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- 2025
- Working Paper
Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships
between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant
challenges.... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Using Satellites and Phones to Evaluate and Promote Agricultural Technology Adoption: Evidence from Smallholder Farms in India
By: Shawn Cole, Grady Killeen, Tomoko Harigaya and Aparna Krishna
This paper evaluates a low-cost, customized soil nutrient management advisory service in India. As a methodological contribution, we examine whether and in which settings satellite measurements may be effective at estimating both agricultural yields and treatment... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Apax Partners: Deciding Whether to Bid for Trader Corp.
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer
Apax Partners’ investment committee was schedule to meet on March 21, 2011, to decide whether to invest in Trader Corporation, a Canadian classified advertising business for used automobiles with both print (magazines) and digital (website) distribution. What made this... View Details
Keywords: Value Creation; Network Effects; Private Equity; Growth Management; Digital Marketing; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; E-commerce; Valuation; Competition; Digital Platforms; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation; Transition; Advertising Industry; Auto Industry; Information Industry; Canada; United Kingdom; New York (state, US); New York (city, NY)
- 2025
- Book
Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
We all struggle with difficult conversations, but we're often not very good at easy ones either. Though we do it all the time, conversation is one of the most complex, demanding, and delicate of all human tasks, rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and... View Details
Keywords: Interpersonal Communication
- November–December 2024
- Article
How Robust Is Your Climate Governance?
By: Lynn S. Paine and Suraj Srinivasan
During the past few years, as evidence of climate change and its effects has mounted, many corporate boards have added climate governance to their agendas. But the maturity of boards’ climate-oversight processes and activities varies widely.
To better... View Details
To better... View Details
- 2024
- Article
State Capacity and Varieties of Climate Policy
By: Jonas Meckling and Ari Benkler
Countries vary in the adoption of sticks and carrots in climate policy. Differences in institutional capacity and fiscal space shape national policies. This matters for the effectiveness of national mitigation efforts and the extent of international conflict over... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Moonfare and the Democratization of Private Equity
By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu
Founded in 2016, Moonfare headquartered in Europe, was a pioneer in the “democratization” of private equity investments. Historically, private equity was accessible only to institutional investors like pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and large family... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Generative AI and the Nature of Work
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate considerable potential to
complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity
effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details
- Fall 2024
- Article
The Case for Climate Alliances
Business leaders are under pressure to address the climate crisis, but they can’t do so alone. Climate alliances can help leaders and firms be more ambitious, responsible, and effective in driving the systems change necessary to save the planet. View Details
- September 2024
- Exercise
Finding Your 'Jagged Frontier': A Generative AI Exercise
By: Mitchell Weiss
In 2023 a set of scholars set out to study the effect of artificial intelligence (AI) on the quality and productivity of knowledge workers—in this specific instance, management consultants. They wanted to know across a range of tasks in a workflow, which, if any, would... View Details
- September 2024
- Technical Note
How to Pay Family Employees in a Family Business
By: Christina R. Wing, Maryann G Bell and Kara A Perusse
Family businesses play a pivotal role in global economies, contributing significantly to employment and wealth creation. However, managing compensation for family members within these enterprises can be complex. Family employees frequently intertwine their roles as... View Details
- September 2024
- Article
Sales Coaching and Value Creation
Despite the prevalence of “coachability” in firms’ stated hiring criteria, managers over-estimate the amount of time they actually devote to coaching their people. For example, research indicates that only 15% of sales managers even spend as much as 25% of their time... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Determinants of Top-Down Sabotage
By: Hashim Zaman and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate the conditions that motivate managers to impede the growth of talented subordinates due to fears of future competition for their own positions. Our research expands on existing tournament and contest theory literature that considers peer-to-peer sabotage... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Wade Test: Generative AI and CEO Communication
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Bart S. Vanneste and Amirhossein Zohrehvand
Can generative artificial intelligence (AI) transform the role of the CEO by effectively automating CEO
communication? This study investigates whether AI can mimic a human CEO and whether employees’
perception of the communication’s source matter. In a field... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
Scaling Seven Starling
By: Ryan W. Buell and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Seven Starling, a maternal mental health startup, is scaling its digital clinic model. Seven Starling addresses perinatal mental health challenges by providing licensed therapists, peer support, and medication to mothers across five states, with a hybrid care model... View Details
- July 24, 2024
- Article
Research: How Passion Can Backfire at Work
By: Erica R. Bailey, Kai Krautter, Wen Wu, Adam D. Galinsky and Jon M. Jachimowicz
Passion has long been championed as a key to workplace success. However, scientific studies have found mixed results: On the one hand, some studies find evidence that passionate employees tend to perform better, while other research has documented null or even negative... View Details
- July–September 2024
- Article
Psychological Ownership for Overcoming Departmental Barriers to Innovation: A Study of Innovation Handoffs
By: Alf Steinar Sætre, Amy C. Edmondson, Oda Dregelid and Sofie Rud Zimmer
Effective collaboration across departments in an organization is critical to innovation success. Our purpose was to investigate factors contributing to successful innovation involving multiple organizational departments. We employed a multiple-case design with three... View Details
- May 2024
- Case
Naked Wines: The Profit vs. Growth Decision
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer
Nick Devlin faced a difficult strategic decision in October 2022. As the CEO of a UK-based subscription business connecting wine drinkers in the US, UK, and Australia with winemakers from around the world (which one journalist called the “Netflix of Wine”), he had to... View Details
Keywords: Profit Vs. Growth; Platform Business; Economies Of Scale; Subscription Business; Wine; Scaling; Racing; Value Creation; Network Effects; Business Startups; Small Business; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Growth Management; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Profit; E-commerce; Growth and Development Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Australia; United Kingdom
- May 2024
- Teaching Note
Vineyard Wind Starts Spinning (A): Overcoming Onshore Challenges to Offshore Wind
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 324-113. To activate the first wind turbines in the ocean off Martha’s Vineyard eventually supplying clean energy to 400,000 households, Vineyard Wind’s leaders had to navigate the permitting process, numerous delays, and objections from... View Details
- May 20, 2024
- Article
Porter’s Five Forces and Competitive Advantage in Web3
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Liang Wu
Competitive strategy — the art of crafting and executing plans to achieve an advantageous position in the market — is integral to any business, and especially relevant for platforms because it determines their ability to achieve network effects and scale. But web3... View Details