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| Following CNE's recent and highly successful Market Insights Luncheon, Should software have patents?, CNE now proposes to delve further into the issues of software patents by exploring their impact on economic growth. In August 2003, a group of 12 eminent economists wrote an open letter to the European Parliament expressing their concerns about the impending Software legislation and its impact on small and medium sized businesses. This letter has become a touchstone of the current debate in Brussels and is worthy of further exploration and discussion. It is in this context that the CNE hopes to encourage an open and informed debate, presenting both sides of the argument. | 
Tuesday, 02 March 2004
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 Dietmar
Harhoff is Professor of Management and Director of the Institute for
Innovation Research and Technology Management (INNO-tec) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University
in Munich. After graduating from the University of Dortmund in Mechanical
Engineering (Dipl.-Ing.) in 1984, he was awarded a McCloy Scholarship
for a two-year study programme at Harvard University where he studied
business economics. After graduating from Harvard (M.P.A. 1987), he entered
the doctoral programme at the Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT). His doctoral thesis (Ph.D. 1991) analyzed
research incentives in vertically related industries. In 1991, he joined
the newly founded Centre for European Economic Research (Zentrum für Europäische
Wirtschaftsforschung - ZEW) in Mannheim where he served as Senior Research
Fellow and - since 1995 - as Associate Director. Dietmar Harhoff held
visiting positions at MIT and the Social Science Research Center (Wissenschaftszentrum
für Sozialforschung - WZB) in Berlin, and in 1998 assumed his current
position at the University of Munich. His research interests focus on
the economics and management of innovation, and in particular on the patent
system. His most recent research results have been published, inter alia,
in the Journal of Industrial Economics, Annales d'Économie et de Statistique,
Research Policy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Banking
and Finance, and Management Science. For more information see inno-tec.de. |
In the 1993-94 academic year, he introduced an elective course for second-year MBAs on private equity finance. In recent years, “Venture Capital and Private Equity” has consistently been one of the largest elective courses at Harvard Business School. (The course materials are collected in Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Casebook, John Wiley, 2000 and 2002.) He also teaches a doctoral course on entrepreneurship. He serves as the School’s representative on Harvard University Patent, Trademark and Copyright Committee and the Provost's Committee on Technology Transfer. |
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Josh
Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at
Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Finance and
the Entrepreneurial Management Units. He graduated from Yale College
with a Special Divisional Major which combined physics with the history
of technology. He worked for several years on issues concerning technological
innovation and public policy, at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private
task force in Chicago, and on Capitol Hill. He then undertook his graduate
study at Harvard's Economics Department. His research focuses on the
structure of venture capital organizations, and their role in transforming
scientific discoveries into commercial products. (Much of his research
is collected in The Venture Capital Cycle, MIT Press, 1999 and The Money
of Invention, Harvard Business School Press, 2001.) He also examines
the impact of intellectual property protection, particularly patents,
on the competitive strategies of firms in high-technology industries.
He is a Researcgh Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s
Corporate Finance and Productivity Programs and serves as Co-Organizer
of the Innovation Policy and the Economy Group, co-editor of their publication
Innovation Policy and the Economy, and organizer of the Entrepreneurship
Working Group.