Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,577)
- Faculty Publications (646)
- May–June 2018
- Article
Layoffs That Don't Break Your Company: Better Approaches to Workforce Transition
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta
Today layoffs have become companies’ default response to the challenges created by advances in technology and global competition. Yet research shows that job cuts rarely help senior leaders achieve their goals. Too often, they’re done for short-term gain, but the cost... View Details
- April 2018
- Supplement
Flipkart (B): The Ongoing Battle for India's E-Commerce Market
By: Sunil Gupta, Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani
In 2017, both Flipkart and Amazon claimed leadership position in India's recently concluded key annual festive season sale, but it was too early to declare victory. Amazon continues to invest heavily in India. Competition from newer players is increasing. Media reports... View Details
- Article
Space, the Final Economic Frontier
After decades of centralized control of economic activity in space, NASA and U.S. policymakers have begun to cede the direction of human activities in space to commercial companies. NASA garnered more than 0.7% of GDP in the mid-1960s but is only around 0.1% of GDP... View Details
- March 2018
- Case
TrustSphere: Building a Market for Relationship Analytics
By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden
Manish Goel was the CEO of TrustSphere, a seven-year-old company in the data analytics industry that focused squarely on relationship analytics, a space in which TrustSphere was pioneering a unique technology and solutions in the areas of sales, risk, and people... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised September 2023)
- Case
X: The Foghorn Decision
In February 2016, Kathy Hannun—a project leader at X, Alphabet Inc.'s so-called "moonshot factory"—had to prepare a recommendation for the senior leadership of X regarding the future of Foghorn, a project she was leading to develop a carbon-neutral process for... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Amazon, Google, and Apple: Smart Speakers and the Battle for the Connected Home
By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson
Amazon, Google, and Apple all offer their own smart speaker. The devices represent each firm's entry point into the connected home market. All three companies come into the space with their own strengths and weaknesses. Who will win? View Details
Keywords: Apple; Apple Inc.; Google; Amazon; Amazon.com; Google Home; Homepod; Echo; Smart Home; Connected Home; Voice; Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning; Internet Of Things; Smart Speaker; Connected Speaker; Intelligent Assistants; Virtual Assistants; Voice Assistants; Alexa; Google Assistant; Siri; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Business Strategy; Adoption; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Household; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- February 2018 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Artificial Intelligence and the Machine Learning Revolution in Finance: Cogent Labs and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy and William Powley
This case examines the intersection of two firms (Cogent Labs—a machine learning software firm in Tokyo; and Google, the technology infrastructure giant) attempting to exploit the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial services... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
OpenInvest
By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details
- February 2018
- Article
Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns
By: William R. Kerr
This study tests the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade. The empirical analysis has three comparative advantages: including emerging and advanced economies, isolating panel variation regarding the link between productivity and... View Details
- January 2018
- Case
Scaling Swagbucks (A)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble
In early 2014, Chuck Davis (HBS '86) has joined Swagbucks as its first professional CEO to scale a successful and profitable brand promotion and consumer research business. Davis came into the job while serving as a venture partner at TCV, a growth stage VC firm,... View Details
Keywords: Loyalty Management; Scaling; Scale; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Leading Change; Growth Management; Religion; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Transition; Leadership; Technology Industry; Technology Industry
- 2019
- Working Paper
Machine Learning Approaches to Facial and Text Analysis: Discovering CEO Oral Communication Styles
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Dan Wang, Natalie A. Carlson and Tarun Khanna
We demonstrate how a novel synthesis of three methods—(1) unsupervised topic modeling of text data to generate new measures of textual variance, (2) sentiment analysis of text data, and (3) supervised ML coding of facial images with a cutting-edge convolutional neural... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Background Note
Continuous Software Development: Agile's Successor
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Samuel Clemens and Olivia Hull
In recent years, the twin software development methodologies of continuous delivery and continuous deployment have risen to prominence in the start-up world and beyond. These methods have enabled technology companies large and small to accelerate their product... View Details
Keywords: Continuous Improvement; Continuous Development; Continuous Delivery; Continuous Integration; Product Development Processes; Computer Programming; Agile; Waterfall; Software Applications; Software Engineering; Applications and Software; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Customer Focus and Relationships; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Quality; Product Marketing; Product; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Massachusetts; Boston
- Article
Mitigating Bias in Adaptive Data Gathering via Differential Privacy
By: Seth Neel and Aaron Leon Roth
Data that is gathered adaptively—via bandit algorithms, for example—exhibits bias. This is true both when gathering simple numeric valued data—the empirical means kept track of by stochastic bandit algorithms are biased downwards—and when gathering more complicated... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Transportation Cost and the Geography of Foreign Investment
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen
Falling transportation costs and rapid technological progress in recent decades have precipitated an explosion of cross-border flows in goods, services, investments, and ideas led by multinational firms. Extensive research has sought to understand the geographic... View Details
- November 2017 (Revised July 2018)
- Case
Royal Philips: Designing Toward Profound Change
By: Srikant M. Datar, Rajiv Lal and Caitlin N. Bowler
This case explores Royal Philips CEO Frans van Houten's bold use of design research to inform a critical strategic decision: Should Philips leave its storied lighting business behind in favor of complete focus on health technology and consumer lifestyle products?... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
The Use and Misuse of Patent Data: Issues for Corporate Finance and Beyond
By: Josh Lerner
Patents and citations are powerful tools for understanding innovative activity inside the firm and are increasingly used in corporate finance research. But due to the complexities of patent data collection and the changing spatial and industry composition of innovative... View Details
- October 2017
- Case
LeBron James: Building a Hollywood Empire
By: Anita Elberse
It is June 2016. Superstar basketball player LeBron James and his childhood friend and business partner Maverick Carter are celebrating James’ third NBA championship. The duo will soon have to decide on a strategy for their media businesses—their film and television... View Details
Keywords: Film; Motion Picutres; Superstar; Innovation; Creative Industries; Talent; General Management; Celebrities; Marketing; Entertainment; Sports; Media; Film Entertainment; Innovation Strategy; Talent and Talent Management; Strategy; Digital Strategy; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry
- September 2017 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Intermountain Healthcare: Pursuing Precision Medicine
By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy E. Giusti, Robert S. Huckman and Julia Kelley
Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Intermountain Healthcare operates 23 hospitals and hundreds of clinics in Utah and Idaho and provides insurance to approximately 850,000 patients through its insurance arm, SelectHealth. In 2013, Intermountain, known for its commitment... View Details
- September 2017 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Great Lakes Banking Group: Data Management
By: Shane Greenstein and Christine Snively
In May 2016, Michael Rechtin, an expert in international data center law, advised global financial services firm Great Lakes Banking Group (GLBG) on its plans to upgrade its data centers. The bank’s data processing and storage systems were in need of an update, and... View Details
- September 2017
- Case
Sensing (and Monetizing) Happiness at Hitachi
By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton
Inspired by research linking happiness and productivity, Hitachi had invested in developing new “people analytics” technologies to help companies increase employee happiness. Hitachi had begun manufacturing high-tech badges that quantify a wearer’s activity patterns.... View Details