Publications

June 2020
Article

Real-time Data from Mobile Platforms to Evaluate Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure

By: Omar Isaac Asensio, Kevin Alvarez, Arielle Dror, Emerson Wenzel, Catharina Hollauer and Sooji Ha

By displacing gasoline and diesel fuels, electric cars and fleets reduce emissions from the transportation sector, thus offering important public health benefits. However, public confidence in the reliability of charging infrastructure remains a fundamental barrier to... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Transportation; Infrastructure; Behavior; AI and Machine Learning; Demand and Consumers

March–April 2017
Article

Advancing Conservation by Understanding and Influencing Human Behavior

By: Sheila M. Reddy, Jensen Montambault, Yuta J. Masuda, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth Keenan, William Butler, Jonathan R. Fisher and Stanley T. Asah

Behavioral sciences can advance conservation by systematically identifying behavioral barriers to conservation and how to best overcome them. Behavioral sciences have informed policy in many other realms (e.g., health, savings), but they are a largely untapped resource... View Details

Keywords: Adaptive Management; Awareness; Behavioral Economics; Behavioral Science; Conservation Intervention; Conservation Planning; Decision-making; Incentives; Nudge; Management; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Marketing; Decision Making; Environmental Sustainability; Economics

January 2022
Article

Artificial Intelligence, Data-Driven Learning, and the Decentralized Structure of Platform Ecosystems

By: David R. Clough and Andy Wu

Gregory, Henfridsson, Kaganer, and Kyriakou (2020) highlight the important role of data and AI as strategic resources that platforms may use to enhance user value. However, their article overlooks a significant conceptual distinction: the installed base of... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Data Strategy; Ecosystem; Value Capture; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; Strategy; Learning; Value Creation; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Video Game Industry; Advertising Industry

Article

Detecting Adversarial Attacks via Subset Scanning of Autoencoder Activations and Reconstruction Error

By: Celia Cintas, Skyler Speakman, Victor Akinwande, William Ogallo, Komminist Weldemariam, Srihari Sridharan and Edward McFowland III

Reliably detecting attacks in a given set of inputs is of high practical relevance because of the vulnerability of neural networks to adversarial examples. These altered inputs create a security risk in applications with real-world consequences, such as self-driving... View Details

Keywords: Autoencoder Networks; Pattern Detection; Subset Scanning; Computer Vision; Statistical Methods And Machine Learning; Machine Learning; Deep Learning; Data Mining; Big Data; Large-scale Systems; Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

June 2018 (Revised June 2018)
Case

Facebook Confronts a Crisis of Trust

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

The case, “Facebook Confronts a Crisis of Trust,” starts with the crisis Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing in March 2018 over Cambridge Analytica’s accessing data from 87 million Facebook accounts in order to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential... View Details

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Freeing Patient Data to Enable Innovation

customer experience is so poor across the health care industry. "Employers do. So there's no real driver for quality." Hsiang (HBS MBA 2010), a health data advisor for the White House's US Digital Service View Details

Keywords: Re: Karim R. Lakhani; Health

Spring 2016
Article

The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Inflation Measurement and Research

By: Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon

New data-gathering techniques, often referred to as “Big Data” have the potential to improve statistics and empirical research in economics. In this paper we describe our work with online data at the Billion Prices Project at MIT and discuss key lessons for both... View Details

Keywords: Billion Prices Project; Online Scraped Data; Online Price Index; Economics; Research; Price; Analytics and Data Science

October 2018
Case

Fundraising at St. Camillus Hospital

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

St. Camillus is a fictional non-profit hospital in rural Maine facing a serious budget deficit. As Director of Marketing, Victoria Stern is building a team to modernize the hospital fundraising efforts. An interview with a promising candidate, who is also a digital... View Details

Keywords: Data Analysis; Data Privacy; Data Governance; Non-profit; Health Care; Fundraising; Data Security; Analytics and Data Science; Safety; Governance; Ethics; Health Care and Treatment; Cybersecurity

February 25, 2016
Article

The Hodgepodge Principle in U.S. Privacy Policy

By: John A. Deighton

Data, says Professor Lawrence Summers, is the new oil, "a hugely valuable asset essential to economic life." Personal data, the kind of data that invites thoughts of privacy, is a big part of that. The European Union saw this economic fuel source coming long ago and... View Details

Keywords: Data; Privacy; Technology; Big Data; Personal Data; Marketing; Information Technology; Analytics and Data Science

01 Mar 2004
Lessons from the Classroom

Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science

how fast you can learn, and therefore on how fast you can improve—raising the bar before real data are available is risky, and makes learning from experience more difficult.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

June 2021
Article

Developing a Value Framework: Utilizing Administrative Data to Assess an Enhanced Care Initiative

By: Casey J. Allen, Jarrod S. Eska, Nikhil G. Thaker, Thomas W. Feeley, Robert S. Kaplan, Ryan W. Huey, Ching-Wei D. Tzeng, Jeffrey E. Lee, Steven J. Frank, Thomas A. Aloia, Vijaya Gottumukkala and Matthew H.G. Katz

We used national administrative data to assess multiple domains of value associated with enhanced recovery pathways for patients undergoing pancreatic surgery. Value metrics included in-hospital mortality, complication rates, length of stay (LOS), 30-day readmission... View Details

Keywords: Value-based Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Outcome or Result; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Improvement

August 2017 (Revised July 2019)
Case

GROW: Using Artificial Intelligence to Screen Human Intelligence

By: Ethan Bernstein, Paul McKinnon and Paul Yarabe

Over 10% of all 2017 university graduates in Japan used GROW, an artificial intelligence platform and mobile app developed by Tokyo-based people analytics startup IGS, to recruit for a job. This case puts participants in the shoes of IGS founder and CEO Masahiro... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Artificial Intelligence; Talent and Talent Management; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Human Resources; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Financial Services Industry; Air Transportation Industry; Advertising Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; Japan

2015
Working Paper

Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules

By: Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Danielle Li and Bhaven N. Sampat

We quantify the impact of scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on patenting by pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Our paper makes two contributions. First, we use newly constructed bibliometric data to develop a method for flexibly... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of Science; Patenting; Academic Reserach; NIH; Knowledge Spillovers; Patents; Research; Government and Politics

May–June 2015
Article

Big Data: Big Deal or Big Hype?

By: Sunil Gupta

Google Flu Trends article of November 2008 heralded a new age for big data where it is possible to leverage the vast amount of data to speak for itself, without theory or expert knowledge of the subject matter. However, in a short span the pendulum swung from big data... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Analytics and Data Science; Management Practices and Processes

July 2019
Article

Using Behavioral Science to Inform the Design of Sugary Drink Portion Limit Policies: Reply to Wilson and Stolarz-Fantino (2018)

By: Leslie John, Grant E. Donnelly and Christina A. Roberto

In their commentary, Wilson & Stolarz-Fantino argue that specific design features of our research mean that it cannot have policy implications and that researchers “need to consider profit maximization in menu design or studies are likely to suggest ill-informed... View Details

Keywords: Policy Implementation; Food; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy

September 2015
Case

Deflategate and the National Football League

By: Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

On January 18, 2015, the New England Patriots faced the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game. In the second quarter, a Colts player intercepted a pass from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Colts equipment personnel alerted NFL officials that the ball's air... View Details

Keywords: ＂Deflategate＂; Analytics; National Football League; NFLPA; Roger Goodell; Tom Brady; Operations; United States

August 2001
Article

Technology as a Complex Adaptive System: Evidence from Patent Data

Keywords: Information Technology; System; Patents; Analytics and Data Science

Article

Big Names or Big Ideas: Do Peer-Review Panels Select the Best Science Proposals?

By: Danielle Li and Leila Agha

This paper examines the success of peer-review panels in predicting the future quality of proposed research. We construct new data to track publication, citation, and patenting outcomes associated with more than 130,000 research project (R01) grants funded by the U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Research; Entrepreneurship; Forecasting and Prediction; Innovation and Invention; Business and Government Relations; United States

March 2021
Supplement

Artea (A), (B), (C), and (D): Designing Targeting Strategies

By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Power Point Supplement to Teaching Note for HBS No. 521-021,521-022,521-037,521-043. This collection of exercises aims to teach students about 1)Targeting Policies; and 2)Algorithmic bias in marketing—implications, causes, and possible solutions. Part (A) focuses on... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Advertising; Targeting; Algorithmic Data; Bias; A/B Testing; Experiment; Advertising; Gender; Race; Diversity; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Prejudice and Bias; Analytics and Data Science; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States