Empirical research on Technology, Strategy and Innovation

KEVIN BOUDREAU

Assistant Professor, Strategy

kboudreau at london dot com

I research questions at the intersection of innovation, competition and organization. My research is mostly empirical, involving large-sample, quantitative analysis.

I have a particular interest in understanding how large groups or “ecosystems” of innovating firms and individuals should be deliberately organized and governed.

An ecosystem sponsor might orchestrate an ecosystem through a number of strategic instruments, including: contracts, property rights assignment, licensing practices, technology and architecture design, fomenting specific norms and culture and other means.

This viewpoint is applicable to a wide range of sectors including publishing, telecoms, software, publishing, aerospace, websites, portals, social network platforms, IT, video games, television networks, automotive manufacturers, fashion designers and retailers, defense industry and others.

I have a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I studied Economics and Strategy, an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto and a BASc in Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Here are some papers and my resume.

PAPERS

· Racing and Searching in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis, Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 09-041 (with N. Lacetera, CWRU and K. Lakhani, Harvard Business School)

· Opening the Platform vs. Opening the Complementary Good? The Effect on Product Innovation in Handheld Computing

· Organizing Digital Innovation Ecosystems: Econometric Analysis

· How to Manage Outside Innovation: Building Communities or Markets of External Innovators? Sloan Management Review 2009 (with K. Lakhani, Harvard Business School)

· Platform Rules: Regulating the Ecosystem around a Multi-Sided Platform (with A. Hagiu, Harvard Business School) in Gawer, A. (ed) (2009), Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, US: Edward Elgar.

· How Open Should an Open System Be? : Essays on Mobile Computing (Dissertation)

RESEARCH PROJECTS

· “Experiments on Search, Open and Closed IPR”
(with C Baldwin, K. Lakhani, Harvard Business School & A. MacCormack MIT)

· Organizing Innovation for NBER 50th anniversary of The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity

· “Heterogeneity, Knowledge, Competition, Innovation”
(with C. Helfat, Dartmouth & K. Lakhani, Harvard Business School)

· “Econometric Analysis of Video Game Modders”
(with Lars Bo Jeppessen, CBS)

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 strategy consultant, working with 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. Prior to arriving at LBS, I taught Strategy, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship classes at HEC-Paris.