Publications

Purchase

2020
Working Paper

Strategic Foresight as Dynamic Capability: A New Lens on Knightian Uncertainty

By: J. Peter Scoblic

This paper proposes to treat strategic foresight as a dynamic capability, providing a new theoretical lens on managerial judgment. Formulating strategy under uncertainty is a central challenge facing the modern firm. Analogy is thought to help managers make sense of... View Details

Keywords: Foresight; Dynamic Capabilities; Managerial Judgment; Risk and Uncertainty; Management; Strategy

17 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Rating Fund Managers by the Company They Keep

from the Working Paper.Ann Cullen: How is your system different than traditional mutual fund rating systems? Cohen: Our method takes advantage of a wealth of previously unexploited information about fund holdings. Standard metrics rate... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

20 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting the Marketing Mix Right

what is called the Invariant Proportion of Substitution (IPS) property, which implies that the proportion of demand generated by taking business away from a competitor is the same, no matter which marketing activity is used. "These... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

October 2018
Article

The Operational Value of Social Media Information

By: Ruomeng Cui, Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang

While the value of using social media information has been established in multiple business contexts, the field of operations and supply chain management have not yet explored the possibilities it offers in improving firms' operational decisions. This study attempts to... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Information; Sales; Forecasting and Prediction; Social Media

Purchase

16 Apr 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Chris Christensen: Legend of the Classroom

believed wholeheartedly in "the teachability of teaching" and that "a good class discussion can be developed, rather than merely left to the randomness of chance or genetics." He described the essential challenge of the case View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Education

05 Jun 2009
What Do You Think?

What Does Slower Economic Growth Really Mean?

Summing Up If not useful growth, what are we measuring? And why? This column does not thrive on general agreement. And this past month discussants came close to general agreement on the proposition that... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

June–July 2019
Article

A Methodology for Operationalizing Enterprise IT Architecture and Evaluating Its Modifiability

By: Robert Lagerström, Alan MacCormack, David Dreyfus and Carliss Y. Baldwin

Recent contributions to information systems theory suggest that the primary role of a firm’s information technology (IT) architecture is to facilitate, and therefore ensure the continued alignment of a firm’s IT investments with a constantly changing business... View Details

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture; Modularity; Information Systems; Modifiability; Design Structure Matrix

13 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

5 Weight Loss Tips From Behavioral Economists

Weight Loss: A Randomized, Controlled Trial," published in the June 2011 edition of Journal of General Internal Medicine. TIP #3- Fill your backpack with rocks. A research team from Harvard and the University of Central Florida tested the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

30 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Return on Political Investment in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004

Keywords: by Hui Chen, Katherine Gunny & Karthik Ramanna

20 Dec 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Zooming In: A Practical Manual for Identifying Geographic Clusters

Keywords: by Juan Alcácer & Minyuan Zhao

23 Sep 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Applying Random Coefficient Models to Strategy Research: Testing for Firm Heterogeneity, Predicting Firm-Specific Coefficients, and Estimating Strategy Trade-Offs

Keywords: by Juan Alcácer, Wilbur Chung, Ashton Hawk & Gonçalo Pacheco-de-Almeida

Other Article

What Do We Know About Variance in Accounting Profitability?

By: Anita M. McGahan and Michael E. Porter

In this paper, we analyze the variance of accounting profitability among a broad cross-section of firms in the American economy from 1981 to 1994. The purpose of the analysis is to identify the importance of year, industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; United States

November 2011
Article

Ownership Structure and Financial Constraints: Evidence from a Structural Estimation

By: Chen Lin, Yue Ma and Yuhai Xuan

This article examines the impact of the divergence between corporate insiders' control rights and cash-flow rights on firms' external finance constraints via generalized method of moments estimation of an investment Euler equation. Using a large sample of U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Ownership; Social Enterprise; Reputation; Cash Flow; Annuities; Investment; Investment Funds; Financial Reporting; Accounting Audits; Financial Services Industry; United States

29 Jul 2021
Blog Post

Exploring the Intersection of Business & Health Care: Summer Fellow Derek Soled (MD/MBA 2022)

The HBS Summer Fellows Program enables students to apply their classroom training as they explore career opportunities in roles or regions where compensation is generally lower than the traditional MBA level. This summer, we are... View Details

15 Aug 2005
HBS Case

Classic Cases Live On at HBS

was still a low-cost producer. HBS professor emeritus Norm Berg, who developed the case along with research assistant Norman Fast (HBS DBA '77), was at the time course head of Business Policy, the School's required general management... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

2022
Working Paper

TalkToModel: Explaining Machine Learning Models with Interactive Natural Language Conversations

By: Dylan Slack, Satyapriya Krishna, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Sameer Singh

Practitioners increasingly use machine learning (ML) models, yet they have become more complex and harder to understand. To address this issue, researchers have proposed techniques to explain model predictions. However, practitioners struggle to use explainability... View Details

Keywords: Natural Language Conversations; Predictive Models; AI and Machine Learning