Publications

09 Apr 2019
HBS Seminar

Linda Price, University of Oregon

2010
Chapter

The Impact of Employer Matching on Savings Plan Participation under Automatic Enrollment

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

Existing research has documented the large impact that automatic enrollment has on savings plan participation. All the companies examined in these studies, however, have combined automatic enrollment with an employer match. This raises a question about how effective... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Consumer Behavior; Personal Finance; Investment Funds; Microeconomics; Compensation and Benefits

June 2002
Background Note

Note on the Equivalency of Methods for Discounting Cash Flows

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

Uses a numerical example to demonstrate that when you discount the cash flows to capital from a project at the weighted average cost of capital, you get same net present value result as you obtain when discounting the cash flows to equity at the cost of equity. Also... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Cash Flow; Cost of Capital; Equity; Valuation

Educators

17 Mar 2017
News

Schwarzman on Blackstone and the Value of an MBA

(via Poets & Quants) (via Poets & Quants) Many b-school students covet a career like the one Steve Schwarzman (MBA 1972) has had. He became a managing director at Lehman Brothers when he was 31. Seven years later, he cofounded Blackstone,... View Details

Keywords: Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises

March 2024
Article

How Foes Become Allies: The Shifting Role of Business in Climate Politics

By: Irja Vormedal and Jonas Meckling

Firms often oppose costly public policy reforms—but under what conditions may they come to support such reforms? Previous scholarship has taken a predominantly static approach to the analysis of business positions. Here, we advance a dynamic theory of change in... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Environmental Regulation; Business and Government Relations

04 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

The Air War versus The Ground Game: An Analysis of Multi-Channel Marketing in US Presidential Elections

Keywords: by Doug J. Chung & Lingling Zhang

2010
Working Paper

Boundary Spanning in a For-profit Research Lab: An Exploration of the Interface Between Commerce and Academe

By: Christopher C. Liu and Toby E. Stuart

In innovative industries, private-sector companies increasingly are participants in open communities of science and technology. To participate in the system of exchange in such communities, firms often publicly disclose what would otherwise remain private discoveries.... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Higher Education; Information Publishing; Innovation and Invention; Science-Based Business; Social and Collaborative Networks; Boundaries; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

Economists have debated the extent to which strengthening patent protection spurs or detracts from technological innovation. This paper examines the reduction of software copyright protection in the Lotus v. Borland decision. If patent and copyright protections... View Details

2010
Article

Hiring for Strength, Hiring for Weakness: Evidence of Internal Strategic Fit from the NFL

By: Andrew Hill

Firms may hire senior managers to shore up a weakness or to build on a strength. Using evidence on the hiring of NFL head coaches, this paper finds that teams that hire for strength outperform teams that hire for weakness. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Selection and Staffing; Performance; Sports; Sports Industry

18 Jul 2019
Lessons from the Classroom

The Internet of Things Needs a Business Model. Here It Is

their competition. “After 50 customers have signed on,” Lal says, “the 51st customer will ask, how can I make this work for me too?” As for IoT’s place on Gartner’s hype cycle, the firm says look for View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Computer

24 Apr 2014
News

Necessity became the mother of invention for staffing-firm founder

development firm that matches qualified professionals—women and men—who want flexible schedules with businesses in need of high-caliber services. “It doesn't make a lot of... View Details

Article

Ensembles of Overfit and Overconfident Forecasts

By: Y. Grushka-Cockayne, V.R.R. Jose and K. C. Lichtendahl

Firms today average forecasts collected from multiple experts and models. Because of cognitive biases, strategic incentives, or the structure of machine-learning algorithms, these forecasts are often overfit to sample data and are overconfident. Little is known about... View Details

Keywords: Decision Analysis; Data Science; Forecasting and Prediction; Data and Data Sets

Article

Why Am I Seeing This Ad? The Effect of Ad Transparency on Ad Effectiveness

By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz and Leslie K. John

Given the increasingly specific ways marketers can target ads, many consumers and regulators are demanding ad transparency: disclosure of how consumers’ personal information was used to generate ads. We investigate how and why ad transparency impacts ad effectiveness.... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Customization and Personalization; Information; Trust; Performance Effectiveness

November 2014
Case

Ardian—The Sale of Diana

By: Paul A. Gompers and Michael Roberts

The case focuses on a European private equity firm—Ardian—and the process it uses to sell one of its portfolio companies, and the decisions around that sale. Key issues include the choice of an auction or acceptance of a pre-emptive bid, and the role of the portfolio... View Details

Keywords: Spin-out; Exit; Sale; Private Equity; France

Educators

January–February 2017
Article

The Truth about Blockchain

By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

Contracts, transactions, and records of them provide critical structure in our economic system, but they haven’t kept up with the world’s digital transformation. They’re like rush-hour gridlock trapping a Formula 1 race car. Blockchain promises to solve this problem.... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Information Management; Information Technology Industry

Register to Read

1976
Chapter

More or Less Poverty? The Economic Effects of the MNE at Home and in the LDC's

By: L. T. Wells Jr.

Keywords: Poverty; Developing Countries and Economies; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Economies and Regions

07 Mar 2008
News

Art of retaining professionals

June 2007
Article

What Is the Impact of Software Patent Shifts? Evidence from Lotus v. Borland

By: Josh Lerner and Feng Zhu

Economists have debated the extent to which strengthening patent protection spurs or detracts from technological innovation. This paper examines the reduction of software copyright protection in the Lotus v. Borland decision. If patent and copyright protections are... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Patents; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

2022
Article

Becoming a Learning Organization While Enhancing Performance: The Case of LEGO

By: Thomas Borup Kristensen, Henrik Saabye and Amy Edmondson

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred from a production context to a knowledge work context for the purpose... View Details

Keywords: Performance Efficiency; Learning; Organizational Change and Adaptation