Publications

Educators

May 2003 (Revised October 2003)
Case

BEA Systems, Inc.: Constant Reinvention to Cope with Market Waves

Developed in 1995 as a specialist software vendor, BEA Systems, Inc. had already transformed itself twice from a transaction processing product company to a server application provider. By July 2002, it had become the fastest company in history to reach $1 billion in... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Platforms; Business Growth and Maturation; Management Practices and Processes; Applications and Software; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Culture; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry

December 2012 (Revised November 2014)
Case

W.R. Grace & Co.: Dealing with Asbestos Torts

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott

A manufacturer of building products and specialty chemicals, W. R. Grace & Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001 in response to a flood of lawsuits alleging that its products contained asbestos, and had caused hundreds of thousands of people to contract... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy Reorganization; Business Failures; Environmental Regulations; Class Action Lawsuits; Natural Environment; Valuation; Health Disorders; Capital Structure; Restructuring; Lawsuits and Litigation; Chemicals; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Legal Liability; Construction Industry; Chemical Industry; United States

Educators

18 Mar 2021
News

Authentically Leading with Blind Ambition

In a recent virtual fireside chat, HBS Senior Fellow Bill George spoke with Chad E. Foster (PLDA 21, 2016), who learned that, though he lost his vision in his early 20s, blindness was a “gift” from which he developed the mental stamina... View Details

November 2023
Article

Effects of Remote Patient Monitoring Use on Care Outcomes Among Medicare Patients with Hypertension

By: Mitchell Tang, Carter Nakamoto, Ariel Dora Stern, Jose Zubizarreta, Felippe Marcondes, Lori Uscher-Pines, Lee Schwamm and Ateev Mehrotra

Background: Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a promising tool for improving chronic disease management. Use of RPM for hypertension monitoring is growing rapidly, raising concerns about increased spending. However, the effects of RPM are still... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Measurement and Metrics

Co-authored by Feng Zhu

Which source of information contains greater bias and slant-text written by an expert or that constructed via collective intelligence? Do the costs of acquiring, storing, displaying, and revising information shape those... View Details

April 1978 (Revised October 1994)
Case

Cumberland Metal Industries (A): Model Year 1978 Negotiations with Beta Motors

By: Benson P. Shapiro

Provides the background on Cumberland Metal Industries' entry into the automotive components market as a supplier of emission control equipment parts. Cumberland Metal must decide what bid to quote on Beta Motor's 1978 model year business. The company previously had a... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Bids and Bidding; Market Participation; Negotiation; Competitive Strategy; Manufacturing Industry

Educators

18 Jan 2013
News

The Psychology of Rooting for the Guy with the (Fake) Dead Girlfriend

01 Mar 2006
News

One-on-One with Dr. Margaret Chan

geographic spread,” she says, “the virus has extended to affect a wider range of animals than we’ve ever seen before. It’s infecting cats, for example, and has even caused the death of tigers. It has a high fatality rate in humans; we believe that more than half the... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Government; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

January 2024
Article

Investing with the Government: A Field Experiment in China

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Bo Li and Ernest Liu

We study the demand for government participation in China’s venture capital and private equity market. We conduct a large-scale, non-deceptive field experiment in collaboration with the leading industry service provider, through which we survey both capital investors... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Business and Government Relations; Entrepreneurship; China

August 2016
Supplement

Videojet (B)

By: Raffaella Sadun, Bharat Anand and Eric Van den Steen

In 2005 Craig Purse, the CEO of Videojet, a company recently acquired by the conglomerate Danaher, is dealing with the unexpected failure of a new high tech printer just launched in the market. The new product exemplified the first real instance in which the Videojet... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Processes; Conglomerates; Diversification; Relational Contracts; Corporate Strategy; Manufacturing Industry

04 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

rewarded by GE. In contrast, a supplier of circuit boards to Ford Motor Company was never able to overcome a preoccupation with the contract terms. The supplier's failure to manage effectively this aspect of... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk-assessment and lending decisions. We first show that, while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more... View Details

November 2015
Article

Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel

Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Value Appropriation; Relational Contracts; Clans; Intellectual Property

Read Now

2014
Working Paper

Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel

Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Value Appropriation; Relational Contracts; Clans; Rights; Complexity; Intellectual Property

SSRN

Read Now

11 Jul 2016
HBS Case

Neurodiversity: The Benefits of Recruiting Employees with Cognitive Disabilities

seen in an executive program at Harvard get a standing ovation,” Austin says, adding that some listeners were driven to tears. “It was quite an experience.” CIOs were excited by how the concept fits together, matching employers in need of... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Technology

28 Aug 2006
Research & Ideas

Online Match-Making with Virtual Dates

Literally millions of people have found dates through online match-making services, so who says the Internet is isolating? The problem for many users, however, is that initial matches are often imperfect—even frustrating—because the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Publishing

April 2015
Article

Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers

By: Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk assessment and lending decisions. We first show that while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Management Processes; Credit Products; Experimental Economics; Risk Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Financing and Loans; Banking Industry