Publications

May 2024
Teaching Note

AI Wars

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 723-434. In 2024, the world was looking to Google to see what the search giant and long-time putative technical leader in artificial intelligence (AI) would do to compete in the massively hyped technology of generative AI popularized over... View Details

Keywords: AI; Trends; AI and Machine Learning; Public Opinion; Technological Innovation; Competitive Advantage; Technology Industry

Research Summary

Overview

By: Srikant M. Datar

Professor Datar has several research and course development interests. His initial areas of research interest were in cost management and management control, strategy implementation and governance. Over the last few years his areas of interest are management education,... View Details

June 2023
Article

When Does Uncertainty Matter? Understanding the Impact of Predictive Uncertainty in ML Assisted Decision Making

By: Sean McGrath, Parth Mehta, Alexandra Zytek, Isaac Lage and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As machine learning (ML) models are increasingly being employed to assist human decision makers, it becomes critical to provide these decision makers with relevant inputs which can help them decide if and how to incorporate model predictions into their decision... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Decision Making

January 2023 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Cobalt Robotics: Scaling Workplace Robotics

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Kyung Keun Park

Founded in 2016, Cobalt Robotics, based in Fremont, California, was a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) company that built autonomous workplace robots that were designed to replace or supplement human security guards. Outfitted with over 60 sensors, Cobalt robots patrolled... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Customers; Technology Industry; United States; California

Zhongming Jiang is a Ph.D. student in Marketing (Quantitative) at Harvard Business School. His methodological interests include Bayesian {nonparametrics, causal inference, deep learning}, and probabilistic machine learning. Substantively, he is interested... View Details

July 9, 2019
Article

Setting Better Sales Goals with Analytics

By: Doug J. Chung, Isabel Huber, Vinay Murthy, Varun Sunku and Marije Weber

Sales compensation is a critical lever in motivating a salesforce and driving growth in the business-to-business sector: Studies show that revising compensation in line with market trends can have a 50% greater impact on sales than advertisements have, for instance. A... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives

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Forthcoming
Article

An AI Method to Score Celebrity Visual Potential from Human Faces

By: Flora Feng, Shunyuan Zhang, Xiao Liu, Kannan Srinivasan and Cait Lamberton

It has long been a mantra of marketing practice that, particularly in low-involvement situations, spokespeople should be physically attractive. This paper suggests there is a higher probability of gaining fame and influence (i.e., celebrity potential) than is captured... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing

Blog

Is the Digital Transformation Certificate Right for You?

It's no secret that digital technologies have transformed—and continue to transform—entire industries. The ability to grasp the implications of shifting technologies, from mobile devices to social media to machine learning, is critical... View Details

25 Apr 2023
HBS Seminar

Bart Vanneste, UCL School of Management

30 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Can AI Predict Whether Shoppers Would Pick Crest or Colgate?

came from a sample of customers.” While the recent emergence of ChatGPT has reignited fears that machines may replace humans in the workplace, the results of this study don’t necessarily mean that AI is going to gut marketing departments,... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Marvin: A Personalized Telehealth Approach to Mental Health

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Eshani Sharma, Andrew Nguyen, Thomas Arsenault, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Julia Kelley

More than one third of Americans were said to suffer some type of behavioral health ailment at some point in their lifetime, with many people requiring chronic therapy or intervention. Despite significant clinical needs, access to reliable treatment has been difficult... View Details

Keywords: Mental Health; Applications; Startup Management; Telehealth; Health Care Entrepreneurship; Health ＆ Wellness; Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Applications and Software

2023
Working Paper

Feature Importance Disparities for Data Bias Investigations

By: Peter W. Chang, Leor Fishman and Seth Neel

It is widely held that one cause of downstream bias in classifiers is bias present in the training data. Rectifying such biases may involve context-dependent interventions such as training separate models on subgroups, removing features with bias in the collection... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Prejudice and Bias

Kris Ferreira is the Edgerley Family Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) Unit. She teaches the Supply Chain Management course in the MBA elective curriculum and analytics in numerous Executive Education... View Details

Keywords: retailing

February 2021
Case

Digital Manufacturing at Amgen

By: Shane Greenstein, Kyle R. Myers and Sarah Mehta

This case discusses efforts made by biotechnology (biotech) company Amgen to introduce digital technologies into its manufacturing processes. Doing so is complicated by the fact that the process for manufacturing biologics—or therapeutics made from living cells—is... View Details

June 2016
Article

Understanding Online Hotel Reviews Through Automated Text Analysis

By: Shawn Mankad, Hyunjeong "Spring" Han, Joel Goh and Srinagesh Gavirneni

Customer reviews submitted at Internet travel portals are an important yet underexplored new resource in obtaining feedback on customer experience for the hospitality industry. These data are often voluminous and unstructured, presenting analytical challenges for... View Details

Keywords: Hotel Reviews; Natural Language Processing; Information Technology; Service Operations; Accommodations Industry; Moscow

Find at Harvard

Article

How to Use Heuristics for Differential Privacy

By: Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zhiwei Steven Wu

We develop theory for using heuristics to solve computationally hard problems in differential privacy. Heuristic approaches have enjoyed tremendous success in machine learning, for which performance can be empirically evaluated. However, privacy guarantees cannot be... View Details

2022
Article

A Human-Centric Take on Model Monitoring

By: Murtuza Shergadwala, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Krishnaram Kenthapadi

Predictive models are increasingly used to make various consequential decisions in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, finance, and policy. It becomes critical to ensure that these models make accurate predictions, are robust to shifts in the data, do not rely on... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Research and Development; Demand and Consumers

2023
Working Paper

The Customer Journey as a Source of Information

By: Nicolas Padilla, Eva Ascarza and Oded Netzer

In the face of heightened data privacy concerns and diminishing third-party data access, firms are placing increased emphasis on first-party data (1PD) for marketing decisions. However, in environments with infrequent purchases, reliance on past purchases 1PD... View Details

Keywords: Customer Journey; Privacy; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Customer Focus and Relationships