Publications

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December 2014
Article

The Discipline of Business Experimentation

By: Stefan Thomke and Jim Manzi

The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As a... View Details

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December 2009 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Woolf Farming and Processing

By: David E. Bell, Laura Winig and Mary Louise Shelman

Woolf Farming Company, a privately owned family farming business in California's Central Valley, found its business threatened by a lack of water, brought on by a combination of drought, poor quality well water and unavailability of surface water due to federally... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Resource Allocation; Quality; Business and Government Relations; Decision Choices and Conditions; Infrastructure; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Climate Change; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; California

August 2006
Case

Dreyer's Slow Churned(TM) Ice Cream

By: Noel H. Watson, Steven C. Wheelwright and Brian DeLacey

Examines capacity forecasting and planning in a complex new product introduction scenario. The introduction at Dreyer's, a large dairy snack manufacturer, involves not only a new product but a new manufacturing process and product package, thus implying a significant... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Forecasting and Prediction; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Product Development; Planning; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

Program

Agribusiness Seminar

constraints Leverage data and technology to improve decision making, operating efficiency, and responsiveness to customers Defend against commodification and drive profitability through product and marketing innovation Design robust, View Details

Keywords: Agriculture; Agriculture

The Discipline of Business Experimentation

The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As... View Details

2022
Working Paper

Post-market Surveillance of Software Medical Devices: Evidence from Regulatory Data

By: Alexander O. Everhart and Ariel D. Stern

Medical devices increasingly include software components, which facilitate remote patient monitoring. The introduction of software into previously analog medical devices as well as innovation in software-driven devices may introduce new safety concerns—all the more so... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Safety; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

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15 Apr 2024
Book

Struggling With a Big Management Decision? Start by Asking What Really Matters

doesn’t resemble a simple compass that reliably points to magnetic north. It doesn’t show you what is right. Its crucial role is helping you decide what is right. Your true moral compass is your way of making sense of the world. It is... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2010
Working Paper

Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)

By: Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen and Kari Granger

This presentation is based on our research program over the last seven years in which our objective has been to rigorously distinguish leader and leadership and to create a technology for providing access to being a leader and exercising leadership effectively (in... View Details

Keywords: Curriculum and Courses; Innovation and Invention; Leadership Development; Goals and Objectives; Research and Development; Attitudes; Perception; Technology; United States

SSRN

18 Aug 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Role of Organizational Scope and Governance in Strengthening Private Monitoring

Keywords: by Lamar Pierce & Michael W. Toffel

March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into... View Details

Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Cross-border Frictions; Remittances; Business Startups; Diasporas; Financial Crisis; Money; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Poverty; Financial Institutions; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Lebanon

2015
Working Paper

Service Quality, Inventory and Competition: An Empirical Analysis of Mobile Money Agents in Africa

By: Karthik Balasubramanian and David F. Drake

The use of electronic money transfer through cellular networks ("mobile money") is rapidly increasing in the developing world. The resulting electronic currency ecosystem could improve the lives of the estimated 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day by... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Base Of The Pyramid; Mobile Money; Inventory Management; Competition; Currency; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology

SSRN

Regular handwashing with soap is believed to have substantial impacts on child health in the developing world. Most handwashing campaigns have failed, however, to establish and maintain a regular practice of handwashing. Motivated by scholarship that suggests... View Details

Web

Student Performance - Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning

reliability of the overall performance evaluation. From a student perspective, the participant-centered nature of the case method generates greater expectations and opportunities for feedback as compared to lecture-based pedagogies. As... View Details

2013
Working Paper

The Impact of Conformance and Experiential Quality on Healthcare Cost and Clinical Performance

By: Claire Senot, Aravind Chandrasekaran, Peter T. Ward and Anita L. Tucker

The quality of operational processes is an important driver of performance in hospitals. In particular, processes that reliably deliver both evidence-based and patient-centered care, which we call conformance and experiential quality, respectively, have been argued to... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Experiential Quality; Conformance Quality; Clinical Outcomes; Cost Efficiency; Quality; Service Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Performance; Outcome or Result; Health Industry

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March 2008 (Revised February 2009)
Case

Transparent Value LLC

By: Sharon P. Katz, Krishna G. Palepu and Aldo Sesia, Jr.

Leading index company Dow Jones recently signed a license and joint marketing agreement with Transparent Value LLC, the creator of a new fundamentals-based valuation methodology. The agreement allowed Dow Jones to offer a family of indexes based on the Transparent... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Stocks; Price; Performance Expectations; Mathematical Methods; Valuation

July 2000 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Madison Avenue: Digital Media Services (A)

Introduces a "new-economy" company, Madison Avenue, facing challenges of mega-success. In the two years since its founding, the company's revenues have grown from zero to nearly $30 million, head count has swollen from the start-up handful to more than 200, and the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Online Advertising; Advertising Industry

18 May 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Embracing Paradox

Keywords: Re: Michael L. Tushman

2015
Book

Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy

By: Karthik Ramanna

There are certain institutions underlying our modern market-capitalist system that are largely outside the interest and understanding of the general public—e.g., rulemaking for bank capital adequacy, actuarial standards, accounting standards, and auditing practice. In... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Financial Institutions; Financial Reporting; GAAP; IFRS; Lobbying; Capitalism; Sustainability; Accounting; Finance; Business and Government Relations; Leadership; Accounting Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States; China; India

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December 2006 (Revised October 2016)
Case

eClinicalWorks: The Paths to Growth

By: Robert F. Higgins and Mark Rennella

In January 2006, eClinicalWorks (eCW) had an acquisition opportunity that could fundamentally change the way they had done business since the inception of the company in 1999. eClinicalWorks was a privately run business in the healthcare information technology field... View Details

Keywords: Young Companies; Strategic Revelation; Strategy And Execution; Strategy Development; Strategy And Leadership; Financing Strategy; Financing Risk; Financing; Expansion; Business Growth and Maturation; Organizational Culture; Financing and Loans; Customer Focus and Relationships; Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Health Industry; Massachusetts