Output - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Mar 2023
HBS Case

ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

AI system contain bias, she contended, the outputs will contain the same bias, a problem that multiplies as the size of the dataset grows. In 2020, Gebru and Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, led the... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Technology

November 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Infarm: Betting the (Indoor) Farm on Food Security

By: Elie Ofek

In the summer of 2023, the co-founders of Infarm, a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company, were contemplating a major pivot going forward. While Infarm had successfully shown it could grow over 75 products—mainly herbs, leafy greens and mushrooms—in modular... View Details

Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Business Model; Market Entry and Exit; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Transition; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; North America; Toronto; Northeastern United States

Citation

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01 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Good Leadership Is an Act of Kindness

in fear of losing their jobs. In times of crisis, bosses must alter their expectations. As Bryce Covert wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "Keeping output steady while maintaining our physical and mental health just cannot be done. We have... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson

16 Jan 2013
Research & Ideas

The Messy Link Between Slave Owners and Modern Management

determine how far they could push their workers to get the most profit. Using the account books, slave owners could see how many pounds of cotton each slave picked and compare it to their output from previous years—and then create minimum... View Details

Keywords: by Katie Johnston

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

macroeconomics: output, money, and expectations. Can you talk generally why these are important to understand? A: When you think about these three things, output should be in big letters, and the other ones in smaller letters. View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

November 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Technical Note

Rechargeable Batteries, 2017: Gigafactory Wars in the Offing?

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2017, the global market for rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries was 126 gigawatt-hours (GWh) valued at $37 billion, growing by $10 billion in two years. Once confined largely to consumer electronics and appliances, the rapid increase in demand was spurred by... View Details

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05 Jun 2023
What Do You Think?

Is the Anxious Achiever a Post-Pandemic Relic?

infrastructure (support systems).” They have accounted for a substantial portion of the output and productivity of the world’s most developed economies. Now the anxious achievers occupying many leadership positions are confronted with a... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Dec 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is Quality of Labor? And How Is It Achieved?

is to assume that quality of labor is genetic ." Flavius Chircu said, "I would simplify the analysis by substituting 'quality of labor' with 'quality of output,' be that output a product, service, or mix thereof." In Sneh... View Details

Keywords: by by Jim Heskett

Research Summary

Social Innovation

My intellectual agenda addresses this question: How to innovate to solve the world’s toughest challenges? Out of the earth’s population, about 2 billion can afford good products whereas the remaining 5 billion are poor and therefore are nonconsumers.... View Details

08 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Representation Matters: Building Case Studies That Empower Women Leaders

classroom. Understanding the elusive female protagonist Knowing this, we wanted to look at the HBS case output and curricula through a gender lens. We first took a deep dive into the cases published between 2008 and 2015 and found that 20... View Details

Keywords: by Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg

21 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

Are You Sabotaging Your Own Company?

it says, people can cause time-sucking distractions that stall an organization’s output by doing physical damage to equipment, buildings, and methods of transportation using everyday items found in a home or workplace. This involves petty... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

01 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

A Penny for Your Thoughts? For Big-Picture Ideas, the Right Pay Structure Matters

employees to propose new ideas when it came to “narrow-scope innovations” having to do with their particular task, the authors find. For example, a machine operator might suggest ways to limit mechanical breakdowns that are lowering View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

Benchmarking certainly has its virtues. Comparing production time or the cost of a standard process to that of peer companies can yield important insights about your own efficiencies—and ultimately, competitiveness. But benchmarking also has its limits. When you ignore... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

04 Mar 2019
What Do You Think?

What’s the Antidote to Surveillance Capitalism?

implement safeguards against uses of their output intended to degrade privacy, the reliability of information, independent thought, and user behaviors. Shareholders would step forward to demand changes in the way information is deployed... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Advertising; Consumer Products

03 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Transforming Manufacturing Waste into Profit

It's been said that "one man's trash is another man's treasure." HBS Assistant Professor Deishin Lee, however, has taken that old adage a step further in her recent working paper Turning Waste into By-Product by showing how it's possible for companies to turn... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

25 Mar 2019
Research & Ideas

The Secret Life of Supply Chains

versus to consumer households. They grouped industries into supply chain versus business-to-consumer (B2C), to find the percentage of outputs in each of these areas. “We find that the supply chain economy is a distinct and large segment... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing; Service

30 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

How Technology Adoption Affects Global Economies

the date when cell phone technology first entered a country. But the intensive margin would measure the number of cell phones in a country relative to that country's population. When applicable, the intensive margin also takes into account the amount of View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

07 Jan 2002
Research & Ideas

How Marketing Can Reduce Worldwide Poverty

farmer. They already decided that what's good for the farmer is these kinds of implements, these kinds of equipment, this kind of loan. In fact, the farmer may say, "Given everything else, that's not exactly the kind of output that... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

14 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

and the length of their involvement in the same communities." A Matter Of Resources So, if an organization has a focused, or linear, theory of change and a tightly focused operational strategy, measuring results is much easier. But these are likely to be short-term... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

07 Jul 2003
What Do You Think?

Can We Have Too Much Productivity Improvement?

had risen to the highest rate in nine years. Economists assure us that productivity (the ratio of product and service outputs to labor and capital inputs) improvements are good for all of us, whether we are employed (and thus factored... View Details