Publications

August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Chateau Winery (A): Unsupervised Learning

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

This case follows Bill Booth, marketing manager of a regional wine distributor, as he applies unsupervised learning on data about his customers’ purchases to better understand their preferences. Specifically, he uses the K-means clustering technique to identify groups... View Details

Keywords: Clustering; Data Science; Analytics and Data Science; Customers; Marketing; Analysis

December 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Akooda: Charging Toward Operational Intelligence

By: Christopher Stanton and Mel Martin

The Akooda case describes the challenges confronting founder and CEO Yuval Gonczarowski (MBA ‘17) in 2022 as he attempts to boost sales. Launched in November 2020, Akooda was an AI company that mined 20 different sources of digital data, from tools like Slack, Google... View Details

Keywords: Data Mining; Productivity; Monitoring; Data Analysis; AI and Machine Learning; Knowledge Management; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Information Industry; Boston; Israel

Fast Answer

Bloomberg: Investment Management course tips

Which Bloomberg tips are for the HBS Investment Management course? These Bloomberg tips below were created for students enrolled in the HBS Investment Management course. For more... View Details

2016
Book

Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work

By: Joseph L. Badaracco

Part of a manager's job is making tough calls, and the hardest challenge can be resolving "gray area” problems—situations in which analysis of the numbers, facts, and data fails to provide a clear answer. Gray areas test not only managers’ skills but also their... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Decision Choices and Conditions

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2011
Other Unpublished Work

Functional Centralization and the Division of Labor in Management

By: Julie Wulf, Maria Guadalupe and Hongyi Li

This paper shows that the trend towards flatter hierarchies in large US firms since the mid-80's has been accompanied by increased centralization of activities at the top of the organization. In particular, the number of functional managers (e.g., Chief Financial... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Management Teams; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Diversification; Information Technology; United States

October 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Store24 (A): Managing Employee Retention

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Provides a retailing context in which employee retention strategies are explored through analyzing detailed store-level data. View Details

Keywords: Retention; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Analytics and Data Science; Strategy; Mathematical Methods; Retail Industry

Research Summary

Overview

By: Ayelet Israeli

Professor Israeli utilizes econometric methods and field experiments to study data driven decision making in marketing context. Her research focuses on data-driven marketing, with an emphasis on how businesses can leverage their own data, customer data, and market data... View Details

Keywords: Channel Management; Pricing; Pricing Policies; Online Marketing; E-commerce; Analytics; Econometrics; Field Experiments; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; Value Of Data

March 2018
Case

TrustSphere: Building a Market for Relationship Analytics

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden

Manish Goel was the CEO of TrustSphere, a seven-year-old company in the data analytics industry that focused squarely on relationship analytics, a space in which TrustSphere was pioneering a unique technology and solutions in the areas of sales, risk, and people... View Details

Keywords: Data Analytics; People Analytics; Talent Management; Human Resources; Networks; Relationships; Analysis; Employee Relationship Management; Core Relationships; Applications and Software; Communication; Technology Industry; Singapore

Web

Technology & Operations Management - Faculty & Research

Technology & Operations Management Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students 2025 Working Paper Designing Consent: Choice Architecture and Consumer Welfare in Data... View Details

07 Mar 2016
HBS Seminar

Scott Stern, MIT Sloan School of Management

21 Sep 2016
HBS Seminar

Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan School of Management

March 2020
Supplement

People Analytics at Teach For America (B)

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Julia Kelley

This is a supplement to the People Analytics at Teach For America (A) case. In this supplement, situated one year after the A case, Managing Director Michael Metzger must decide how to apply his team's predictive models generated from the previous year’s data. View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Human Resource Management; Data; Workforce; Hiring; Talent Management; Forecasting; Predictive Analytics; Organizational Behavior; Recruiting; Analytics and Data Science; Forecasting and Prediction; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Talent and Talent Management

31 Aug 2021
News

Impact of Returning to Offices on Employee, Manager Morale and Productivity

October 2015
Article

Managing the Performance Tradeoffs from Partner Integration: Implications of Contract Choice in R&D Projects

By: Alan MacCormack and Anant Mishra

Formal contracts represent an important governance instrument with which firms exercise control of and compensate partners in R&D projects. The specific type of contract used, however, can vary significantly across projects. In some, firms govern partnering... View Details

Keywords: ＂＂Partner Integration; Contract Choice; R＆D Project Management; Relational Contracts; Partnering Performance; Research and Development; Projects; Partners and Partnerships; Performance; Contracts

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Article

The Decreasing Value of Our Research to Management Education

By: Jone L. Pearce and Laura Huang

For centuries we have expected the best teachers also to be scholars. The practice of scholarship should do more than make scholars more humble teachers; scholarship is expected to be more than an activity done for its own sake. Here we present evidence that our... View Details

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03 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

The Tricky Business of Managing Web Advertising Affiliates

outside manager, the merchant should be clear on what practices the program will permit and to not assume outsourced managers will always act in the merchant's best interest. ("Quite the contrary, our data... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Advertising; Publishing

2020
Working Paper

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research

Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used as an observation for further inductive or abductive research, but should not be treated as the result of a... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Theory Building; Induction; Decision Trees; Random Forests; K-nearest Neighbors; Neural Network; P-hacking; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis