Publications

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14 May 2007
Research & Ideas

The Key to Managing Stars? Think Team

performance? A: For managers, it is imperative to understand that stars are not self-contained silos. Producing top-quality knowledge work requires collaboration and flows of information among a network of top performers. That means any one View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

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HBR Classics - Alumni

Five Messages Leaders Must Manage , John Hamm The Power of Talk , Deborah Tannen Transforming Corner - Office Strategy into Frontline Action Decision-Making Conquering a Culture of Indecision , Ram Charan Stop Making Plans Start View Details

March 2019
Case

Mahindra Finance

By: V.G. Narayanan and Tanvi Deshpande

Mahindra Finance is a non-banking lender operating mainly in the rural and semi-urban areas of India. Set up in 1991, the company had grown to become a market leader with assets of $8.5 billion and a presence in 3,30,000 villages across India. Since most of Mahindra's... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Business Model; Volatility; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Credit; Financing and Loans; Service Delivery; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry; India

Web

About the Center - Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning

of character...we want [the student] to start thinking about issues...to think about the ethics of someone in a company making 10 million dollars and someone making three thousand dollars a year...about how... View Details

July 2019
Article

I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice

By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis

People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen... View Details

Keywords: Self-other Difference; Social Perception; Inference-making; Preferences; Consumer Behavior; Prediction; Prediction Error; Decision Choices and Conditions; Perception; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction

March 2021
Article

Deliberately Prejudiced Self-driving Vehicles Elicit the Most Outrage

By: Julian De Freitas and Mina Cikara

Should self-driving vehicles be prejudiced, e.g., deliberately harm the elderly over young children? When people make such forced-choices on the vehicle’s behalf, they exhibit systematic preferences (e.g., favor young children), yet when their options are unconstrained... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Autonomous Vehicles; Driverless Policy; Moral Outrage; Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Transportation; Policy

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04 Aug 2011
What Do You Think?

How Dangerous Is Common Sense to Managers?

Mott commented that "Managers who use only common sense to make decisions can fall prey to short-sighted thinking." Ajay Kumar Gupta cautioned that "we tend to forget many things" and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

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Faculty & Researchers - Managing the Future of Work

Manjari supports co-chairs William R. Kerr and Joseph B. Fuller on all project priorities. Her research efforts focus on location choices by global companies, the role of business in making cities and regions more competitive, shared... View Details

August 2018 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Magnus Resch: Transforming the Art Market Through Transparency

By: Henry McGee and Sarah Mehta

Economist and entrepreneur Magnus Resch was on a mission to make the art market more transparent. To that end, in 2014, he began building the Magnus app, which catalogued the price and transaction history of millions of works of art. Users could download the app, take... View Details

Keywords: Art Market; Transparency; Art Pricing; Business Startups; Decision Making; Innovation Strategy; Culture; Business Strategy; Mobile Technology; Fine Arts Industry; Information Technology Industry

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

the profits come from the other side. Can you give an example or two and explain why these markets are structured like this? A: Dating clubs usually charge only the men, and credit card companies make their revenues mostly from merchants... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

May 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details

2023
Working Paper

The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior: Evidence from Young U.S. Movers, 1992–2021

By: Jacob R. Brown, Enrico Cantoni, Sahil Chinoy, Martin Koenen and Vincent Pons

We ask how childhood environment shapes political behavior. We measure young voters’ participation and party affiliation in nationally comprehensive voter files and reconstruct their childhood location histories based on their parents’ addresses. We compare outcomes of... View Details

Keywords: Political Parties; Government and Politics; Age; Residency; Voting

07 Oct 2014
First Look

First Look: October 7

marketplaces. Rothman had five food delivery startup options to choose from, a philosophy on how to analyze marketplace businesses, and a few weeks to make his first ever investment as a Partner at Greylock. Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis

conduct an analysis to determine how companies were responding to the crisis. Were they retaining their staff and providing essential workers with extra pay, or were they cutting expenses through layoffs and furloughs? "It gave us a rare opportunity. Every View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

10 Oct 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Scaling Two Businesses Against the Odds: Wendy Estrella’s Founder’s Journey

Keywords: Re: Jeffrey J. Bussgang; Legal Services; Real Estate

Web

Resources - Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning

Method by David Garvin October 2003 Harvard Magazine Making the Case by David Garvin Background Notes 1995, rev. 1996 Choreographing a Case Class by V. Kasturi Rangan Compares four different approaches to case teaching: lecturing,... View Details

May 2020
Case

Big Boom Beverages: Fight or Flight?

By: Stephen A. Greyser and William Ellet

Four college friends market a beverage that combines ingredients like those in a drink they consumed in college bars. It includes a caffeinated energy drink, malt liquor, and a soft drink flavoring. They launch the business, Big Boom Beverages (BBB), with their own... View Details

Keywords: Alcoholic Beverages; Energy Drinks; Regulation; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Marketing Communications; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Reputation; Communication Strategy; Decision Making

2012
Working Paper

The Dark Side of the Vote: Biased Voters, Social Information, and Information Aggregation Through Majority Voting

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a "dark side", i.e. result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We develop a... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Voting