Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,175)
- Faculty Publications (351)
- 2017
- Working Paper
Innovation Policies
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Past work has shown that failure tolerance by principals has the potential to stimulate innovation, but has not examined how this affects which projects principals will start. We demonstrate that failure tolerance has an equilibrium price ― in terms of an investor's... View Details
- Forthcoming
- Chapter
Intermediation and Diffusion of Responsibility in Negotiation: A Case of Bounded Ethicality
By: Neeru Paharia, Lucas Clayton Coffman and Max Bazerman
This article compares direct deception with deception via an intermediary in the bargaining context. It describes a growing experimental literature that suggests how perceived ethics surrounding transactions with multiple partners can encourage misbehavior. It is noted... View Details
- August 2012
- Article
Organ Allocation Policy and the Decision to Donate
By: Judd B. Kessler and Alvin E. Roth
Organ donations from deceased donors (cadavers) provide the majority of transplanted organs in the United States, and one deceased donor can save numerous lives by providing multiple organs. Nevertheless, most Americans are not registered organ donors despite the... View Details
- May 2012
- Background Note
Innovation Magic
By: Stefan Thomke and Jason Randal
Why do certain product and service experiences seem like magic, making them all but destined for success, while other items languish on store shelves? For a better understanding of that, perhaps there's no better place to turn to than the world of magic. Consider that... View Details
- 2012
- Chapter
Problem Solving and Search in Networks
By: David Lazer and Ethan Bernstein
This chapter examines the role that networks play in facilitating or inhibiting search for solutions to problems at both the individual and collective levels. At the individual level, search in networks enables individuals to transport themselves to a very different... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm
By: Nancy F. Koehn, Nora N. Khan and Elizabeth W. Legris
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm is the story of one entrepreneur's vision and journey to create a market-leading, environmentally responsible business founded on the principles of product quality, organizational alignment, and sustainability. A former environmental... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Values; Development Stage Enterprises; Innovation; Management By Objective; Experimentation; Emerging Technologies; Mission and Purpose; Management Style; Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Organizational Culture; Environmental Sustainability; Business Growth and Maturation; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Innovation and Invention; Food and Beverage Industry; New Hampshire
- 2012
- Chapter
The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort
By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details
- February 2012
- Article
Walking the Talk in Multiparty Bargaining: An Experimental Investigation
By: Kathleen L. McGinn, Katherine L. Milkman and Markus Noth
We study the framing effects of communication on payoffs in multiparty bargaining. Communication has been shown to be more truthful and revealing than predicted in equilibrium. Because talk is preference revealing, it may effectively frame bargaining around a logic of... View Details
- Article
The Learning Effects of Monitoring
By: Dennis Campbell, Marc Epstein and F. Asis Martinez-Jerez
This paper investigates the relationship between monitoring, decision making, and learning among lower-level employees. We exploit a field-research setting in which business units vary in the "tightness" with which they monitor employee decisions. We find that tighter... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear!
By: Willy Shih
This case is set inside IBM Research's efforts to build a computer that can successfully take on human challengers playing the game show Jeopardy! It opens with the machine named Watson offering the incorrect answer "Toronto" to a seemingly simple question during the... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
Psychological Safety: A Foundation for Speaking Up, Collaboration, and Experimentation
By: Ingrid M. Nembhard and Amy C. Edmondson
- June 2011
- Article
Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor
By: Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
It is often difficult for donors to predict the value of charitable giving because they know little about the persons who receive their help. This concern is particularly acute when making contributions to organizations that serve heterogeneous populations. While we... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior
By: Francesca Gino and Sreedhari D. Desai
Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one's own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall memories from their childhood were more likely to help the... View Details
- 2011
- Article
Free to Punish? The American Dream and the Harsh Treatment of Criminals
By: Rafael Di Tella
We describe the evolution of selective aspects of punishment in the U.S. over the period 1980-2004. We note that imprisonment increased around 1980, a period that coincides with the "Reagan revolution" in economic matters. We build an economic model where beliefs about... View Details
Keywords: Crime and Corruption
- Article
A Learning Perspective on Intraorganizational Knowledge Spill-Ins
By: James Oldroyd and Ranjay Gulati
This exploratory study examines the role of intraorganizational knowledge spill-ins in the process of inferential learning. Drawing on the notions of knowledge reliability (the creation of shared meanings) and validity (understandings of cause and effect), we explore... View Details
- October 2010
- Article
Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity
This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture-in the sense of shared beliefs and values in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Financing Risk and Innovation
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
We provide a model of investment into new ventures that demonstrates why some places, times, and industries should be associated with a greater degree of experimentation by investors. Investors respond to financing risk―a forecast of limited future funding―by modifying... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
By: Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms... View Details