Publications

Article

Ensembles of Overfit and Overconfident Forecasts

By: Y. Grushka-Cockayne, V.R.R. Jose and K. C. Lichtendahl

Firms today average forecasts collected from multiple experts and models. Because of cognitive biases, strategic incentives, or the structure of machine-learning algorithms, these forecasts are often overfit to sample data and are overconfident. Little is known about... View Details

Keywords: Decision Analysis; Data Science; Forecasting and Prediction; Data and Data Sets

26 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

the flexibility of AI versus humans in adjusting to new situations, the authors set up four video games, outlining certain tasks for humans and several popular game-playing AI algorithms to complete. The tasks tested the players’ ability... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

March 2023
Teaching Note

VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory

By: Karim R. Lakhani

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 621-021. The case “VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory” examines the creation of dental startup VideaHealth (Videa) and the development of its artificial intelligence (AI)-led business strategy through the eyes of founder and CEO Florian... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Business Model; Marketing Strategy; Product Development; Health Industry; Technology Industry

2015
Chapter

Optimal Process Control of Symbolic Transfer Functions

By: Christopher Griffin and Elisabeth Paulson

Transfer function modeling is a standard technique in classical Linear Time Invariant and Statistical Process Control. The work of Box and Jenkins was seminal in developing methods for identifying parameters associated with classical (r, s, k) transfer functions.... View Details

Keywords: Transfer Functions; Markov Processes; Stochastic Models; Process Control; Research; Information Technology

2020
Working Paper

Topic Preference Detection: A Novel Approach to Understand Perspective Taking in Conversation

By: Michael Yeomans and Alison Wood Brooks

Although most humans engage in conversations constantly throughout their lives, conversational mistakes are commonplace— interacting with others is difficult, and conversation re-quires quick, relentless perspective-taking and decision making. For example: during every... View Details

Keywords: Natural Language Processing; Interpersonal Communication; Perspective; Decision Making; Perception

March 2025
Case

Niramai: An AI Solution to Save Lives

By: Rembrand Koning, Maria P. Roche and Kairavi Dey

Founded in 2017, Niramai developed Thermalytix, a breast cancer screening tool. Thermalytix used a high-resolution thermal sensing device and machine learning algorithms to analyze thermal images and detect tumors. Its patented solution leveraged big data analytics,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Health Care and Treatment; Technology Industry; Health Industry; Asia; India; South Asia

Educators

2021
Book

The Future of Executive Development

By: Mihnea C Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven by digital disruption and a widening gap between the skills that participants and their organizations demand and those provided by their executive programs. This work delves into the... View Details

Keywords: Executive Education; Leadership Development; Management Skills; Education Industry

September–October 2020
Article

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

SSRN

06 Oct 2015
First Look

October 6, 2015

upon the Thompson sampling algorithm used for multi-armed bandit problems by incorporating inventory constraints into the pricing decisions. Our algorithm proves to have both strong theoretical performance... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Jul 2023
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2023

fascinating realm of design and human interaction with everyday objects. Norman provides thought-provoking insights on usability and human-centered design. The book is relevant to my own research on visual analytics. Picture this: designing an View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Article

Soul and Machine (Learning)

By: Davide Proserpio, John R. Hauser, Xiao Liu, Tomomichi Amano, Burnap Alex, Tong Guo, Dokyun (DK) Lee, Randall Lewis, Kanishka Misra, Eric Schwarz, Artem Timoshenko, Lilei Xu and Hema Yoganarasimhan

Machine learning is bringing us self-driving cars, medical diagnoses, and language translation, but how can machine learning help marketers improve marketing decisions? Machine learning models predict extremely well, are scalable to “big data,” and are a natural fit to... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Marketing Applications; Knowledge; Technological Innovation; Core Relationships; Marketing; Applications and Software

June 2016
Teaching Note

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: Jill Avery, Asis Martinez Jerez and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, a web marketing startup selling inbound marketing software to small- and medium-sized businesses, is under pressure from its venture capital partners to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. The B2B SaaS company is in the... View Details

Keywords: CRM; Customer Acquisition; Customer Retention; Churn Management; SaaS Business Models; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Startup; Software; Monitoring And Control; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Accounting; Technology Industry; United States

December 2019
Article

Communicating with Warmth in Distributive Negotiations Is Surprisingly Counterproductive

By: M. Jeong, J. Minson, M. Yeomans and F. Gino

When entering into a negotiation, individuals have the choice to enact a variety of communication styles. We test the differential impact of being “warm and friendly” versus “tough and firm” in a distributive negotiation, when first offers are held constant and... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Style; Communication Strategy; Perception; Performance Effectiveness; Outcome or Result

2023
Article

On Minimizing the Impact of Dataset Shifts on Actionable Explanations

By: Anna P. Meyer, Dan Ley, Suraj Srinivas and Himabindu Lakkaraju

The Right to Explanation is an important regulatory principle that allows individuals to request actionable explanations for algorithmic decisions. However, several technical challenges arise when providing such actionable explanations in practice. For instance, models... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

2023
Working Paper

Dynamic Pricing, Intertemporal Spillovers, and Efficiency

By: Alexander J. MacKay, Dennis Svartbäck and Anders G. Ekholm

Pricing technology that allows firms to rapidly adjust prices has two potential benefits. Time-varying prices can respond to high-frequency demand shocks to generate greater revenues, and they can also be used to smooth out demand to reduce costs. Using data... View Details

Keywords: Price; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Volatility

SSRN

2019
Working Paper

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability, or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

SSRN

Article

Assent-maximizing Social Choice

By: Katherine A. Baldiga and Jerry R. Green

We take a decision theoretic approach to the classic social choice problem, using data on the frequency of choice problems to compute social choice functions. We define a family of social choice rules that depend on the population's preferences and on the probability... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Theory; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Society