Publications

2018
Book

Unlocked: Keys to Improve Your Thinking

By: Gerald Zaltman

What’s the best way to change your life? Change how you think, says marketing guru Gerald Zaltman. While most of us are accustomed to self-improvement via physical exercise or dieting, we often overlook our most powerful tool for effecting change: our own thoughts.... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Performance Improvement

November–December 2024
Article

Retire Without Regrets

By: Teresa M. Amabile, Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas T. "Tim" Hall and Kathy E. Kram

This article explores the significant transition of retirement and offers insights into creating a satisfying postcareer life. It highlights the contrasting experiences of Irene and Lawrence, two retirees who navigated this change differently. Irene embraced retirement... View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Satisfaction; Transition; Identity

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November 2012
Article

Empirical Observations on Longer-term Use of Incentives for Weight Loss

By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Behavioral economic-based interventions are emerging as powerful tools to help individuals accomplish their own goals, including weight loss. Deposit contract incentive systems give participants the opportunity to put their money down toward losing weight, which they... View Details

Keywords: Weight Loss; Obesity; Behavioral Economics; Intervention; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

September 2008
Case

Adobe Systems: Working Towards a "Suite" Release (A)

By: David A. Thomas and Lauren Barley

The case examines the tools a manager can use to keep her project on track and manage conflict and tension as Adobe prepares to launch Creative Suite 3, the biggest software release in the company's 25-year history. The protagonist, Yvonne Murray, is a group program... View Details

Keywords: Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Product Launch; Projects; Groups and Teams; Conflict Management; Power and Influence

January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

PortageBay and ESG Analytics

By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Radhika Kak

In 2023, sustainable investors faced several challenges. The first was the lack of access to standardized and vetted environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, and equally, the interpretation of this data into investment-useful insights. Reducing reliance on... View Details

Keywords: ESG Ratings; Investment Funds; Governance; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

2023
Working Paper

Insufficiently Justified Disparate Impact: A New Criterion for Subgroup Fairness

By: Neil Menghani, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

In this paper, we develop a new criterion, "insufficiently justified disparate impact" (IJDI), for assessing whether recommendations (binarized predictions) made by an algorithmic decision support tool are fair. Our novel, utility-based IJDI criterion evaluates false... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Prejudice and Bias

09 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Called Back to the Office? How You Benefit from Ideas You Didn't Know You Were Missing

cross-pollinate through committees, seminars, speeches, athletic events, or even chance meetings. Zoom, Slack, and social media facilitate some virtual information sharing, but it’s unclear to what degree. While it’s still early days in... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

17 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership

changing elements of our social interaction in unprecedented ways that may well lead to irrevocable social changes. Already, the follow-on effects of the virus are enough to ensure there will be no normal to... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

October 2021
Article

Changing Gambling Behavior through Experiential Learning

By: Shawn A. Cole, Martin Abel and Bilal Zia

This paper tests experiential learning as a debiasing tool to reduce gambling in South Africa, through a randomized field experiment. The study implements a simple, interactive game that simulates the odds of winning the national lottery through dice rolling.... View Details

Keywords: Debiasing; Experiential Learning; Behavioral Economics; Financial Education; Learning; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Behavior; Decision Making

17 Jan 2023
In Practice

8 Trends to Watch in 2023

As 2023 begins, businesses and employees face an uncertain economy and labor market, as the twin dilemmas of inflation and interest rates weigh on forecasts. Harvard Business School faculty share the top trends that they believe will shape the workplace and markets... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

2019
Article

Overcoming Cultural Resistance to Open Source Innovation

By: John Winsor, Jin Hyun Paik, Michael Tushman and Karim R. Lakhani

Purpose: This article offers insight on how to effectively help incumbent organizations prepare for global business shifts to open source and digital business models.
Design/methodology/approach: Discussion related to observation, experience and case studies... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Innovation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Model; Technological Innovation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

02 Apr 2024
What Do You Think?

What's Enough to Make Us Happy?

Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson, Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004) Your feedback to last month’s column Do People Want to Work Anymore? “Let’s turn that sleeve inside out.... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2022
Chapter

Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good

By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls employed the ‘veil of Ignorance’ as a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial thinking. By imagining the choices of decision-makers who are blind to biasing information, one might see more clearly the organizing... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making

September 17, 2021
Article

AI Can Help Address Inequity—If Companies Earn Users' Trust

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan, Param Singh and Nitin Mehta

While companies may spend a lot of time testing models before launch, many spend too little time considering how they will work in the wild. In particular, they fail to fully consider how rates of adoption can warp developers’ intent. For instance, Airbnb launched a... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Algorithmic Bias; Technological Innovation; Perception; Diversity; Equality and Inequality; Trust; AI and Machine Learning

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25 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 25

simulation tools and data as the U.S. policymakers use. Other case studies perform a sensitivity analysis (for instance, demonstrating that the increase in extra life year gains by relaxing certain fairness constraints can be as high as... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2011 (Revised April 2014)
Case

Uptake of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests

By: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Kindred and Richard Sedlmayr

This case describes barriers to adoption of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Zambia and highlights the importance of understanding end users in promoting product adoption. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are simple, easy-to-use tools that provide a relatively reliable,... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health Pandemics; Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Behavior; Prejudice and Bias; Health Industry; Zambia

Article

Policies to Influence Perceptions about COVID-19 Risk: The Case of Maps

By: Claudia Engel, Jonathan Rodden and Marco Tabellini

Choropleth disease maps have become an important tool for informing the public about the risks posed by COVID-19. In a survey conducted in the U.S. state of Georgia in June 2020, we randomly assigned respondents to view either of two maps. The first one reported... View Details

Keywords: Disease Surveillance; Health Pandemics; Risk and Uncertainty; Perception; Policy

July–August 2024
Article

Disclosing Downstream Emissions

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

An increasing number of companies are using the E-liability carbon-accounting method as an important tool for tracking progress toward reducing global emissions in their supply chains. The system does not require formal accounting for downstream emissions—those... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Environmental Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Disclosure; Environmental Sustainability