Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,029)
- Faculty Publications (649)
- October 2016 (Revised March 2022)
- Background Note
Cost Variance Analysis
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Susanna Gallani
This note was written to provide students with fundamental concepts and methods for the analysis of cost variances. It focuses on the decomposition of cost variances into price, quantity, and mix variance components, an approach that allows students to identify the... View Details
Keywords: Cost Accounting
- October 2016 (Revised February 2019)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 5: Building a Profit Plan
By: Robert Simons
This module reading describes how to build a profit plan to reflect the strategy of a business in economic terms. After introducing the profit wheel, cash wheel, and ROE wheel, the module illustrates how to use a profit plan to assess the viability of different... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Execution; Profit Planning; Cash Flow Analysis; Asset Utilization; Return On Equity; Business Planning; Testing Strategy; Analyzing Strategic Alternative; Strategy; Asset Management; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Management Systems; Profit
- 2017
- Working Paper
Self-Employment Dynamics and the Returns to Entrepreneurship
By: Eleanor W. Dillon and Christopher T. Stanton
Small business owners and others in self-employment have the option to transition to paid work. If there is initial uncertainty about entrepreneurial earnings, this option increases the expected lifetime value of self-employment relative to pay in a single year. This... View Details
- September–October 2016
- Article
Growing New Corporate Businesses: From Initiation to Graduation
By: Sebastian Raisch and Michael Tushman
Large companies initiate many new businesses, but few of them reach scale. The ambidexterity literature describes how companies create exploratory businesses, but says little about how they subsequently scale these businesses. The strategy literature uses real option... View Details
- 2016
- Book
Innovation Equity: Assessing and Managing the Monetary Value of New Products and Services
By: Elie Ofek, Eitan Muller and Barak Libai
This book bridges the gap between what academics know, and what innovation stakeholders—from managers, to investors, to analysts, to consumers—need to know about how new products and services are expected to perform in the marketplace. The book develops a compelling... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Technology Diffusion; New Products; Customer Lifetime Value; Monetization Strategy; Social Influence; Innovation Adoption; Forecasting Demand; Commercialization; Marketing Strategy; Practice; Customer Value and Value Chain; Research; Innovation and Management; Technology Adoption; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Development
- August 2016 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
AnswerDash (Abridged)
By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman
It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry
- August 2016 (Revised May 2018)
- Module Note
Strategy Execution Module 1: Managing Organizational Tensions
By: Robert Simons
This module reading lays the foundation for executing strategy using performance measurement and control systems. Properly applied, these systems can overcome the organizational blocks that impede the potential of all people who work in modern organizations. This... View Details
Keywords: Management Control Systems; Implementing Strategy; Strategy Execution; Performance Measurement; Profit Planning; Organization Design; Profitable Growth; Management Attention; Organizational Conflict; Human Behavior; Strategy; Ethics; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance; Measurement and Metrics
- August 2016
- Article
The Role of (Dis)similarity in (Mis)predicting Others' Preferences
By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Leslie K. John
Consumers readily indicate liking options that appear dissimilar—for example, enjoying both rustic lake vacations and chic city vacations or liking both scholarly documentary films and action-packed thrillers. However, when predicting other consumers’ tastes for the... View Details
- July–August 2016
- Article
Minimum Advertised Pricing: Patterns of Violation in Competitive Retail Markets
By: Ayelet Israeli, Eric Anderson and Anne Coughlan
Manufacturers in many industries frequently use vertical price policies, such as minimum advertised price (MAP), to influence prices set by downstream retailers. Although manufacturers expect retail partners to comply with MAP policies, violations of MAP are common in... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Empirical Economics of Online Attention
By: Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein and Jeffrey Prince
In several markets, firms compete not for consumer expenditure but instead for consumer attention. We model and characterize how households allocate their scarce attention in arguably the largest market for attention: the Internet. Our characterization of household... View Details
- June 2016 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
AnswerDash
By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman
It is 2014, and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry
- 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
- Article
Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts
By: Ethan Mollick and Ramana Nanda
In fields as diverse as technology entrepreneurship and the arts, crowds of interested stakeholders are increasingly responsible for deciding which innovations to fund, a privilege that was previously reserved for a few experts, such as venture capitalists and... View Details
- May 25, 2016
- Comment
How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health
By: John A. Quelch
Healthcare and education are two issues in which citizens around the world, rich and poor, are passionately interested. It has long been appreciated that the way that a society treats its youngest and oldest members says much about its moral maturity. Economic... View Details
Keywords: Healthcare; Consumer Power; Innovation In Healthcare Delivery; Mobile Healthcare; Transition; Transformation; Trends; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Health Care and Treatment; Information; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Management; Marketing; Markets; Planning; Problems and Challenges; Biotechnology Industry; Chemical Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Distribution Industry; Fashion Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Public Administration Industry; South America; North and Central America; Middle East; Europe; Asia
- May 2016
- Case
Revitalizing State Bank of India
By: Srikant M. Datar, N. M. Bhatta, Rishikesha T. Krishnan and Rachna Tahilyani
State Bank of India is India’s oldest and largest bank with the government of India as its majority shareholder. Arundhati Bhattacharya, a 35-year veteran of the bank, is appointed as its chairman in October 2013. Her appointment coincides with Moody’s downgrading the... View Details
Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Communication Strategy; Leadership Style; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change And Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; Human Resources; Employees; Compensation And Benefits; Recruiting; Capital Markets; Performance Expectations; Financial Services Industry; Asia; India
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Great Training Robbery
By: Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom and Derek Schrader
In 2012 U.S. corporations spent $164.2 billion on training and education. Overwhelming evidence and experience shows, however, that most companies are unable to transfer employee learning into changes in individual and organization behavior or improved financial... View Details
- Article
Learning from Potentially Biased Statistics: Household Inflation Perceptions and Expectations in Argentina
By: Alberto Cavallo, Guillermo Cruces and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
When forming expectations, households may be influenced by perceived bias in the information they receive. In this paper, we study how individuals learn from potentially biased statistics using data from both a natural experiment and a survey experiment during a... View Details
- March 2016
- Teaching Note
MasterCard: Driving Financial Inclusion
By: Sunil Gupta
Since joining MasterCard (MC) in 2010, CEO Ajay Banga had made advancing financial inclusion (FI)—bringing formal financial services to marginalized populations—an important goal for the company. In 2014, MC had entered a number of partnerships with governments and... View Details
- February 2016 (Revised February 2020)
- Teaching Note
Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve
By: Ryan W. Buell and Ananth Raman
Celebrated as one of the world's premiere luxury hotel brands, Oberoi Hotels attracts and serves some of the most quality sensitive guests in the world. The case considers the challenge of how an organization with a standardized service model can repeatedly delight... View Details
Keywords: Service Quality; Service Management; Service Quality Competition; Customer Management; Customer Service Excellence; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Training; Hospitality; Hotel Industry; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Training; Quality; Accommodations Industry; India
- 2017
- Working Paper
Optimal Tilts: Combining Persistent Characteristic Portfolios
By: Malcolm Baker, Ryan Taliaferro and Terry Burnham
We examine the optimal weighting of four tilts in US equity markets from 1968 through 2014. We define a “tilt” as a characteristic-based portfolio strategy that requires relatively low annual turnover. This is a continuum, with small size, a very persistent... View Details