Publications

January 2025
Supplement

Negotiating with Data: Analytics FC (B)

By: Jillian Jordan and Livia Alfonsi

Analytics FC was a UK-based sports consultancy that focused on international football (soccer), leveraging cutting-edge data-analytic techniques to support clubs, federations, and players. In 2022, Alex Greenwood, an elite female defender, approached the company for... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Negotiation Preparation; Gender; Analytics and Data Science; Sports; Reputation; Value Creation; Consulting Industry; Sports Industry; Europe; United Kingdom

2020
Working Paper

An Empirical Guide to Investor-Level Private Equity Data from Preqin

By: Juliane Begenau, Claudia Robles-Garcia, Emil Siriwardane and Lulu Wang

This note provides guidance on the use of investor-level private equity data from Preqin for empirical research. Preqin primarily sources its cash flow data through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with U.S. public pensions. Our focus is on the components of... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Returns; Prequin Data; Private Equity; Analytics and Data Science; Investment Return

SSRN

17 Nov 2016
News

Building Affordable Health Care in Paradise

01 Sep 2015
First Look

First Look -- September 1, 2015

non-market strategy. While there have been excellent studies highlighting the importance of preemption in Private Politics, political ties in Public Politics, and forum shopping in Integrated Political... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 1994
Background Note

Causal Inference

By: Arthur Schleifer Jr.

Discusses what causation is and what one can (and cannot) learn about causation from observational (nonexperimental) data. View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Interests

May 2020
Teaching Note

Talismark

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 211-097. Talismark negotiated waste hauling contracts for small and medium size companies. Its owners, Charles Muszynski and Marshall Staiman, were able to grow the business by more than 30% per year since it was founded, but believed... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Small Business Administration; Infrastructure; Restructuring; Business Processes; Information Management; Sales; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Wastes and Waste Processing

August 2010 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Highland Capital Partners: Investing in Cleantech

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron

One day during the summer of 2008, Paul Maeder, co-founder and general partner of Highland Capital Partners (HCP), was walking with his wife around Reykjavik, Iceland, marveling at how clean the city felt and at the widespread use of naturally occurring geothermal... View Details

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Global Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry

20 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

When CEOs Become Activists

business community was swift and dramatic. Deutsche Bank froze the creation of 250 jobs in Cary. More than 100 business leaders, many from well-known companies, signed a letter to Gov. McCrory opposing the new state law. PayPal cancelled... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Technology

2025
Working Paper

Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning

By: Liangzong Ma, Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant challenges.... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Policy; Deep Reinforcement Learning; Representation Learning; Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Foreign Direct Investment; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

Read Now

19 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

Why Are Web Sites So Confusing?

might go unrealized. Thus, enabling those matches through search diversion may, to a certain extent, provide a net benefit to society. Turns out, there are benefits which go beyond that. A recent and thought-provoking View Details

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu & Bruno Jullien

03 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 3

substantial information about GMO products, they positively affect approval rates of GMOs by threatening the reputation of the regulatory agency. Our study further shows that firm and product uncertainty... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

Stop Thinking of Climate Change as a Religious or Political Issue

exactly how fast we are changing the climate. We do know that we are treating the atmosphere as though it were free. This used to be a reasonable way to behave: our numbers were small enough, and our View Details

Keywords: by Forest Reinhardt; Energy; Utilities

14 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

Airbnb Hosts Discriminate Against African-American Guests

Due to racial discrimination, white vacationers have an easier time booking an Airbnb rental property than African-Americans do, according to a new study from faculty at Harvard Business School. The problem seems to lie in all the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Accommodations; Web Services

2020
Working Paper

Is Accounting Useful for Forecasting GDP Growth? A Machine Learning Perspective

By: Srikant Datar, Apurv Jain, Charles C.Y. Wang and Siyu Zhang

We provide a comprehensive examination of whether, to what extent, and which accounting variables are useful for improving the predictive accuracy of GDP growth forecasts. We leverage statistical models that accommodate a broad set of (341) variables—outnumbering the... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Elastic Net; GDP Growth; Machine Learning; Macro Forecasting; Short Fat Data; Accounting; Economic Growth; Forecasting and Prediction; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

Read Now

July 2013
Case

Novozymes: Establishing the Cellulosic Ethanol Value Chain

By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai

As the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes, Novozymes had invested heavily for many years to bio-engineer enzymes that could break down cellulose into fermentable sugar. In 2010, the company had launched what it thought would become a breakthrough product... View Details

August 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (A)

By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal

The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details

04 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Start to Measure Your E-commerce Success

"The study of e-commerce has unfolded in much the same way that e-commerce thrust itself on the business world—with a great deal of overstatement," says Marc J. Epstein, Visiting Professor and Wyss... View Details

Keywords: by Marc J. Epstein

August 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Calera Corporation

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Thomas J. Steenburgh and Lauren Barley

Brent Constantz, founder, CEO, and president of Calera Corporation, felt a surge of optimism as he gazed at the recently commissioned prototype flue gas processing line at Calera's R&D facility in Moss Landing, California. It was late May 2009, and Calera was an... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Product Design; Product Development; Environmental Sustainability; Commercialization; Green Technology Industry