Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary Field experiments have the potential to provide unambiguous causal evidence on innovation topics while simultaneously assisting organisations with their innovation. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>This paper discusses several challenges in designing field experiments to better understand how organizational and institutional design shapes innovation outcomes and the production of knowledge. We proceed to describe the field experimental research program carried out by our Crowd Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University to clarify how we have attempted to address these research design challenges. This program has simultaneously solved important practical innovation problems for partner organizations, like NASA and Harvard Medical School, while contributing research advances, particularly in relation to innovation contests and tournaments.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684988 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question What are the challenges to implementing experimental approaches to estimate causal relationships in the field of economics of innovation? What steps can be taken to spread the field experimental research method to the economics of innovation literature? Sample Trial population and sample selection Various Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Various Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Various Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Various Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Various. Among the most prominent variables: venture survival, venture growth, venture profitability, financial well-being of the clients, health of clients, education of the clients' children, and empowerment of female clients.</p> Results <p>Challenges with field experiments applied to economics of innovation include: 1) the nature of the knowledge production function, 2) unit of analysis, replication and sample size, 3) selection versus treatment effects, 4) designing treatments and counterfactuals, 5) representativeness, validity and precision. The Crowd Innovation Laboratory's work has shown that innovation contests can be used to solve computational problems and has demonstrated significant gains in cost effectiveness, speed to solution and quality. Development of experiments focused around the generation and evaluation of scientific research grant proposals has also advanced knowledge in economics of innovation related to how researchers compete and collaborate to win grants. The policy challenge now is to understand how innovation contest can become a routine part of federal procurement for technology.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani, "Innovation Experiments: Researching Technical Advance, Knowledge Production, and the Design of Supporting Institutions," Innovation Policy and the Economy 16 (2016): 135-167. Citation for use in academic references
