KEVIN BOUDREAU

Assistant Professor, Strategy

London Business School

kboudreau at london dot edu

I do empirical research on topics at the intersection of innovation, competition and organization.

I am particularly interested in open and distributed innovation---and how core “platform” owners can structure and organize these systems to be most productive.

This perspective has implications for a larger number of industries, such as: telecommunications, publishing, aerospace, life sciences, IT, video games (console, mobile and on-line), computing, television, open source software, on-line portals, automotive, fashion, health care organizations, franchises of various kinds, defense, aerospace and many other contexts.

I have a PhD from MIT, an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto and a BASc in Engineering from the University of Waterloo. I have taught courses in Strategic Management, and Innovation and New Venture Strategies.

PAPERS

Opening the Platform vs. Opening the Complementary Good? The Effect on Product Innovation in Handheld Computing, conditional acceptance Management Science

Competition and Modular Innovation: Evidence from an “App Store” on Variety and Quality (under review)

Racing and Searching in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis (under review) (with N. Lacetera, CWRU and K. Lakhani, HBS)

SELECTED ON-GOING PROJECTS

I am currently pursuing several projects related to experiments and econometric analysis of naturally-occurring data in systems industries, open markets and open communities. Here are some examples:

Open Innovation Institutions as Governance or Selection Mechanisms? Evidence from a Field Experiment on a NASA Space Life Science Problem (with K. Lakhani, HBS)

Field Experiments on Open Innovation in Software Development for National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) 50th anniversary of The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity (with K. Lakhani, HBS)

Two-Sided Markets with Free Goods and Suppliers Who Don’t Get Paid: Structural Econometric Analysis of Indirect Network Effects for ‘Mods’ of On-Line Games (with L. Jeppessen, CBS)

OTHER WORKS

How to Manage Outside Innovation: “Communities” or “Markets” of External Innovators? Sloan Management Review 2009 (with K. Lakhani, HBS)

Platform Rules: Regulating the Ecosystem around a Multi-Sided Platform
(with A. Hagiu, HBS) in Gawer, A. (ed) (2009), Platforms, Markets and Innovation

CASES

Palm (A): The Debate on Licensing Palm’s OS (1997)." Harvard Business School Case 708-514. (with R. Casadesus-Masanell, Harvard Business School, and Jordan Mitchell)

Palm (B): 2001. HBS Supplement 708-515. (with R. Casadesus-Masanell, Harvard, and Jordan Mitchell)

Palm (C): 2005. HBS Supplement 708-516. (with R. Casadesus-Masanell, Harvard, and Jordan Mitchell)

Palm (D): Epilogue as of 2008. HBS Supplement 708-517. (with R. Casadesus-Masanell, Harvard, and Jordan Mitchell)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Prior to academics, I was a director of research and consulting at the Economist Intelligence Unit focusing on communications and media industries in Western Europe and North America. In an earlier position I was program leader for M&A and large-scale infrastructure contracting projects at Qualcomm Inc, working mostly in Latin America. At Braxton Associates, I supported the Canadian practice as a business analyst, consulting to media and telecoms companies and their investors in North and South America. In engineering school I interned at the Canadian Space Agency working on the Canadarm robotic arm for the international space station and researched heat transfer problems for Nortel Networks.