Publications

Forthcoming
Article

Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency

By: Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi

Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Customer Selection; Customer Compatibility; Retention; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Australia

Article

Improved Bounds on the Sizes of S.P Numbers

By: Paul Myer Kominers and Scott Duke Kominers

A number which is S.P in base r is a positive integer which is equal to the sum of its base-r digits multiplied by the product of its base-r digits. These numbers have been studied extensively in The Mathematical Gazette. Recently, Shah Ali... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods

Read Now

12 Feb 2015
Video

Connecting Communities to Improve Post-Disaster Recovery

December 2013 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Atlanta Schools: Measures to Improve Performance

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

The widespread cheating scandal that rocked the Atlanta public school system in 2010 and 2011 illustrates how high-stakes performance pressure, without sufficient risk controls, can drive dangerous behavior. After becoming superintendent of the low-income and... View Details

Educators

Article

(Too) Optimistic about Optimism: The Belief that Optimism Improves Performance.

By: Elizabeth R. Tenney, Jennifer M. Logg and Don A Moore

A series of experiments investigated why people value optimism and whether they are right to do so. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants prescribed more optimism for someone implementing decisions than for someone deliberating, indicating that people prescribe... View Details

Keywords: Optimism; Bias; Accuracy; Decision Phase; Performance; Attitudes; Performance Improvement; Perception; Outcome or Result

Read Now

26 May 2009
Research & Ideas

Improving Market Research in a Recession

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge. Recession-challenged consumers are buying... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

May 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Lowe’s: Improving the Total Home Strategy

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Alicia Dadlani

In 2023, Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe’s, contemplated enhancements to the company’s Total Home Strategy to accelerate performance and grow market share. In the last five years since becoming CEO, Ellison had championed a turnaround of the company, completing a... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Competition; Brands and Branding; Business Strategy; Retail Industry

Educators

18 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Getting It Done: Improving Nonprofit Performance

Whereas the for-profit capital markets provide transparent objective criteria for making early- and later-stage investment decisions, balance risks with return, and create a "performance-driving cycle" by rewarding View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner

12 PM – 1 PM EDT, 16 Mar 2017
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools

In this webinar, Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker will discuss the themes from their Amazon-bestselling book, Blended. Using the theories of disruptive innovation, Horn and Staker reveal a practical guide for designing an education system that can help all students... View Details

August 28, 2018
Article

How Intermittent Breaks in Interaction Improve Collective Intelligence

By: Ethan Bernstein, Jesse Shore and David Lazer

People influence each other when they interact to solve problems. Such social influence introduces both benefits (higher average solution quality due to exploitation of existing answers through social learning) and costs (lower maximum solution quality due to a... View Details

Read Now

14 Nov 2019
Video

Health Minute: How Entrepreneurs are Reducing Costs & Improving Outcomes

Article

Vungle Inc. Improves Monetization Using Big-Data Analytics

By: Bert De Reyck, Ioannis Fragkos, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Casey Lichtendahl, Hammond Guerin and Andrew Kritzer

The advent of big data has created opportunities for firms to customize their products and services to unprecedented levels of granularity. Using big data to personalize an offering in real time, however, remains a major challenge. In the mobile advertising industry,... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Monetization; Data and Data Sets; Advertising; Mobile Technology; Customization and Personalization; Performance Improvement

September 2009
Article

A Detailed Analysis of the Reduction Mammaplasty Learning Curve: A Statistical Process Model for Approaching Surgical Performance Improvement

By: Matthew Carty MD, Rodney Chan, Robert S. Huckman, Daniel C. Snow and Dennis Orgill

Background: The increased focus on quality and efficiency improvement within academic surgery has met with variable success among plastic surgeons. Traditional surgical performance metrics, such as morbidity and mortality, are insufficient to improve the... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Outcome or Result; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

10 AM – 11 AM EDT, 22 Oct 2015
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Collective Impact: An Innovative Approach to Improving Public Education

In this webinar, Professor Grossman will describe an innovative approach to improving public education Collective Impact and how you can get involved to help transform public education in the communities you care about. View Details

08 Mar 2017
News

Can the Proposed American Health Care Act Improve on 'Obamacare'?

18 Feb 2016
News

America's Steps Forward to Improving Health Care

2010
Journal Article

Competitiveness: Business Model Reconfiguration for Innovation and Internationalization

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on competitiveness by using the business model concept and to understand the need to adapt business models to changes in the environment. View Details

Keywords: Modeling Innovation; Business Improvement; Spain; Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Change; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Situation or Environment; Competition