Abhishek Nagaraj
Assistant Professor | Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA, UNITED STATES
Researcher focused on innovation, entrepreneurship and the digital economy
Areas of Expertise (7)
Innovation
Crowdsourcing
Mapping
Entrepreneurship
Big Data and the Digital Economy
Copyright and Intellectual Property
Open Innovation
About
Abhishek Nagaraj is an Assistant Professor in the Management and Organizations (MORS) group at Berkeley Haas. He earned his PhD in Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management (TIES) group. He also holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta and a B.Tech in Computer Science from the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP).
Nagaraj's research is in the area of innovation management and entrepreneurship, where he studies the role of intellectual property in digital markets, the impact of government information on the private-sector, and the design of crowdsourcing communities. He is particularly interested in the impact of maps and digital, geographic information on the economy.
His work has received a number of awards including the BPS Wiley Blackwell Outstanding Dissertation Award, the Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) Best Dissertation Award, the J. Roberts Beyster Fellowship, as well as the Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship. In addition to his teaching, Nagaraj teaches Entrepreneurial Strategy and enjoys advising early-stage startups.
Education (3)
MIT Sloan School of Management: PhD, Management
Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta: MBA
College of Engineering, Pune: Bachelor of Technology, Computer Science
Links (4)
Honors & Awards (8)
Wiley Blackwell Outstanding Dissertation Award
Behavioral and Policy Sciences (BPS), July 2017
Technology and Innovation Management (TIM Division) Outstanding Dissertation Award
July 2017
Kauffman Prize
Best Student Paper, REER 2015
Ewing Marion Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship
2014
J. Roberts Beyster Fellowship
2014
NESTA Innovation Research Grant
2014
Sloan Foundation Research Grant
2014
MIT Energy Fellowship
2012
Languages (5)
- English
- French
- Hindi
- Kannada
- Marathi
Positions Held (1)
At Haas since 2017
2017 – present, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business 2016 – 2017, Postdoctoral Fellow in Digitization, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Media Appearances (15)
Haas School of Business study analyzes impact of chains businesses on local business closures
The Daily Californian online
2021-09-07
Recent research by Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj found a local business is 3.5% more likely to close the next day if a chain business in the same industry and zip code closed the day prior. Saqib Mumtaz, a PhD candidate who co-authored the study, noted the results could affect government policy. “Understanding organizational decision making during tumultuous times such as a global pandemic can help local governments design more effective policies to positively influence the behavior of local establishments,” he said.
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business launches online program for MBA students
The Daily Californian online
2021-08-03
The new “Flex” MBA option will make a Berkeley Haas degree more accessible to students who can’t make the EWMBA schedule work, said Jamie Breen, Assistant Dean of MBA Programs for Working Professionals. The rigor will be the same, though, said Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj. “It has been quite rare for top business schools to offer any kind of online program, so Haas will be one of the pioneers in that regard,” he said.
Mapping the Good and the Bad of Pandemic-Related Restrictions
Stanford Business Insights online
2020-09-01
A new computer model developed by researchers including Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj and PhD candidate Matteo Saccarola could help policymakers choose the right reopening strategy.
This interactive tool lets you experiment with different COVID-19 reopening strategies
Fast Company online
2020-08-28
A new model developed by a group of university researchers, including Asst. Abhishek Nagaraj, tries to show how different reopening policies affect both the employment and health outcomes in a city. An interactive website based on the research lets you try out different policies and instantly see the changes in health and economic outcomes.
Most internet service providers are gone. Sonic has survived — and thrived
San Francisco Chronicle online
2019-07-26
Sonic, founded in Santa Rosa, marks its 25th anniversary this year and is looking forward to the future. The key to its survival might be its regional focus, said Assist. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj. “Regional ISPs tend to be more flexible, more innovative,” he said. “They can more quickly cater to the needs of the local market."
Like Uber, but for cartographers
CityLab online
2018-09-19
Small companies are challenging the Google Maps monopoly. “There are a lot of platforms where the data collection is open, but the data itself is closed,” said Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj . “What makes these guys interesting is they’re flipping that model on its head.” But Nagaraj isn't sure businesses will be willing to pay for data that will eventually be free and open for everyone—including their competitors.
MapLab: How satellites cracked open a gold mine
CityLab online
2018-08-29
Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj has found that satellite imagery doubled the likelihood of new gold discoveries in the areas they covered.
MapLab: Satellites on fire
CityLab online
2018-08-15
The article references forthcoming research by Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj on the link between the release of Nasa's Landsat program satellite imagery to the public domain and the acceleration of climate science in the early 1990s.
The founder of a beloved productivity app thinks the startup model is broken — here's how he's trying to keep the tech industry from 'making the same 10,000 mistakes over and over again'
Business Insider Prime (reg. req'd)
2018-08-12
"All Turtles" is a company with an anti-startup mission of looking at innovation in a different, problem-solving way. "If this works, you can copy and spread it" widely, said Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj. "The potential is tantalizing."
The electric scooter acid test
Moneywatch online
2018-07-16
Lime, founded by Brad Bao, MBA 05, and Toby Sun, MBA 11, is one of the early entrants to the field. But: “The biggest barrier to the adoption of the technology is what I would call the dorkiness quotient,” said Assist. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj. “It’s not the most exciting-looking thing for people.”
Google knowns what we do online and may soon know everything else about us, too
KQED California Report online
2018-05-16
Google’s new Internet of Things software is a big strategic play for the company, said Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj. "What is going to be more important for them is not so much to control the hardware, but to control the operating system or the software that runs on these things," he said.
Here's how Facebook can regain trust at its F8 conference
Fast Company online
2018-04-27
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will likely face tough questions during Facebook's F8 developer conference Q&A. And that could be an issue. “The risk is coming across and saying nothing, and not being candid enough," says Abhishek Nagaraj, an assistant professor in the Haas Management of Organizations Group. "The questions [would] likely be much more pointed" than they were in Washington, D.C.
Mark Zuckerberg grilled for two days: What’s next for Facebook?
The Mercury News online
2018-04-11
Starting next month in Europe, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will give Facebook users more control. As for the U.S., "I see some agreement on both sides of the aisle that a legal framework for internet/data businesses is important, and with the GDPR being passed in the EU, there is some precedent and pressure on U.S. lawmakers," said Asst. Prof. Abishek Nagaraj of the Haas Management of Organizations Group.
Tech backlash: ‘Maybe Silicon Valley needs to be taken down to size’
The Mercury News online
2018-03-19
“It is unprecedented,” UC Berkeley Haas School of Business professor Abhishek Nagaraj, said of the backlash. “I think this is because of how deeply penetrated tech is in people’s lives.” Nagaraj, who studies the tech industry, compared the demonization of Silicon Valley to the outcry against Wall Street after deceptive investment banking practices knocked the U.S. into the Great Recession. “It appears as if, basically, tech is the new finance,” Nagaraj said.
Nearly 200 New Profs At Top B-Schools
Poets & Quants online
2017-10-03
Susan Harmeling was well into what has become a 30-year career as a business school case writer when she traveled to Croatia to design a graduate entrepreneurship course at the University of Osijek. It was September 2001, and the country was still recovering from its four-year war that had begun a decade before when Harmeling, working for the Open Society Institute founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, organized a course focusing on entrepreneurial case research, writing, and teaching for both graduate students and faculty.
Working Papers (4)
How Competition Affects Contributions to Open Source Platforms: Evidence from OpenStreetMap and Google Maps
Abhishek Nagaraj and Henning Piezunka
Digitization and the Demand for Physical Works: Evidence from the Google Books Project
Abhishek Nagaraj and Imke Reimers
Getting on the Map: The Impact of Online Listings on Business Performance
Abhishek Nagaraj, Michael Luca. and Gauri Subramani
Socioeconomic Network Heterogeneity and Pandemic Policy Response
Abhishek Nagaraj, Mohammad Akbarpour, Cody Cook, Aude Marzuoli, Simon Mongey, Matteo Saccarola, Pietro Tebaldi, Shoshana Vasserman, and Hanbin Yang https://reopenmappingproject.com
Selected Papers & Publications (9)
The Economics of Maps
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Abhishek Nagaraj and Scott Stern
February 2020
Social In uence in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Community Establishments' Closure Decisions Follow Those of Nearby Chain Establishments
Management Science
Abhishek Nagaraj, Mathijs de Vaan, Saqib Mumtaz and Sameer Srivastava
Forthcoming
Information Seeding and Knowledge Production in Online Communities: Evidence from OpenStreetMap
Management Science
Abhishek Nagaraj
Forthcoming
The Private Impact of Public Data: Landsat Satellite Maps Increased Gold Discoveries and Encouraged Entry
Management Science
Abhishek Nagaraj
Forthcoming
Improving data access democratizes and diversifies science
Proceedings of the National Academies of Science
Abhishek Nagaraj, Mathijs de Vaan & Esther Shears and
Forthcoming
Does Data Access Democratize Science?
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Abhishek Nagaraj, Esther Shears, and Mathijs de Vaan
September, 2020
The Economics of Maps
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Abhishek Nagaraj and Scott Stern
February, 2020
Does Copyright Affect Reuse? Evidence from Google Books and Wikipedia
Management Science
Abhishek Nagaraj
July 2018
Do Wiki-pages have parents? An article-level inquiry into Wikipedia's inequalities
Workshop on Information Technology Systems
Abhishek Nagaraj, P. Seetharaman, R.Roy, and A. Dutta
2009
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