Publications

08 Feb 2021
Book

How to Make the World Better, Not Perfect

modern building in Evanston, Illinois, marked by its expansive views of Lake Michigan. In passing, I mentioned that I had become a vegetarian. Someone in the audience made a comment in which he referred to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

04 Mar 2011
Working Paper Summaries

From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America

Keywords: by Marion Fourcade & Rakesh Khurana; Education

December 2010
Article

Social Preferences and Strategic Uncertainty: An Experiment on Markets and Contracts

This paper reports a three-phase experiment on a stylized labor market. In the first two phases, agents face simple games, which we use to estimate subjects' social and reciprocity concerns. In the last phase, four principals compete by offering agents a contract from... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Markets; Contracts; Decisions; Distribution; Labor; Game Theory

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07 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

Pursuing a Deadly Opportunity

the entrepreneurial organizations could be explained in part by a distrust of established medical institutions on the part of minorities. The profiles of organizations receiving the cadavers also showed View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

21 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

Voter ID Laws Don't Work (But They Don't Hurt Anything, Either)

The North Carolina State Board of Elections began a hearing this week into alleged ballot tampering in last year’s 9th District congressional race, which ended in a razor-thin, 905-vote win for Republican Mark Harris. Since the 2016... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

May 2024
Case

SofMedica Group: Managing Growth

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

SofMedica Group had expanded from its origins as a medical equipment distributor in Romania to a holding company with four business lines operating in six countries. This expansion had been driven by SofMedica’s mission: to make cutting edge medical technology... View Details

15 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Remembering Alfred Chandler

followed. These books, which explored the origins of the modern large-scale business enterprise, were marked by their intellectual rigor, depth of research, and sweeping argument. They displayed a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

11 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Non-competes Push Talent Away

firms will not invest in R&D unless they can keep their people, but other research by Mark Garmaise at UCLA has shown just the opposite." To that end, Marx and Fleming have shared their findings with... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology

November 2003 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Flextronics International, Ltd.

By: Robert S. Huckman and Gary P. Pisano

Describes Flextronics' evolution from providing outsourced manufacturing services for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the electronics industry to developing entire unbranded products for purchase by OEMs. In 2001, Flextronics began a development program that... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Production; Service Operations; Performance Effectiveness; Electronics Industry; Manufacturing Industry

August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Trouble with a Bubble

By: Tom Nicholas

Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details

Keywords: Bubble; Stock Market; Great Depression; Irving Fisher; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; History; Financial Markets; Performance; Labor and Management Relations; Equity; Financial Crisis; Innovation and Invention; United States

26 Jun 2000
Research & Ideas

Presentation Round-Up

self-proclaimed "infrastructure guy," panelist Steve Papa (HBS MBA '99) of Optigrab.com speculated that the future of e-business services will be marked by the same pull toward uniformity that took place in... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace & Kenneth Liss; Technology; Communications; Telecommunications

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

joint venture with Toyota called NUMMI, approximately fifteen years ago. However, despite Toyota's openness and the genuinely honest efforts by other companies over many years to emulate Toyota, no one had yet matched Toyota in terms of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

September 2019
Article

Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970-2008

By: Ryan Raffaelli

In 1983, 14 years after the introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch, mechanical watches and the Swiss watchmakers who built them were predicted to be obsolete (Landes, 1983). Unexpectedly, however, by 2008 the Swiss mechanical watchmaking industry had... View Details

Keywords: Technology Reemergence; Technology Cycles; Cognition And Market Redefinition; Legacy Technology Trajectories; Information Technology; Demand and Consumers; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity; Change; Consumer Products Industry; Switzerland

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12 Mar 2012
Research & Ideas

Crowded at the Top: The Rise of the Functional Manager

direct reports in 1986 to an average of 10 today. The growth is driven almost entirely by an increase in the number of C-level "functional" managers, rather than by an increase in general managers.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

30 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

All Eyes on Slovakia’s Flat Tax

reduction, there is a long way to go from lowering tax rates to introducing a flat tax in the U.S. or in Western Europe. This would require a change of attitude in countries marked by a substantial history... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

August 2002 (Revised July 2003)
Case

LAE Enterprises Corp.

Jay Entrepreneur had to decide whether it was worth his time to plow through a 12-page term sheet for a Series A round of preferred stock prepared by HBS Investors, a well-established venture capital firm that did seed, early-round, and mezzanine financings. He could... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Contracts; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Startups; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry