“The Moon and the Ghetto” revisited by Richard Nelson

Richard Nelson explained why is worthwhile to revisit his book.

Over thirty years ago I wrote an extended essay, The Moon and the Ghetto, concerned with the troubling question of why societies so rich and capable technologically and organizationally as to be able to land a man on the moon seemed unable to deal effectively with e.g. poverty, illiteracy, slums. I argued that, while politics was part of the reason, in many cases the problem was that our scientific knowledge and technological know-how was not sufficient to point the way to a solution. The general problem of the great unevenness of human progress has not gone away. The questions explored in this seminar are, first, what lies behind the great unevenness of scientific and technological progress. And second, under what conditions does it make sense to seek a solution to a problem by trying to develop stronger know-how. Can progress be made by reorienting our innovation systems?

You can watch his lecture given at INGENIO in Spain on Youtube.

Nelson Ghetto

Murmann Lecture: What constitutes a compelling case study?

I gave a 50-min keynote lecture on what constitutes compelling case study.  The video from the event at the Forum for Case-based and Qualitative Research in Business Administration may be useful for anyone who is attempting to publish case based studies in field of management.

Nanjing Lecture

The slides from the lecture are visible in the video and can also be downloaded here.  Murmann Slides

The lecture is also available within China on the youku platform.  Click here if you want to access video from China:  China Video AccessAlternative China Video Access

Click on “more” for a written summary of lecture both in English and in Chinese.

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The Stanley Reiter Lecture 2005

On January 26, 2005 I delivered the Stanley Reiter Award Lecture. The Reiter award is named for Stanley Reiter, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at Kellogg. It is presented to a Kellogg faculty member whose paper is judged by a panel of Kellogg professors across disciplines to be the best paper written in the preceding four calendar years. I received the award for my book Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology and National Institutions. You can also read the text of the lecture by clicking on “More” button or by downloading it as a Word file.  Alternatively,  you can watch a video (58 minutes) of the lecture with Real Player here: Lecture Video. If you watch the video, you should download the Slides that I presented during the lecture but which are not visible in the video.

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Evolutionary Economics—The State of the Science

This is a talk I gave at a conference New Perspectives on Telecommunications and Pharmaceuticals in Europe and the United States: Conference on Evolutionary Economics:
Conference Program

Good morning. Let me give you a quick road map of my presentation. First, I will discuss where we are in terms of evolutionary economics, beginning with Nelson and Winter, 1982, the key book in this literature. Then I’ll provide a quick review of the ideas behind evolutionary accounts, laying out the requirements for a valid evolutionary explanation. I’ll follow this with a discussion of recent trends in the literature over the last six or seven years, addressing what I believe to be some of the key outstanding issues that should be addressed by the evolutionary perspective. Finally, time-permitting I’ll speculate a little bit about how one can make economics more an evolutionary science, and about what can be done to make evolutionary ideas more accepted.

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