Josh Lerner Bio

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 earned a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Economics Department.

Much of his research focuses on the structure and role of venture capital and private equity organizations. (This research is collected in three books, The Venture Capital Cycle, The Money of Invention, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams.) He also examines policies towards innovation, and how they impact firm strategies. (The research is discussed in the books Innovation and Its Discontents, The Comingled Code, and the forthcoming Architecture of Innovation.) He co-directs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Research, and Innovation Program and serves as co-editor of their publication, Innovation Policy and the Economy. He founded and runs the Private Capital Research Institute, a non-profit devoted to encouraging data access to and research about venture capital and private equity.