Publications

September 2000 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Freeport Studio

By: Rajiv Lal and James Weber

Describes the start-up and first-year difficulties of Freeport Studio, a unit of L.L. Bean, founded in 1998 to sell women's clothing by catalog. First-year sales were far below plan, and projected profits did not materialize. Fran Philip must identify the problems and... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Creativity

11 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans

Talk of the recent financial crisis often falls into a simplistic narrative of villainous banks, marketing toxic financial products to innocent customers who did not understand their risks. Among the storied victims are municipal... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

November 2005
Article

A Behavioral Window on the Mind of the Market: An Application of the Response Time Paradigm

By: Fred W. Mast and Gerald Zaltman

Keywords: Behavior; Markets; Standards

Find at Harvard

16 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

The Unfulfilled Promise of Educational Technology

faces considerable challenges. Technology firms must figure out how to turn a profit on edtech applications—whether that means dealing directly with school districts, which can be bureaucratic and cumbersome, or marketing directly to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Education

27 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

The Coffee Economy That Bloomed Out of Nowhere

another 30 years," says Lurtz, the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow at Harvard Business School. "How do you build these institutions that you need for market agriculture in a place where maybe there are laws on the books, but there's not much... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Agriculture & Agribusiness

2022
Working Paper

Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate

By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea

The influence of behavioral biases on aggregate outcomes like prices and allocations depends in part on self-selection: whether rational people opt more strongly into aggregate interactions than biased individuals. We conduct a series of betting market, auction and... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Cognition and Thinking; Markets; Price

Find at Harvard

22 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 22

products for different business contexts requires that a firm deploy different new-product development processes. Products designed for stable and mature end-user markets require a process optimized for control and efficiency. In... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2015 (Revised July 2019)
Case

CVS Health: Promoting Drug Adherence

By: Leslie John, John Quelch and Robert Huckman

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

The case describes a program that CVS Health recently implemented to improve medication adherence, an important problem from a societal, public policy, and firm... View Details

August 2007 (Revised July 2008)
Background Note

Take Advantage of Your Diaspora Network

By: William R. Kerr and Daniel J. Isenberg

Diaspora networks (DNs) are an important resource for global entrepreneurs. Discusses several features of DNs, combining both academic and practitioner perspectives. Describes the history and prevalence of DNs in many ethnicities, documents the broad resources DNs can... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Diasporas; Entrepreneurship; Globalized Markets and Industries; Social and Collaborative Networks

29 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 29

Transfers usefully move resources from lowest- to highest-valuation networks, but transfers tend to cause socially costly growth in the Internet's routing table. We propose a market rule that avoids... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Feb 2001
What Do You Think?

Do MBA Programs Face “The Innovator’s Dilemma”?

not directly competitive. They offer different products that provide different results for different markets. Alan Carswell points out that online programs are ideal for adult learners with "less need for the social role of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2010
Working Paper

Quality Provision, Expected Firm Altruism and Brand Extensions

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper studies quality choice in a model where consumers expect firms to act altruistically. It is shown that, under plausible assumptions regarding this altruism and the reaction of consumers to firms that demonstrate insufficient altruism, existing firms (or... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Product Development; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Quality; Mathematical Methods

Read Now

18 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 18

characteristics of the waste-to-energy operation, the market characteristics for waste disposal and energy, and the mechanisms regulators use to encourage production of renewable energy, we determine the profit-maximizing operating... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: December 21

older children remains essentially unchanged. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous demonstration that one need not succumb to temptation in order for it to detrimentally impact one's economic productivity. The Dynamics of Social... View Details

18 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, July 18, 2017

innovation, and peer production—relate to theories of the firm, with particular attention on “sociality” in firms and markets. We first briefly review extant theories of the firm and then discuss three theoretical aspects of sociality... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Jun 2013
Research & Ideas

Is Your iPhone Turning You Into a Wimp?

an average of 58 minutes per day on their smartphones, according to a recent report from Experian Marketing Services. Talking accounts for only 26 percent of that time. The other 73 percent is devoted to texting, e-mail, View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Consumer Products

09 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Warring Algorithms Could Be Driving Up Consumer Prices

The widespread use of pricing algorithms is reshaping the nature of competition in online markets and potentially driving up the prices of retail goods, according to recent research. These automated, price-adjusting software programs may... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Height Taken but Worth Unknown: Valuation as an Institutional Process

By: R. Daniel Wadhwani and Mukti Khaire

Drawing on research from organizational studies, sociology, history, and anthropology, we develop a framework for understanding valuation as an institutional process in markets. We posit that three institutional elements—categories, criteria, and standards—are integral... View Details

Keywords: Interactive Communication; Markets; Standards; Situation or Environment; Perception; Valuation