Publications

January 2007 (Revised December 2007)
Case

PSI: Social Marketing Clean Water

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Nava Ashraf and Marie Bell

Senior management at PSI, arguably the world's largest and most successful social marketer with impressive achievements in the field of family planning, HIV/AIDS, and malaria prevention must determine what to do about their slow-to-take-off clean water initiative.... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Health Care and Treatment; Social Marketing; Natural Environment; Social Enterprise; Business Strategy

2018
Working Paper

Information Provision and Innovation: Natural Experiment of Herbal Patent Prior Art Adoption at the United States and European Patent Offices

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna

We exploit a natural experiment to study how codifying information about prior innovation affects subsequent innovation. A codified database of traditional Indian herbal formulations was adopted by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Ethnicity; Health Care and Treatment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; China; India

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20 Mar 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, March 20, 2018

link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54267 February 6, 2018 Harvard Business Review What Could Amazon's Approach to Health Care Look Like? By: Huckman, Robert S. Abstract—No abstract... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 3

leadership development programs for residents. The authors first present a definition of clinical leadership and highlight evidence that effective frontline clinical leadership improves both clinical outcomes and satisfaction for patients and providers. The authors... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Brand Power from Wedgwood to Dell: Part Two

decades mixing and selling skin care formulas before she undertook to build a national market for her products. Howard Schultz did not grow up drinking specialty coffee, but as soon as he was introduced to the business, he learned as much... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

March 1990 (Revised March 1992)
Case

New York Against AIDS (A): The Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Advertising Campaign

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Sohel Karim

Describes the background leading to the development of an advertising campaign to help prevention of AIDS in New York City. The three television networks, however, for various reasons reject the campaign, to the dismay of Saatchi & Saatchi executives. View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Growth and Development; Health Care and Treatment; Marketing Communications; Failure; Advertising Industry; New York (city, NY)

March 2000
Case

Heartport, Inc.

By: Gary P. Pisano and Shoshana Dobrow

Heartport, an entrepreneurial medical device maker, has introduced several innovative systems for conducting less-invasive cardiac surgery. Despite initially high expectations, the company has struggled to get its technology adopted by cardiac surgeons. The company's... View Details

Keywords: History; Product Positioning; Knowledge Acquisition; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Health Care and Treatment

30 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

Use the Psychology of Pricing To Keep Customers Returning

same concept can be applied to health care. In its current form, most of us pay for blanket health care coverage that entitles us to a number of periodic services such as... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

May 2025
Teaching Note

The VideaHealth AI Factory: CEO Florian Hillen on Speed, Scale, and Innovation

By: Tsedal Neeley

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 425-720. Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup using artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. This AI factory,... View Details

Keywords: Diagnostics; Organization Design; Change Management; Disruption; Transformation; Health Care and Treatment; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Management Style; Organizational Culture; Success; Health Industry; Health Industry; United States

15 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 15

the director and the quality of the prior LBO experience. This effect is robust to the most likely alternative explanations and supports the idea that directors and social networks play an influential role in change-of-control... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2024
Background Note

Social Enterprise in the MENA Region

By: Brian Trelstad and Ahmed Dahawy

This research note provides an overview of the socio-economic landscape of social enterprise in the Middle East and North Africa. It highlights the diversity of players in the region including social enterprise organizations (in their many forms) and supporting... View Details

May 4, 2023
Article

Falling Insulin Prices—What Just Happened?

By: Leemore S. Dafny

Recently, more than 100 years after insulin was developed, manufacturers announced price reductions for insulin products. Pressure to reduce prices had long been building, so why would they act now? View Details

Keywords: Price; Health Care and Treatment; Public Opinion; Demand and Consumers; Pharmaceutical Industry

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03 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 3

Abstract—Improving the way we pay for health care must be a central component in health care reform. Payment reform must link provider... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

The New Measures for Improving Nonprofit Performance

speak the same language for the most part. In the social sector we don't have nearly that degree of agreement over what constitutes useful, common metrics, even in subsectors like health care, education, and the environment. At the moment... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

11 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Four Ways to Create Lasting Change

Clinics in Minnesota. That effort produced enduring behavioral and cultural changes regarding an issue (medical errors) that has proven very difficult to address for many health care institutions. Moving... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2024
Working Paper

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy—Living Drugs: Case Histories of Transformational Advances

By: Amar Bhidé and Srikant M. Datar

In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an immunotherapeutic treatment, called CAR-T therapy, for two kinds of blood cancers—acute leukemia (ALL) and a lymphoma. We describe 1) how CAR-T works, 2) the foundational advances and discoveries, 3) the... View Details

Keywords: Immunotherapy; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

SSRN

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January 2018
Case

Spark Therapeutics: Pioneering Gene Therapy

By: Robert F. Higgins and Tina Liu

Spark Therapeutics is a pioneering gene therapy startup. It was spun out of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The company had taken with it much of the intellectual property and talent that CHOP had developed. The company is considering an initial public... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Business Startups; Opportunities; Problems and Challenges; Strategy

April 2017
Supplement

Imprimis (C)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karen Elterman and Marc Appel

This case is a supplement to Imprimis (A & B). Set in 2015, it first describes Imprimis’s decision to introduce its own line of compounded eye drop medication called LessDrops. The case then examines the moral dilemma faced by CEO Mark Baum, who was struck by the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Moral Sensibility; Competitive Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States