Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,411)
- Faculty Publications (689)
- April 2020
- Article
Technological Leadership (de)Concentration: Causes in Information and Communication Technology Equipment
By: Yasin Ozcan and Shane Greenstein
Using patent data from 1976 to 2010 as indicators of inventive activity, we determine the concentration level of where inventive ideas originate and then examine how and why those concentrations change over time. The analysis finds pervasive deconcentration in every... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Girls Who Code
By: Brian Trelstad, Amy Klopfenstein and Olivia Hull
In 2012, Reshma Saujani founded Girls Who Code (GWC) with the mission of closing the technology (tech) industry’s gender gap. While GWC offered coding education programs to middle- and high-school-aged girls, the organization also sought to alter cultural stereotypes... View Details
- March 18, 2020
- Article
How Honest Conversations Can Accelerate Corporate Transformation
By: Michael Beer
When CEOs engage a cross section of their key people in an honest conversation about organizational strengths and barriers to the execution of strategic changes required by the changing competitive landscape, transformations are accelerated. The honest conversation... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Hannah Riley-Bowles and Michael Norris
In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, faced the decision of the best path forward to grow her small company. Should she build more and better... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Thinx, Inc.—Breaking Barriers in Feminine Care
By: Rembrand Koning, Elie Ofek and Nicole Keller
An examination of the strategic marketing challenges facing Thinx as it tries to grow in the face of menstruation taboos and competition from large incumbents. View Details
- March 2020
- Article
Do Managers Matter? A Natural Experiment from 42 R&D Labs in India
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Christos A. Makridis
We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the staggered entry of new managers into India’s 42 public R&D labs between 1994 and 2006 to study how alignment between the CEO and middle-level managers affect research productivity. We show that the introduction of new lab... View Details
- Article
Innovation Contests for High-Tech Procurement
By: Jin Hyun Paik, Martin Scholl, Rinat A. Sergeev, Steven Randazzo and Karim R. Lakhani
Innovation managers rarely use crowdsourcing as an innovative instrument despite extensive academic and theoretical research. The lack of tools available to compare and measure crowdsourcing, specifically contests, against traditional methods of procuring goods and... View Details
- Working Paper
Rebates in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Evidence from Medicines Sold in Retail Pharmacies in the U.S.
By: Pragya Kakani, Michael Chernew and Amitabh Chandra
Rising list prices are often used to illustrate the burden of prescription drug spending, but payers routinely negotiate rebates from manufacturers that generate differences between list and net prices. List prices are easily available and affect patient cost-sharing,... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Supplement
MoviePass: The 'Get Big Fast' Strategy
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams form related businesses... View Details
Keywords: Market Entry; Growth Strategy; Profit Vs. Growth; Subscription Business; Cash Burn; Data Analytics; Get-big-fast; Buyer Power; Strategy Implementation; Movie Industry; Racing; Business Strategy; Value Creation; Consolidation; Cash Flow; Growth Management; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Mobile Technology; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Advertising Industry; Information Industry; United States
- 2020
- Article
Fast Exact Matrix Completion: A Unified Optimization Framework for Matrix Completion
By: Dimitris Bertsimas and Michael Lingzhi Li
We formulate the problem of matrix completion with and without side information as a non-convex optimization problem. We design fastImpute based on non-convex gradient descent and show it converges to a global minimum that is guaranteed to recover closely the... View Details
Keywords: Mathematical Methods
- December 2019
- Case
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Shaping the Vaccine Manufacturing Ecosystem (Abridged)
By: Willy Shih
This case describes the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to lower the cost of producing vaccines to prevent polio infections. It is an abridged version of HBS Case No. 620-021 with less emphasis on comparison between traditional and the new compact... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
The Genesis Lab at Novartis
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Ranjay Gulati, Patrick J. Healy and Kerry Herman
Novartis' Genesis Labs program, launched in 2016 as part of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), hosted pitch competitions where teams of NIBR scientists proposed ideas to explore that aimed to revolutionize drug discovery. The goal was to break down... View Details
- Article
How to Use Heuristics for Differential Privacy
By: Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zhiwei Steven Wu
We develop theory for using heuristics to solve computationally hard problems in differential privacy. Heuristic approaches have enjoyed tremendous success in machine learning, for which performance can be empirically evaluated. However, privacy guarantees cannot be... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
From Coast to Hinterland: Fiscal State Formation in British and French West Africa, c. 1880–1960
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
This chapter contrasts and compares the ways different colonial states in West Africa developed local fiscal capacity. We show that per capita revenues were higher in the more commercialised coastal export economies than in remote parts of the interior. We argue that... View Details
Keywords: Fiscal Capacity; Public Debt; French West Africa; British West Africa; Geography; History; Africa
- 2019
- Working Paper
The Impact of the General Data Protection Regulation on Internet Interconnection
By: Ran Zhuo, Bradley Huffaker, KC Claffy and Shane Greenstein
The Internet comprises thousands of independently operated networks, where bilaterally negotiated interconnection agreements determine the flow of data between networks. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict restrictions on... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Feeling Machines: Emotion AI at Affectiva
By: Shane Greenstein and John Masko
In 2016, Affectiva—a Boston-based emotion AI software company with a long track record of building emotion-sensing software for market research—had attempted to expand into new verticals by releasing a mobile software development kit (SDK) that downloaders could adapt... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Agility Africa
By: Juan Alcacer, Caroline M. Elkins and Esel Çekin
This case illustrates the challenge and opportunities that firms face when developing and executing new business models in high-risk, low-infrastructure, low-trust countries. It features a global logistics group, Agility, that aimed to become the leader in supplying... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised July 2025)
- Case
Keroche (A): Fighting for Share in the Kenyan Alcoholic Drinks Market
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding
This case discusses the challenges faced by Kenyan alcoholic drinks producer Keroche Industries Limited in 2003, when the Kenyan government accused the company of manufacturing and selling substandard alcoholic drinks, revoked its liquor licenses, and shut down its... View Details
Keywords: Keroche; Alcohol; Wine; Manufacturing; Informal Market; Regulation; Illicit; Illegal; Shutdown; Factory; Low-income Consumers; Multinational; Local; Government; Allegations; Accusations; Negative Press; EABL; Tusker; Beer; SAB; Chang'aa; Naivasha; Rift Valley; East Africa; Lawsuit; Legal Battle; Business Ventures; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Production; Safety; Quality; Distribution; Small Business; Family Business; Crime and Corruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Income; Demographics; Geographic Scope; Geographic Location; Goods and Commodities; Government Legislation; Growth and Development; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Lawfulness; Goals and Objectives; Consumer Behavior; Market Entry and Exit; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Competition; Entrepreneurship; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Kenya; Nairobi; Africa
- September 2019
- Supplement
Keroche (B): Considering Entry into the Kenyan Beer Market
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding
This case discusses the situation of the Kenyan alcoholic drinks producer Keroche in July 2004, when co-founder Tabitha Karanja was debating whether to enter the Kenyan beer market. Doing so would mean direct competition with the multinational EABL in an industry and... View Details
Keywords: Keroche; Alcohol; Alcoholic Drinks; Alcoholic Beverages; Beverages; Drinks; Wine Industry; Wine; Fortified Wine; Viena; Beer; Beer Market; Manufacturing; Production Capacity; Capacity; Growth; Regulated; Unregulated; Informal; Informal Market; Regulation; Illicit; Illegal; Substandard; Dangerous; Shutdown; Factory; Safe; Affordable; Low-income Consumers; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Production; Investment; Safety; Quality; Small Business; Family Business; Crime and Corruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Income; Demographics; Geographic Scope; Geographic Location; Goods and Commodities; Government Legislation; Growth and Development; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Lawfulness; Goals and Objectives; Consumer Behavior; Market Entry and Exit; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Competition; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Kenya; Nairobi; Africa
- September 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Supplement
Keroche (C): The Excise Tax Increase
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding
This case discusses the Kenyan government’s decision to increase excise taxes on wines in 2007. The tax increase would cause an average increase in price of 367% on Keroche’s fortified wines. Meanwhile, Keroche’s competitor EABL had effectively lobbied the government... View Details
Keywords: Keroche; Alcohol; Alcoholic Drinks; Alcoholic Beverages; Beverages; Drinks; Wine Industry; Wine; Fortified Wine; Business Ventures; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Small Business; Family Business; Crime and Corruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Income; Demographics; Geographic Scope; Geographic Location; Goods and Commodities; Government Legislation; Growth and Development; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Lawfulness; Goals and Objectives; Consumer Behavior; Market Entry and Exit; Problems and Challenges; Safety; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Competition; Entrepreneurship; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Kenya; Nairobi; Africa