Big Four - Publications - Faculty & Research

23 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Will the “Long Tail” Work for Hollywood?

2000-2005 period covered in the paper, the number of titles that sold only a few copies each week increased twofold—yet the number of titles that didn't sell at all was four times as high as in 2000. The increasing clutter may be a... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Entertainment & Recreation

30 Dec 2013
HBS Case

HBS Cases: What Warren Buffett Saw in Newspapers

led to Morton's consideration of Buffett's offer to buy 63 newspapers from his highly leveraged company, which had experienced a 31 percent decline in revenues over the previous four years and a 90 percent plunge in stock price. Included... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Journalism & News; Publishing

29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

How Technological Disruption Changes Everything

Word, for example? The problem: Overshooting the market can open the way for disruptive technologies that are cheaper and simpler to take root. So Xerox was eventually disrupted by less expensive copiers from Ricoh and Canon, Western Union by the telephone, and View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

16 Dec 2002
Lessons from the Classroom

Marrying Distance and Classroom Education

In an interview with HBS Working Knowledge editor Sean Silverthorne, Harvard Business School professor Dorothy Leonard and research assistant Brian DeLacey discuss their research and the recent Adult Learning Workshop held at Harvard Business School. Silverthorne: A... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

29 Apr 2020
Book

The Key to Powerful Social Change: Small Villages

Who will solve the great problems facing humanity, a list of critical issues that only begins with the current pandemic? In the interview below, Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses her recent book, Think Outside the Building, and her view that solutions are most likely to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

04 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

hard decisions about returning to the market. Here’s a common prediction: Social distancing forces people to do more buying online and communicating through social media, thus accelerating a permanent, big shift after the crisis to more... View Details

Keywords: by Frank V. Cespedes

29 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

How Economics May Lead to Better Football Games

Matching is economist-speak for how we get the things we choose in life that also choose us. You can't just choose a selective school or a job—you have to be admitted or hired—just as you can't simply choose your spouse, you also have to be chosen. Matching is one of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Sports

24 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

With Millions of Workers Juggling Caregiving, Employers Need to Rethink Support

experience, which makes them more productive. Say they join your company at age 24 or 25 and then after four or five years, they decide to start a family. They’ve got five years of work experience; they have a network inside the company;... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

02 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Stuck in Gear: Why Managers Don’t Act

future. He also offers suggestions for avoiding the worst mistakes and gives advice for reviving your own company. For most companies, a big jolt in the industry landscape is a pretty rare event, Sull says. The travel industry, for... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Oct 2010
First Look

First Look: October 19, 2010

Publication:Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (forthcoming) Abstract People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 May 2014
Op-Ed

The Alibaba Effect

transactions. A combination of Amazon and eBay, it holds an 80 percent share of the e-commerce market in the world's second largest economy. Its net income for 2013 was four times more than in 2012. Its products and services lie at the... View Details

Keywords: by Bill Kirby & Warren McFarlan; Retail

10 May 2016
First Look

May 10, 2016

targeted firms. These results suggest a need to check the power of NPEs through changes in U.S. IP policy, in particular to screen out trolling early in the litigation process. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51034 forthcoming Economic... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

21 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

Loyalty: Don’t Give Away the Store

25 percent of your sales, you have a big problem. By using rewards programs, retailers give away things for free that their best customers would have bought anyway. With such a large volume of customers purchasing off the card, you have... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls; Consumer Products; Retail

07 Feb 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Creating the Founders’ Dilemmas Course

four sections of the course, with 68 students in each section. Some 170 more students were wait-listed. The course's popularity is a reflection of its universal nature—it addresses quandaries that virtually all entrepreneurs will face... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

30 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Market Makers Bid for Success

operating business, like a specialized business field, so they went to companies like Procter or McKinsey, because that was where they could develop more business skills while they hung out and waited for their entrepreneurial opportunities to arrive. Sahlman: There's... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Web Services; Technology

27 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 27, 2009

effects in teams, meaning that they default to using the expertise of high-status members while becoming less effective at using team members with deep client knowledge. I test the model in a field study of 100+ accounting and consulting teams from a View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

11 Apr 2000
Research & Ideas

Financial Services 24/7

typical new player, for example, might spend over $100 million in advertising. "There is a big rush for market share," explains Crane. "Firms are gambling that when the dust settles, they will be one of the survivors." F. Warren McFarlan,... View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

21 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Lessons for Retailers from the Rebirth of Indie Bookstores

As big box bookstores Barnes & Noble and Borders spread across the landscape in the 1990s, retail observers sounded the death knell for small, independent booksellers. But they had no idea of the onslaught that was coming. Amazon.com... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Entertainment & Recreation

11 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Cheap, Fast, and In Control: How Tech Aids Innovation

assessing which management practices and processes in an organization could benefit from experimentation? It is important to understand that experimentation matters to managing change and uncertainty. A: It is important to understand that experimentation matters to... View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild

28 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: Feb. 28

greater risk and thus affects resource allocation. Download the paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1999484 Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and... View Details