Optimal Mechanism Design - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

Knowledge flows and capability acquisition

Technological advancements are a major source of improvement in competiveness, and a firm’s incentives to invest are diminished when the knowledge generated is involuntarily dispersed to competitors. While intellectual property rights can moderate this flow to the... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Aspects Of Strategy; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Spillovers; Knowledge Acquisition; Manufacturing Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; China

November 2021
Article

The Comprehensive Effects of Sales Force Management: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Selection, Compensation, and Training

By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Byoung G. Park

This study provides a comprehensive model of an agent’s behavior in response to multiple sales management instruments, including compensation, recruiting/termination, and training. The model on agents’ behavior takes into account many of the key elements that... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Training; Behavior; Analysis

Citation

Find at Harvard

Read Now

18 May 2010
First Look

First Look: May 18

challenges for educators because it requires a facility with different kinds of knowledge and wide-ranging learning abilities. We report on the development and delivery of an information technology (IT) management course designed to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 2009
Journal Article

Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma

By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter

For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Operations; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Adaptation

Citation

Find at Harvard

Research Summary

Managing Product Development in Rapidly Changing Environments

By: Alan D. MacCormack

A consistent finding in many studies of innovation is the repeated failure of established firms when faced with radical changes in their core markets or technologies. Professor MacCormack's research takes the view that many of these failures can be attributed to the... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Inventory Management for Mobile Money Agents in the Developing World

By: Karthik Balasubramanian, David F. Drake and Douglas Fearing

Mobile money systems, platforms built and managed by mobile network operators to allow money to be stored as digital currency, have burgeoned in the developing world as a mechanism to transfer money electronically. Mobile money agents exchange cash for electronic value... View Details

Keywords: Currency; Mobile Technology; Market Platforms; Developing Countries and Economies

Citation

SSRN

Read Now

Janice H. Hammond is the Jesse Philips Professor of Manufacturing. She currently serves as coursehead for the new MBA required course, Data Science for Managers. She serves as program chair for the HBS Executive Education International Women’s Foundation and Women’s... View Details

Keywords: apparel; distribution; e-commerce industry; manufacturing; retailing; textiles; transportation

The Comprehensive Effects of Sales Force Management: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Selection, Compensation, and Training

This study provides a comprehensive model of an agent’s behavior in response to multiple sales management instruments, including compensation, recruiting/termination, and training. The model takes into account many of the key elements that constitute a realistic... View Details

26 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 26

whether the testimonial's efficacy increases when information is added about an affiliation the quoted individual shares with the recipient. Research Design and Methods: A total of 5,498 union members were randomly assigned to receive 1... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Program

Program for Leadership Development

step toward becoming a member of the global HBS alumni community Who Should Attend PLD is designed for executives preparing for career growth who want to expand their hard and soft skills and refine their personal leadership style to... View Details

Research Summary

Dynamics of Network Structure and Content in Social Media

Organizations use social media to leverage knowledge contributions by individual employees, which also foster social interactions – activity in blogs, forums, wikis etc. is critical to ensuring a thriving online community. Prior studies have examined... View Details

July–August 2024
Article

Doing More with Less: Overcoming Ineffective Long-Term Targeting Using Short-Term Signals

By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza

Firms are increasingly interested in developing targeted interventions for customers with the best response, which requires identifying differences in customer sensitivity, typically through the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) estimation. In theory, to... View Details

Keywords: Long-run Targeting; Heterogeneous Treatment Effect; Statistical Surrogacy; Customer Churn; Field Experiments; Consumer Behavior; Customer Focus and Relationships; AI and Machine Learning; Marketing Strategy

Brand-new markets are like the wormholes of science fiction, where the usual rules of time and space do not apply. When a market has just been born, the forces of competition there are constantly in flux, it's unclear who your customers really are, and conventional... View Details

March 2006
Module Note

Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World: Module 4: Sensing Opportunity

By: Alan D. MacCormack

Describes the fourth module of the 30-session Harvard Business School elective course Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World. The course helps students understand the challenges that uncertainty implies for innovation and how to overcome them. The course emphasizes... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Problems and Challenges; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Projects; Opportunities; Risk and Uncertainty; Perspective; Value Creation; Networks; Alignment

Citation

Purchase

10 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 10

working paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2397317 Cases & Course Materials Harvard Business School Case 515-042 Simplot Plant Sciences: Designing a Better Potato Privately held Simplot has developed a new... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Program

Advanced Management Program

responsibilities, the Advanced Management Program is designed to bring about a full-scale change that empowers executives to create and renew competitive advantage for their organizations. Three highly integrated modules are presented... View Details

November – December 2011
Article

Explaining Influence Rents: The Case for an Institutions-Based View of Strategy

By: Gautam Ahuja and Sai Yayavaram

Research in strategy has identified and tried to explain four types of rents: monopolistic rents, efficiency rents, quasi rents, and Schumpeterian rents. Building on previous work on political and institutional strategies, we add a fifth type of rent: influence rents.... View Details

Keywords: Institutions; Influence Rents; Generic Strategies; Strategy; Organizations; Renting or Rental; Economics

Citation

Find at Harvard

Purchase

August 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Calera Corporation

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Thomas J. Steenburgh and Lauren Barley

Brent Constantz, founder, CEO, and president of Calera Corporation, felt a surge of optimism as he gazed at the recently commissioned prototype flue gas processing line at Calera's R&D facility in Moss Landing, California. It was late May 2009, and Calera was an... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Product Design; Product Development; Environmental Sustainability; Commercialization; Green Technology Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

October 2022
Case

An Heir with No Spare: The Deitch Family Office

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Joe and Matt Deitch, father and son, knew it was time to start their own family office. Matthew had recently joined his father at the family’s three enterprises, and they both realized that their family’s needs had grown increasingly complex over the years. In search... View Details