Publications

Find at Harvard

December 2012 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Greencore

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Patrick Coveney, CEO of Greencore, one of the top producers of private label prepared foods sold through UK grocery retailers, was assessing Greencore's growth options. Growth potential was limited in the UK, a mature market in which retailers were unlikely to grant... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United Kingdom; United States

Web

Faculty & Research

examines how Ingersoll Rand—a global leader in air, liquid, and gas handling technologies—approached broadening employee ownership. The company granted restricted stock units (RSUs) to all employees on their one-year anniversary,... View Details

Research Summary

Product-Market Competition and Managerial Autonomy

It is often argued that competition forces managers to make better choices, thus favoring managerial autonomy in decision making. I formalize and challenge this idea. Suppose that managers care about keeping their position or avoiding interference, and that they can... View Details

June 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Communities In Schools (Atlanta): Innovating a College Program

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Lynda M. Applegate and Alexis Lefort

Frank Brown, CIS of Atlanta's new Black CEO, was keen to extend CIS's well-honed case management in schools program to youth in college. Founded 50 years ago by Bill Milliken, CIS, a network of 110 affiliates, had built a strong program of assisting and supporting... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Education; Expansion; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Atlanta

August 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Teaching Note

To Prioritize Money or Time? The P-Mot Exercise (Instructor)

By: Ashley Whillans and Liz Goldenberg

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 921-012. Working professionals are often in the predicament of needing to make a choice between activities that will grant them more money or more time. Indeed, in large-scale representative panels of working adults, most respondents... View Details

Keywords: Time; Time As Money; Trade-offs; Money; Time Management; Decision Making

December 2010 (Revised March 2015)
Case

The Wright Brothers and Their Flying Machines

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright were fascinated by the mystery of flight and they built on the ideas of prominent earlier figures such as Octave Chanute (1832-1910) the French-born American who was influential in fostering the free exchange of ideas... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business History; Technological Innovation; Patents; Knowledge Sharing; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; Europe; United States

2025
Working Paper

Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Format Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early-Stage Ideas

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Simon Friis, Tianxi Cai, Michael Menietti, Griffin Weber and Eva C. Guinan

The evaluation of innovative early-stage projects is essential for allocating limited resources. We investigate how the evaluation format affects the identification of feasibility issues through a field experiment at a leading research university. Experts were... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Evaluation; Evaluation Criteria; Feasibility Assessment; Attention Allocation; Cognitive Mechanisms; Field Experiment; Research; Performance Evaluation; Innovation and Invention; Prejudice and Bias

Read Now

February 2018
Article

Patent Publication and the Market for Ideas

By: Deepak Hegde and Hong Luo

In this paper, we study the effect of invention disclosure through patent publication on the market for ideas. We do so by analyzing the effects of the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA)—which required U.S. patent applications to be published 18 months... View Details

Keywords: Licensing; Patent Publication; Invention Disclosure; Patents; Information Publishing; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Dissemination

2010
Working Paper

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Decision Making; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Management Systems; Financial Services Industry

20 Jan 2015
News

Corporate Conspiracy Charges for the Financial Crisis

Research Summary

Overview

I am interested in the individual experience of learning in organizational settings, particularly how employees learn to learn from the challenging work they do. I am currently researching the role of reflection for raising awareness of learning opportunities that... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Learning And Development; Learning Organizations; Intrinsic Motivation; Reflection; Goal Setting; Performance Measurement; Innovation; Job Design; Biotechnology Industry; Consulting Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

Web

HBS Working Knowledge – Harvard Business School Faculty Research

people do. Julian De Freitas and colleagues pit humans against machines in a video game to study AI's current limits and mine insights for the real world. Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted by Rachel... View Details

I Moved Your Cheese

Now a Wall Street Journal Best-seller! Over a decade ago, the best-selling business fable Who Moved My Cheese? offered its answer to the question: accept that change is inevitable and beyond your control, don't waste your time wondering why things are the... View Details

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

$15 Billion in Five Years: What Data Tells Us About MacKenzie Scott’s Philanthropy

giving, Scott’s approach suggested an impatience to give away her wealth, a belief in giving as a way to empower the good works of others, and an unusual willingness to cede control. “Scott has not finished her giving, but with more than $15 billion View Details

Keywords: by Matthew Lee, Brian Trelstad, and Ethan Tran

August 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Exercise

To Prioritize Money or Time? The P-Mot Exercise (Student)

By: Ashley Whillans and Liz Goldenberg

Working professionals are often in the predicament of needing to make a choice between activities that will grant them more money or more time. Indeed, in large-scale representative panels of working adults, most respondents report feeling pressed for both time and... View Details

Keywords: Time; Time-as Money; Money; Time Management; Decision Making

January 2016
Case

Savannah Informatics

By: Kevin Schulman

John Muthee and Justus Paul are recent graduates of medical school and a unique program in clinical informatics. They return to Nairobi, Kenya with a passion to make a difference in their community. They have a team they know well, but need to find a project concept... View Details

Keywords: Information Systems; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Kenya; Africa

March 2014 (Revised September 2014)
Supplement

Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (B)

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred

This case, a follow-up to Cancer Treatment Centers of America (A), HBS No. 313-012, begins with the debate over New Hampshire's certificate-of-need (CON) law, which restricts hospital expansion. This debate ignited significant public criticism of Cancer Treatment... View Details

Keywords: Cancer; Cancer Treatment; Accountability; Outcomes; Outcomes Reporting; Outcomes Measurement; Survival; For-profit Hospitals; Health Care; Healthcare; Hospital; Certificate Of Need; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Corporate Accountability; Policy; Health Industry; United States

November 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Artisan Entertainment Inc.

Geoff Rehnert and Marc Wolpow have left Bain Capital to launch Audax Group. As part of their separation, they have been granted 90-day options to purchase Bain Capital's stake in a number of portfolio companies at Fair Market Value. As they conside whether to exercise... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Private Equity; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds