Publications

June 2010 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Continental Media Group: Business Highlights

By: Robert L. Simons and Kathryn Rosenberg

Continental Media Group has a series of business reviews struggling to achieve profitability. This case focuses on the use of management control systems to identify emerging opportunities and the formulation of new strategies. The interactive system used by top... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Governance Controls; Management Systems; Risk Management; Business Strategy; Publishing Industry

Educators

Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter's purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing... View Details

December 2010
Article

Social Preferences and Strategic Uncertainty: An Experiment on Markets and Contracts

This paper reports a three-phase experiment on a stylized labor market. In the first two phases, agents face simple games, which we use to estimate subjects' social and reciprocity concerns. In the last phase, four principals compete by offering agents a contract from... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Markets; Contracts; Decisions; Distribution; Labor; Game Theory

July–August 2023
Article

Case Study: How Should a Start-Up Cut Its Burn Rate?

By: Nitin Nohria, Katie Josephson, Sophia Wronsky and Elizabeth Rha

Tyler Smith, the founder and CEO of the enterprise software firm Puck.io, is facing a hard decision. Just three months earlier the company laid off 20% of its employees to reduce its burn rate amid growing economic uncertainty and a suddenly unattractive funding... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business or Company Management; Business Startups

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December 2009
Article

Estimation and Empirical Properties of a Firm-Year Measure of Accounting Conservatism

By: Mozaffar N. Khan and Ross L. Watts

We estimate a firm-year measure of accounting conservatism, examine its empirical properties as a metric, and illustrate applications by testing new hypotheses that shed further light on the nature and effects of conservatism. The results are consistent with the... View Details

12 Apr 2016
News

Equality Takes Work

January 2025
Supplement

Hippo: Weathering the Storm of the Home Insurance Crisis (B)

By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan

Rick McCathron, CEO of Hippo, was optimistic about the InsurTech's path to profitability after navigating the financial uncertainties of 2022. By bundling their home insurance services with third-parties and established insurance incumbents, Hippo was adopting a... View Details

May 1994
Background Note

Managing Market Complexity: A Three-Ring Circus

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Proposes models of organization that address the various product-market environments posed by the product life cycle. Frames these changes along the two dimensions of uncertainty and diversity. Offers three sets of organizational characteristics to reflect the three... View Details

Keywords: Business Processes; Growth and Development Strategy; Complexity; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Product Marketing; Markets; Product

November 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Technical Note

Rechargeable Batteries, 2017: Gigafactory Wars in the Offing?

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2017, the global market for rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries was 126 gigawatt-hours (GWh) valued at $37 billion, growing by $10 billion in two years. Once confined largely to consumer electronics and appliances, the rapid increase in demand was spurred by... View Details

Educators

24 Aug 2015
News

The Case for Teaching Ignorance

March 2006
Module Note

Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World: Module 3: Expanding Diversity

By: Alan D. MacCormack

Describes the third 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; Business Processes; Projects; Risk and Uncertainty; Product Development; Managerial Roles; Opportunities; Perspective; Expansion; Goals and Objectives

March 2000
Exercise

Developing Products on Internet Time: A Process Design Exercise

By: Stefan H. Thomke

This team exercise allows students to experience some of the dynamics of developing products in the fast-paced Internet environment and was inspired by the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft. Designed to be taught in a single class session, the exercise... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Internet and the Web; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Design; Decisions; Management Practices and Processes; Integration; Organizations; Competition

February 2024
Article

Come Together: Firm Boundaries and Delegation

By: Laura Alfaro, Nick Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew F. Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We develop an incomplete-contracts model to jointly study firm boundaries and the allocation of decision rights within them. Integration has an option value: it gives firm owners authority to delegate or centralize decision rights, depending on who can best solve... View Details

Keywords: Boundaries; Decision Choices and Conditions; Risk and Uncertainty

2025
Article

Statistical Inference for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Discovered by Generic Machine Learning in Randomized Experiments

By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li

Researchers are increasingly turning to machine learning (ML) algorithms to investigate causal heterogeneity in randomized experiments. Despite their promise, ML algorithms may fail to accurately ascertain heterogeneous treatment effects under practical settings with... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

Read Now

14 Aug 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Are ‘Better’ Ideas More Likely to Succeed? An Empirical Analysis of Startup Evaluation

Keywords: by Pian Shu; Financial Services

March 30, 2020
Article

Why Is the U.S. Behind on Coronavirus Testing?

By: Stefan Thomke

Coronavirus testing is needed to address the uncertainty in making decisions about patient treatment, resource allocation, policy, and so much more. Answers to questions such as “When should we relax social distancing measures—and for whom?” or “How many ventilators... View Details

Keywords: Testing; Coronavirus; Culture; Trump; Data; Experiments; Health Pandemics; Health Testing and Trials; Government and Politics; United States