Haas Duo Morgan and Wang Receives California Management Review’s Accenture Award

Professor John Morgan and PhD alumnus Richard Wang tied with another set of researchers as recipients of the California Management Review’s 2011 Accenture Award for their article “Tournaments for Ideas.”

In the article, Morgan (top) and Wang (bottom), PhD 10, now an assistant professor at University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, outline how companies can use a tournament of ideas to spur innovation. They weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various tactics and incentives to encourage the best ideas and outline the methods of designing the tournaments.

As a case study, Morgan and Wang show how, using the tournament format, Waltham, Mass.-based InnoCentive creates an online marketplace for ideas by connecting companies, nonprofits, and government agencies with outside individuals who can generate ideas and solve problems.

The other winning article, “Building Sustainable High-Growth Startup Companies: Management Systems as an Accelerator,” was written by Professor Antonio Davila, IESE Business School, University of Navarro, Spain; Professor George Foster, Stanford University Graduate School of Business; and Assistant Professor Ning Jia, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, Beijing.

The Accenture Award, which has been given annually since 1983, recognizes the article that has made "the most important contribution to improving the practice of management" and was published in the previous year’s volume of California Management Review (CMR), the Haas School's business journal. The award includes a cash prize of $2,500.

The CMR editorial board performs the first round of judging, and the final selection is made by a panel of executive judges. This year’s judges were Jack Caouette, chairman, Channel Capital Advisors; Barbara Desoer, president of home loans, Bank of America; Michael R. Gallagher, director, Allergan; Stephen Herrick, president, Continental Capital Corporation; Nancy K. Lusk, CEO and president, The Lusk Company; and Robert Thomas, executive director, Accenture Institute for High Performance Business.

Read the winning CMR articles

Back