli Lilly (an early adopter of open innovation), Harvard Catalyst started with the front end of the innovation system by opening up the process of generating research questions. Instead of focusing on identifying individuals who might tackle a tough research problem, Harvard Catalyst wanted to allow an open call for ideas in the form of a prize-based contest to determine the direction of the academic research. This might lead to potentially relevant questions not currently under investigation or largely ignored by the Type 1 diabetes research community. Harvard Catalyst partnered with the InnoCentive online contest platform to initiate the idea generation process. Participants had to formulate well-defined problems and/or hypotheses to advance knowledge about Type 1 diabetes research in new and promising directions. In the end, 150 new hypotheses and research pathways were proposed. Teams were invited to propose projects on the 12 most promising of these; today, seven teams are carrying out the research. The Harvard Catalyst experience suggests that open-innovation principles can be adopted even within a well-established and experienced innovation-driven organization.

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