Publications

June 2020
Background Note

Customer Management Dynamics and Cohort Analysis

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

The digital revolution has allowed companies to amass considerable amounts of data on their customers. Using this information to generate actionable insights is fast becoming a critical skill that firms must master if they wish to effectively compete and win in today’s... View Details

Keywords: Cohort Analysis; Customers; Analytics and Data Science; Segmentation; Analysis; Customer Value and Value Chain

Article

Collection, Exploration and Analysis of Crowdfunding Social Networks

By: Miao Cheng, Anand Sriramulu, Sudarshan Muralidhar, Boon Thau Loo, Laura Huang and Po-Ling Loh

Crowdfunding is a recent financing phenomenon that is gaining wide popularity as a means for startups to raise seed funding for their companies. This paper presents our initial results at understanding this phenomenon using an exploratory data driven approach. We have... View Details

Program

Succeeding as a Strategic CFO

decisions Become a strategic partner to the CEO Discover how to formulate, evaluate, and implement strategic choices that are grounded in financial metrics, but not limited to them Learn how to determine which metrics are most appropriate... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

By: Shikhar Ghosh

I am focused on exploring the human side of developing early stage entrepreneurial ventures. These enterprises are characterized by the pursuit of opportunity, shortage of resources to pursue their goals and uncertainty at every step of the journey. Some of the... View Details

Keywords: Scale; Exit; Founders' Agreements; Success Measures; Entrepreneurial Risk; Founding Teams; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Europe; Middle East; Asia

January 2020 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural... View Details

March 2018
Article

In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions

By: Eva Ascarza, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost and Rom Schrift

In today’s turbulent business environment, customer retention presents a significant challenge for many service companies. Academics have generated a large body of research that addresses part of that challenge—with a particular focus on predicting customer churn.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Retention; Churn; Customer Relationship Management; Measurement and Metrics

2024
Conference Paper

Quantifying Uncertainty in Natural Language Explanations of Large Language Models

By: Himabindu Lakkaraju, Sree Harsha Tanneru and Chirag Agarwal

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used as powerful tools for several high-stakes natural language processing (NLP) applications. Recent prompting works claim to elicit intermediate reasoning steps and key tokens that serve as proxy explanations for LLM... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning

2015
Chapter

The Fourth Wave: Business Management and Business Education in the Age of the Anthropocene

By: Andrew J. Hoffman and John Ehrenfeld

Sustainability has become mainstream in both management practice and management research. Firms incorporate sustainability strategies into their core mission. University administrators promote sustainability as central to their curricula. Scholars pursue sustainability... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Natural Environment; Leading Change; Management Systems

2016
Article

Organizational Decision-Making and Information: Angel Investments by Venture Capital Partners

By: Andy Wu

We study information aggregation in organizational decision-making for the financing of entrepreneurial ventures. We introduce a formal model of voting where agents face costly tacit information to improve their decision quality. Equilibrium outcomes suggest a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Angel Investors; Organization Design; Voting; Group Decision-making; Information; Strategy; Organizations; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Financing and Loans

May 2014
Case

Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC

By: V.G. Narayanan and Vidhya Muthuram

IDFC was set up in 1997 to direct private finance to infrastructure projects in India. Over the years, it expanded its capabilities to become a 'complete solutions provider' offering financing solutions including debt and equity, investment banking, brokerage and asset... View Details

Research Summary

The Global Networks of Multinational Firms (with Maggie Chen)

By: Laura Alfaro

In this paper we characterize the topology of global multinational networks and examine the macro and micro patterns of multinational activity. We construct indices of network density at both pairwise industry and establishment level and measure agglomeration in a... View Details

August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
Supplement

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (B)

By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in February 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the... View Details

Keywords: Grocery; Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Turkey

03 Mar 2022
HBS Seminar

Daniela Saban, Stanford

December 2018 (Revised March 2020)
Technical Note

Note on Economic Inequality (2020)

By: Rebecca Henderson, Jessica A. Gover, Aldo Sesia and Mariana Oseguera Rodriguez

For over half a century, most of the world's economies have enjoyed steady growth and prosperity. While this economic growth has reduced the number of people living in poverty, it has come with an increase in economic inequality. The gap between the "haves" and the... View Details

Keywords: Economic Inequalty; Wealth Inequality; Equality Of Opportunity; Political Polarization; Economic Growth; Economics; Income; Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Society; Problems and Challenges

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation's out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company's proposed new board. PG&E, which provided... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Corporate Culture Homogeneity and Top Executive Incentive Design: Evidence from CEO Compensation Contracts

By: Dennis Campbell, Ruidi Shang and Zhifang Zhang

We examine how corporate cultures characterized by high degrees of homogeneity in the underlying values and beliefs of organizational members are related to the design of CEO incentive compensation contracts. We argue that culture homogeneity within firms lowers... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Culture; Compensation Design; Accounting; Management Control; Incentive Systems; Organizational Culture; Job Design and Levels; Governance; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives

June 2016
Teaching Note

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: Jill Avery, Asis Martinez Jerez and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, a web marketing startup selling inbound marketing software to small- and medium-sized businesses, is under pressure from its venture capital partners to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. The B2B SaaS company is in the... View Details

Keywords: CRM; Customer Acquisition; Customer Retention; Churn Management; SaaS Business Models; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Startup; Software; Monitoring And Control; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Accounting; Technology Industry; United States

Program

Leading Professional Service Firms

governance, decision-making, performance approaches, and metrics Optimize the use of your time and energy, achieve work-life balance, and help your colleagues to do the same Communicate your vision and strategy effectively and inspire... View Details

Keywords: Professional Services; Professional Services

June, 2023
Article

Walking the Purpose-Talk Inside a Large Company: Sustainable Product Development as an Instance of Divergent Change

By: Marissa Kimsey, Thijs Geradts and Julie Battilana

There is a growing interest in large companies pursuing a new purpose—changing their core reason for being from a singular focus on financial gain to a renewed responsibility to people and the planet alongside profit. Yet knowledge of how a large company can walk that... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Environmental Sustainability; Mission and Purpose; Leading Change