Publications

18 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 18

find that involuntary closures are most frequent in U.S. counties with high rates of households headed by single mothers, low levels of college education, high rates of property crime, a strong presence of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2025
Article

Humor as a Window into Generative AI Bias

By: Roger Samure, Julian De Freitas and Stefano Puntoni

A preregistered audit of 600 images by generative AI across 150 different prompts explores the link between humor and discrimination in consumer-facing AI solutions. When ChatGPT updates images to make them “funnier”, the prevalence of stereotyped groups changes. While... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Demographics; Prejudice and Bias

Read Now

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A) (Abridged)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Innovation; Crowdsourcing; XPRIZE; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Space Industry; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Mobility; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

25 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 25

concerning whether patents are a creative or a destructive influence on the process of technological development. In this paper I examine the basic patent tradeoff between incentives and monopoly distortions in light of recent... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

May 2024
Supplement

gWorks (A)

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

In January of 2019, Joe Heieck, CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size as gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was acquired by... View Details

March 2012 (Revised September 2012)
Case

INRIX

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Ryan Johnson

Since its founding in 2004, INRIX, a leading global provider of traffic information and driver services, had received four rounds of financing from leading venture capital (VC) firms and by 2012 had been cash flow positive for the past six quarters. Its founder, Bryan... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Startups; Organizational Structure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Washington (state, US)

17 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 17, 2018

analyses suggest that the surge in liability risk had a large and negative impact on downstream innovation in medical implants but no significant effect on upstream polymer patenting. These findings show how tort laws may affect the development of new View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Angels Face the Innovator’s Dilemma

or high potential markets that are $10 billion in size in any given year." The bigger the company becomes, he pointed out, the more important it is that the company lays out a very deliberate strategy. Yet the disruptive View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

2025
Working Paper

Enhancing Treatment Effect Prediction on Privacy-Protected Data: An Honest Post-Processing Approach

By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza

As firms increasingly rely on customer data for personalization, concerns over privacy and regulatory compliance have grown. Local Differential Privacy (LDP) offers strong individual-level protection by injecting noise into data before collection. While... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Intervention; Conditional Average Treatment Effect Estimation; Differential Privacy; Honest Estimation; Post-processing; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior; Marketing

SSRN

Read Now

March 2020
Case

Aereo

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jacey Taft

Aereo aimed to disrupt television program distribution by providing consumers access to local broadcast TV programming using offsite antennas, cloud-based DVRs, and an Internet connection. With Aereo, consumers could “cut the cord” and avoid the high cost of a cable TV... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Failure; Lawsuits and Litigation; Internet and the Web; Media; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

April 2008 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Visions of Web 3.0

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and David Andrew Vivero

Explores the Semantic Web, a vision for the next generation of the World Wide Web in which information is stored in machine-readable formats. While the Semantic Web would make information more easily accessible, barriers to its adoption are very high because website... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web

Find at Harvard

August 1985 (Revised December 1987)
Case

Waters Chromatography Division: U.S. Field Sales (A)

Provides background information on the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) industry and the Waters Chromatography Division, an operation engaged in the development, manufacture and sale of HPLC instrument systems and chemical products. An overview of Waters'... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Sales; Technology Industry

October 2015
Case

BandPage (A)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Colin Maclay and Greta Friar

BandPage CEO James "J" Sider is about to receive results from BandPage's targeted advertising campaign on music streaming service Rhapsody and learn whether BandPage's strategy to improve ad click through rates and generate revenue has succeeded. BandPage, which began... View Details

Keywords: Digital Innovation; Digital Music; Digital Marketing; Mobile Marketing; Technological Innovation; Marketing Communications; Music Entertainment; Mobile Technology; Music Industry

September 2006 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Warner Bros. and BitTorrent

Involves the copyright issues associated with Bram Cohen's revolutionary program BitTorrent, which makes it possible to transfer very large files, such as movies, at a high speed over the Internet. The program, which is available for free over the Internet, is used for... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Copyright; Lawfulness; Distribution; Internet and the Web; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

26 Jun 2012
First Look

First Look: June 26

rates to those facing high tax rates. Evidence from the worldwide operations of U.S. multinational firms indicates that affiliates in low-tax jurisdictions use trade credit to lend, whereas those in high-tax jurisdictions use trade credit... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Oct 2013
First Look

First Look: October 15

innovation, our results also help to explain why technological development was still robust following one of the largest shocks in the history of the U.S. banking system. Working Papers Team Scaffolds: How Minimal Team Structures Enable... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 26

across funds. Controlling for fund performance, fund holdings with high past returns attract extra flows only if these stocks were recently featured in major newspapers. In contrast, holdings that were not covered in the media do not... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July, 2022
Article

Telehealth Visits After Shoulder Surgery: Higher Patient Satisfaction and Lower Costs

By: Evan A. O'Donnell, Jillian E. Haberli, Andres Muniz Martinez, Daniel Yagoda, Robert S. Kaplan and Jon J.P. Warner

Purpose and Methods: The study compared the cost of telemedicine visits with in-person clinic visits for routine follow-up after common shoulder surgeries. It also evaluated the safety and patient experience with telemedicine visits. Time-driven activity-based costing... View Details

Keywords: Telehealth; Patient Satisfaction; Health Care and Treatment; Communication Technology; Health Industry