Happy End Problem - Publications - Faculty & Research

08 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Knowledge Transfer: You Can't Learn Surgery By Watching

Organizations, in which he argues that observation and imitation are rarely the best ways for employees to learn on the job. “There are some realms of life where that is true, but for the most part, problems in business are more... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

24 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Get People Addicted to a Good Habit

would receive one ticket each day for washing their hands with soap, but that in two months they would begin receiving triple the number of tickets for every day they used the dispenser. The final group received the same incentive boost two months into the experiment,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

regardless of the GDP. But if the nation's total output in future years is not sufficiently large, then all those stocks and bonds are going to end up being worth a lot less than expected. Total output is the key to how much we can... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

13 Jun 2011
HBS Case

Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

to dig in and figure out what their real needs are and their pain points." The Problem With Wizzit WIZZIT entered the mobile banking market in 2004 because the mobile phone penetration rate in South Africa was almost 100 percent,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Communications; Telecommunications

07 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

The Better Way to Forecast the Future

“overfitting” a statistical model, ensuring the model hits every historical data point and thus making it overly specific and lacking room for future variables. Another problem can develop with miscalibration, failing to consider whether... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Air Transportation; Transportation

29 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

How Organizations Create Social Value

Success in Social Enterprise," ending August 1. This two-year study was the second carried out by SEKN since it was founded in 2001 as a research partnership between HBS and leading business schools in Latin America and Spain. SEKN's... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

25 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Who is to Blame for 'The Great Training Robbery'?

Mass.-based management consulting firm TruePoint Partners, which Beer co-founded and on which he now serves as a director. Most training programs focus on developing and changing behavior of individuals and teams. Beer and his colleagues say the View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Education

22 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Side Effects: The Case of Propecia

product claim strategy, risking the question of side effects in favor of attempting to convince men that they had a problem and Propecia was the answer. Wosinska said that even before marketing began, the drug had high ambient... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health; Pharmaceutical

18 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 18

Second, pay disparity between managers located in different states decreases relative to that of co-located managers. Third, division productivity falls in dispersed firms, with the effect driven by managers at the low end of the wage... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

18 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

After the 'Crypto Crash,' What's Next for Digital Currencies?

in this space across the board. There needs to be more transparency and not just transparency at the abstract level, but the technology needs to be made transparent for consumers in ways that they can understand. This is a problem across... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Financial Services; Technology

15 Mar 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business

This word cloud is composed of blog posts by more than 900 students describing how individual organizations are likely to be affected by climate change. Image by Patrick Clapp Last fall, first-year MBA students at Harvard Business School received a new assignment in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Green Technology

29 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

The History and Influence of Andy Grove

wonder Grove's search for the truth in the business world was so intense, so passionate. He has an uncanny ability to abstract himself from a decision in which he is deeply, emotionally involved and view the problem as an outsider would.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Computer

26 Sep 2011
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Lady Gaga

"Yo Taylor, I'm really happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but [fellow nominee] Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time." Millions of viewers were turned off by his impulsive bullying, and Carter and Lady Gaga, both... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Entertainment & Recreation; Music

10 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Commodity Busters: Be a Price Maker, Not a Price Taker

cause serious problems for customers and create a strong reason not to purchase. Confusing or inaccurate billing causes customer annoyance. Simply eliminating the reasons for someone not to purchase, however, does not create a reason for... View Details

Keywords: by Benson P. Shapiro

30 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Real Estate: The Most Imperfect Asset

Debates on urban sprawl and so-called new urbanism are the rage among developers and academics. Grayfield debates concern what to do with all of those old shopping malls and parking lots in infill locations. (One friend told me the View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Construction; Real Estate

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

organization that operate under a corporate umbrella. For example, Google Search is a classic transaction platform that connects end users to advertisers, and the Android operating system is a classic innovation platform that enables... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

03 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2010

Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han, and Sunil Gupta empirically assesses if friends indeed influence purchases. The answer: It depends. The End of Chimerica For the better part of the past decade, the world economy has been dominated by a... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

31 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Powerful Workplace Motivator

annual salary offer of $115,000 is unfair on its own. They might be perfectly happy with that salary if it weren't for the information that it's below average." And it's not just a matter of money. In several studies of social comparison... View Details