Publications

December 1996 (Revised November 2006)
Background Note

General Mills, Inc.: Appendix of Comparable Company Data

By: William J. Bruns Jr.

Financial ratios for comparable companies to be used in conjunction with an analysis of the General Mills Annual Report. View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Analytics and Data Science; Food and Beverage Industry

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2020
Article

Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability

By: George Serafeim

Combining corporate sustainability performance scores based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with big data measuring public sentiment about a company’s sustainability performance, I find that the valuation premium paid for companies with strong... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment Management; Investment Strategy; Big Data; Machine Learning; Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Performance; Asset Pricing; Investment; Management; Strategy; Human Capital; Public Opinion; Value; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

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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

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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

High-performing knowledge workers often question whether managers actually contribute much, especially in a technical environment. Until recently, that was the case at Google, a company filled with self-starters who viewed management as more destructive than beneficial... View Details

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

01 Mar 2004
Lessons from the Classroom

Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science

FBC project should look like. Rather, NASA forced its managers and contractors to invent new processes and procedures by imposing a set of budget, time, View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

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

October 2021 (Revised June 2022)
Case

PittaRosso: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Pricing and Promotion

By: Ayelet Israeli

PittaRosso, a traditional Italian shoe retailer, is implementing an AI system to provide pricing and promotion recommendations. The system allows them to implement changes that would affect both the top of funnel and bottom of funnel activities for the company: once... View Details

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

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

October 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Supplement

PittaRosso: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Pricing and Promotion

By: Ayelet Israeli and Fabrizio Fantini

PittaRosso, a traditional Italian shoe retailer, is implementing an AI system to provide pricing and promotion recommendations. The system allows them to implement changes that would affect both the top of funnel and bottom of funnel activities for the company: once... View Details

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

16 Aug 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

HBS Introduces Marketing Analysis Tools for Managers

marketing has undergone immense changes over the past decade, and those changes are driving an increasing need for data analysis. Marketing today combines both art and science:... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

21 Feb 2005
Op-Ed

Is Business Management a Profession?

understands to be its causes. Turning to the body of systematized knowledge underpinning the claim that business management too is a profession, we find important differences between management as a View Details

Keywords: by Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria & Daniel Penrice

13 Jun 2017
Blog Post

7 Reasons Why the New MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program at Harvard is Next Level

companies now. i.e. This is bigger than just you. Interested in learning more about the MS/MBA? Here are four things you need to know. -- Anita Mehrotra is a Class of 2018 HBS student (Section I!) and was previously a View Details

08 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Management Education’s Unanswered Questions

How has management education evolved, and where is it going? This question is of crucial importance for society, says HBS professor Rakesh Khurana. Business leaders are admired yet often distrusted, View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

January 2014 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Nivea (A)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Johann Fuller, Volker Bilgram and Greta Friar

The case describes the efforts of Beiersdorf, a worldwide leader in the cosmetics and skin care industries, to generate and commercialize new R&D through open innovation using external crowds and "netnographic" analysis. Beiersdorf, best known for its consumer brand... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Innovation Management; Crowdsourcing; Big Data; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Research and Development; Social and Collaborative Networks; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Analytics and Data Science; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

September 2016 (Revised March 2017)
Module Note

Strategy Execution Module 3: Using Information for Performance Measurement and Control

By: Robert Simons

This module reading explains how managers use information to control critical business processes and outcomes. The analysis begins by illustrating how managers use information to communicate goals and track performance. Then the focus turns to the choices that managers... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Organization Process; Feedback Model; Innovation; Uses Of Information; Big Data; Benchmarking; Decision Making; Information; Performance Evaluation; Analytics and Data Science