Publications

Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,... View Details

January 2017
Teaching Note

The Park Hotels: Revitalizing an Iconic Indian Brand

By: Jill Avery and Chekitan S. Dev

Priya Paul, chairwoman of The Park Hotels, an award-winning portfolio of thirteen boutique hotels scattered across India, was in the midst of a brand revitalization program. Landor Associates, a leading brand consultancy, had identified three areas of concern: the... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Positioning; Brand Portfolio Strategy; Brand Architecture; Brand Repositioning; Target Market; Hospitality; Hotel Industry; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Service Delivery; Travel Industry; Service Industry; India; Asia

April 2009 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Dot.com: Online Pet Retailing

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

From 1995 to 1999, the U.S. experienced a period of tremendous growth in its information technology (IT) sector. The IT industry, although it accounted for less than 10% of the U.S. economy's total output, contributed disproportionately to economic growth. One market... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Price Bubble; Growth and Development Strategy; Failure; Competitive Strategy; Online Technology; Retail Industry

July 2022 (Revised February 2025)
Case

A Soul and a Service: North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance

By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko

The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (the Mutual) was founded in 1898 as a for-profit entity selling life insurance catering to the Black community. The Mutual was entering a field crowded with established White-owned competitors that largely refused to... View Details

Keywords: Black Entrepreneurs; Insurance; History; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Entrepreneurship; Decision Choices and Conditions; Growth and Development Strategy; Insurance Industry; United States

2024
Working Paper

Igniting Innovation: Evidence from PyTorch on Technology Control in Open Collaboration

By: Daniel Yue and Frank Nagle

Many companies offer free access to their technology to encourage outside addon innovation, hoping to later profit by raising prices or harnessing the power of the crowd while continuing to steer the direction of innovation. They can achieve this balance by opening... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Power and Influence; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Corporate Governance

August 2021
Article

Information Seeding and Knowledge Production in Online Communities: Evidence from OpenStreetMap

By: Abhishek Nagaraj

The wild success of a few online communities (like Wikipedia) has obscured the fact that most attempts at forming such communities fail. This study evaluates information seeding, an early-stage intervention to bootstrap online communities that enables contributors to... View Details

Keywords: Online Communities; Knowledge Production; Crowdsourcing; Innovation; Digitization; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Social and Collaborative Networks; Analytics and Data Science; Knowledge Dissemination

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March–April 2017
Article

Advancing Conservation by Understanding and Influencing Human Behavior

By: Sheila M. Reddy, Jensen Montambault, Yuta J. Masuda, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth Keenan, William Butler, Jonathan R. Fisher and Stanley T. Asah

Behavioral sciences can advance conservation by systematically identifying behavioral barriers to conservation and how to best overcome them. Behavioral sciences have informed policy in many other realms (e.g., health, savings), but they are a largely untapped resource... View Details

Keywords: Adaptive Management; Awareness; Behavioral Economics; Behavioral Science; Conservation Intervention; Conservation Planning; Decision-making; Incentives; Nudge; Management; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Marketing; Decision Making; Environmental Sustainability; Economics

February 2023
Case

Seemore Meats & Veggies

By: Lou Shipley, Patricia Favreau and Mel Martin

Cara Nicoletti was an emerging food entrepreneur that had recently launched her first product, a sustainably sourced, vegetable-infused meat sausage. Brooklyn, New York City-based Seemore Meats & Veggies had seen promising signs of success in local markets and pockets... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Food; Logistics; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

December 2014
Article

No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and B. Kelsey Jack

A substantial body of research investigates the effect of pay for performance in firms, yet less is known about the effect of non-financial rewards, especially in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Non-monetary Rewards; Intrinsic Motivation; Motivation and Incentives; Employees; Service Industry; Health Industry

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February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

OpenInvest

By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Impact Investing; Investment Portfolio; Customization and Personalization; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

16 Oct 2010
Working Paper Summaries

A Comparative-Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity

Keywords: by Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson & Jeremy C. Stein

2014
Other Unpublished Work

No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Public Services Delivery

By: Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Kelsey Jack

A substantial body of research investigates the effect of pay for performance in firms, yet less is known about the effect of non-financial rewards, especially in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Non-monetary Rewards; Intrinsic Motivation; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Motivation and Incentives

22 Jan 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, January 22, 2019

historic links with the motion picture industry and benefitting from the so-called “analog revival.” The case explores issues of cultural branding, focusing on how relevance can be built through connections to View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

04 Feb 2014
First Look

First Look: February 4

Publications August 2013 MIT Sloan Management Review The Art of Strategic Renewal By: Binns, Andy, J. Bruce Harreld, Charles A. O'Reilly, and Michael L. Tushman Abstract—In recent years, we have seen well-established companies such as... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthlorne

May 2025
Case

Windsurf and the AI Code Assistant Market

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Sudhanshu Nath Mishra and Radhika Kak

In April 2025, the founding team of Windsurf, an AI start-up specializing in code generation gathered in Mountain View, California, to assess its remarkable year of growth. The company had scaled from a niche GitHub Copilot alternative to a breakout player with over... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry; United States

14 Dec 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Regulating for Legitimacy: Consumer Credit Access in France and America

Keywords: by Gunnar Trumbull

January 2015 (Revised November 2016)
Case

La Martina: Leveraging Polo's Luxury Lifestyle

By: Anat Keinan, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Sandrine Crener

Founded in 1984 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, La Martina has grown from a high-end polo equipment company into a global fashion brand with operations in 56 countries. Polo, which is not only a sport but also a way of life, is at the core of the brand DNA. Polo is a... View Details