Sophistication - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

Growing Pains: Prescriptions for U.S. Health Care

companies to develop ever more sophisticated technologies, products, and systems — typically for the market's high end, where margins are greatest. However, the market's ability to utilize and pay for these advances grows more slowly,... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Health

15 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business of Free Software

"In a complex, sophisticated environment where so many products and services are connected, strategy has become, in large part, the art of influencing assets that you don't own," Iansiti observes. It's the old saw of the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

06 Oct 2003
What Do You Think?

Is “the Innovator’s Solution” to Sustained Corporate Growth an Unnatural Act?

customers whose capabilities and needs have been outstripped by the development of newer and more complex product features. In the face of a "disruptive technology," dominant competitors flee to the upper end of the market where their increasingly View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Making the Most of Government Upheaval

related businesses in the local market or even in other countries. Stage III: Acquisition of New Capabilities. Becoming increasingly sophisticated as they competed with larger foreign rivals, the firms developed new capabilities in areas... View Details

Keywords: by Nancy O. Perry

19 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Ground-Floor Opportunities for Retail in India

have made goods more attainable and enticing to a larger portion of the population. At the same time, trade liberalization and more sophisticated manufacturing techniques create goods that are less expensive and higher quality. A panel... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products; Retail

17 Dec 2001
Research & Ideas

Venture Capital: Hot Markets and Current Industry Trends

sophisticated understanding of that market, said Wiersma. One reason the TV recorder company TiVo ran into difficulty, she said, was the company didn't understand that consumers don't want to have to get another box for their television.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

23 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

This Crisis Loan Program Preserved Jobs—and Made Money

the Boston area. [Image: BalkansCat ] Related Reading How Small Businesses Can Survive the Coronavirus Outbreak Small Businesses Are Worse Off Than We Thought Sophisticated Investors May Be Harming Fintech Lending Platforms What do great... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

The Right Connections

or test product," she says. "Investment bankers want to know if it has technological sophistication and competence, if it can manage its internal resources effectively, and if it can bring its product to market." Given... View Details

Keywords: by Judith A. Ross

28 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: The Good Struggle: Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World

also a nexus of commitments, and sophisticated parties understand this from the start. There is often too much uncertainty and turbulence in market-driven economies to rely on contracts and contingencies to specify who will do what and... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Badaracco

16 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Confronting the Reality of Web Services

equally well within and between companies. Cross-company implementations, however, are still comparatively rare. We see them between large and technically sophisticated organizations who have longstanding ties, and we're also starting to... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant

13 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

3 Ways Firms Can Profit From Environmental Investments

cannot only rely on immediate, short term returns," Henderson writes in the paper. "Instead it rests on a sophisticated understanding of the risks entailed in doing nothing and on the opportunities inherent in moving early to prepare for... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities

15 Feb 2017
Op-Ed

What Africa Can Teach the United States About Funding Infrastructure Projects

conditions in the world today: the declining capabilities of government, the massive size and increasing sophistication of the global financial markets, and the impacts of new technologies that leapfrog large centralized projects and put... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction

07 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing

bigger issue is whether, as millennials get older and develop more sophisticated investing, tax and estate planning needs, firms like Wealthfront will continue to keep them as customers, or lose them to more traditional firms. “They are... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

11 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans

education will be able to understand the risks," he says. The Role Of Financial Sophistication That said, the researchers did assess the role of financial sophistication on the use of structured loans. They... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

03 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Who Guarantees Your Workplace Is Safe for Return?

Allen at a recent Books@Baker event. Most commercial office buildings have fairly sophisticated air temperature and humidity sensors, but the data is seldom shared with tenant companies and individuals. However, in today’s tech-enabled... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber and Joseph Allen; Real Estate

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Media Metamorphosis: Advertising in the Technology Age

of Internet advertising on the industry as a whole. According to Silk and his colleagues, changes in the industry's external environment fit into three broad categories: technical, regulatory, and economic. Advances in technology reach well beyond the Internet to... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs; Advertising

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

How the U.S. Army Develops Leaders

peacekeeper?" We take thousands of young recruits every month and train them to operate some of the most sophisticated equipment in the world under some of the most challenging conditions imaginable.— Scott A. Snook Such an identity... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

06 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: February 6, 2018

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53888 Marketplace Lending: A New Banking Paradigm? By: Vallée, Boris, and Yao Zeng Abstract—Marketplace lending relies on large-scale loan screening by investors, a major deviation from the traditional banking paradigm.... View Details

08 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 8, 2007

occur relatively quickly when the underlying repugnance changes. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-077.pdf An Empirical Approach to Understanding Privacy Valuation Authors:Luc Wathieu and Allan Friedman Abstract The purpose of this paper is to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

The Next Marketing Challenge: Selling to ’Simplifiers’

their stuff embarrasses them. Their Range Rovers no longer tell the world that they are sophisticated town and country socialites. There are simply too many of them on the road to offer much social status. Worse, they now signal the... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Retail; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation

Publications