Publications

2024
Working Paper

Lost in Transmission

By: Thomas Graeber, Shakked Noy and Christopher Roth

For many decisions, people rely on information received from others by word of mouth. How does the process of verbal transmission distort economic information? In our experiments, participants listen to audio recordings containing economic forecasts and are paid to... View Details

Keywords: Information Trnasmission; Word Of Mouth; Word-of-Mouth; Narratives; Reliability; Knowledge Sharing; Spoken Communication; Cognition and Thinking

Article

Don't Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety

By: Alison Wood Brooks, Julianna Schroeder, Jane Risen, Francesca Gino, Adam D. Galinsky, Michael I. Norton and Maurice Schweitzer

From public speaking to first dates, people frequently experience performance anxiety. And when experienced immediately before or during performance, anxiety harms performance. Across a series of experiments, we explore the efficacy of a common strategy that people... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Performance; Emotions

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May 2011 (Revised January 2012)
Supplement

OPOWER: Increasing Energy Efficiency through Normative Influence (B)

By: Maarten W. Bos, Amy J.C. Cuddy and Kyle Todd Doherty

The case profiles OPOWER, an energy efficiency software company that applies Cialdini's principles of social influence to successfully encourage consumers to reduce their energy usage. OPOWER was co-founded in 2008 by two young Harvard graduates, Dan Yates and Alex... View Details

Keywords: Energy Conservation

November 1994 (Revised January 1995)
Background Note

A Note on Capital Cash Flow Valuation

By: Richard S. Ruback

Presents the capital cash flow method for valuing risky cash flows. In this method cash flows are calculated to include the benefits of interest tax shields. In a capital structure, with just ordinary debt and common equity, capital cash flows equal the flows available... View Details

Keywords: Capital; Cash Flow; Valuation

Matt Weinzierl is Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program at Harvard Business School, where he is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration in the Business, Government, and the International Economy Unit, and a Research... View Details

Keywords: aerospace

01 Jun 2013
News

Minding The Gap

March 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Patagonia: 'Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder'

By: Brian Trelstad, Nien-hê Hsieh, Michael Norris and Susan Pinckney

In September 2022, Yvon Chouinard, the iconoclastic founder of outdoor apparel company Patagonia, announced a new ownership model for his company. Chouinard and his family had held complete control of the company's voting and non-voting stock since its founding 50... View Details

05 Feb 2018
What Do You Think?

Should Companies Disclose Employee Compensation?

information when it determines the value of sharing would be low and “the distraction it would cause would be significant.” This prompts the subject of our conversation today: Should compensation data be... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

14 Oct 2020
Blog Post

Creating the Minority Renaissance for Venture Capital: Interview with Henri Pierre-Jacques and Jarrid Tingle, Managing Partners at Harlem Capital

entrepreneurs. Pierre-Jacques said, “We have a unique opportunity to change the face of entrepreneurship and create the minority renaissance for venture capital. We have had a lot of people reach out to us who don’t have experience in... View Details

July–August 2014
Article

Obamacare Rules Pose Challenges for S Corp Owners

By: Josh Baron, Steve Salley and Judith L. Walsh

The article offers information financial impacts of tax by the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA) applied in January 2013 on family business shareholders and owners of S Corp. It discusses suggestions in tax planning to equalize tax burden including establishing family... View Details

Keywords: Ownership Type; Family Ownership; Compensation and Benefits; Taxation; Government Legislation

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2019
Book

Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation

By: Gary P. Pisano

Creative Construction tackles the myth that larger enterprises are inherently incapable of transformative innovation and are doomed to be disrupted by nimble start-ups. If larger enterprises seem incapable of transformative innovation, it is due to how we design... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Business Growth and Maturation; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Culture; Management Systems; Creativity; Leading Change

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July 2002 (Revised March 2003)
Case

North East Medical Services

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Wendy Carter

Sophie Wong, president and CEO of North East Medical Services, a health care organization dedicated to serving the underprivileged Asian American community in San Francisco, must decide how to reposition the organization to serve patients from multiple income levels... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Human Resources; Leadership; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Health Industry; San Francisco

23 May 2021
News

Psychological Safety

October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Dulcie Madden (A)—Growth or Exit?

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Christopher Payton and Shweta Bagai

This is part of a three-case series that follows Dulcie Madden's journey as a founder over five years. Case (A) is about managing growth and cash flow; Case (B) is about the exit decision and conditions on a sale; Case (C) shows Madden dealing with adversity and the... View Details

2016
Working Paper

Paying (for) Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Xiaosheng Mu and Alexander Peysakhovich

Human information processing is often modeled as costless Bayesian inference. However, research in psychology shows that attention is a computationally costly and potentially limited resource. We study a Bayesian individual for whom computing posterior beliefs is... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Economics

Research Summary

Overview

Given the difficulty of directly debiasing cognitive and social biases, Ariella's research focuses on how environments can be structured to reduce biased behaviors and outcomes. Ariella is currently pursuing two main strands of research: the first is a focus on... View Details

April 2025
Case

Techint: Strategic Choices for Community Impact

By: Lauren Cohen, Virak Prum, Kenneth Charman, Pedro Levindo and Mariana Cal

In early 2024 Erika Bienek, Chief Community Relations Officer at Techint, had to decide whether to invest in a new company-owned and operated technical school in Veracruz, Mexico, or invest instead in strengthening the city’s public education system. Techint, a global... View Details

Keywords: Technical Institutes; Community Relations; Social Impact; Argentina; Mexico; Brazil; Conglomerate; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Community Impact; Philanthropy; Business Conglomerates; Business Subsidiaries; Business Headquarters; Family Business; Decision Making; Private Sector; Public Sector; Education; Curriculum and Courses; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Teaching; Training; Learning; Energy; Engineering; Construction; Values and Beliefs; Geography; Global Range; Local Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Recruitment; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge; Resource Allocation; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Creativity; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Construction Industry; Education Industry; Energy Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Europe; Italy; Latin America; North and Central America; Mexico; North America; United States; South America; Argentina; Buenos Aires; Brazil