Behavioral Decision Research - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

‘Retail Revolution’ Excerpt: The Scale of the Ecommerce Threat

trips that don't happen. As a result of increased online shopping, traffic across the retail sector is falling (by as much as 50% when the holiday months of 2010 are compared to those of 2013). Exacerbating the traffic decline, when shoppers do leave their homes, they... View Details

Keywords: Re: Rajiv Lal; Retail

April 2019 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Clear Link Technologies, LLC: Driving Sales with Peer Effects

By: Christopher Stanton, Richard Saouma and Olivia Hull

The importance of a good peer or coworker is widely discussed, but understanding the glue that makes coworkers valuable is less understood. This case sheds light on the importance of peers and the practices and environments that make a group greater than the sum of its... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

06 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

The Determinants of Corporate Venture Capital Success

parent's strategic focus." The Xerox Corporation originated as a photography-paper business called the Haloid Company. 3 The Haloid Company's entrance into what would later become its principal business came in 1947, when it and the Battelle Memorial Institute, a... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner

01 Dec 2003
Research & Ideas

Sometimes Success Begins at Failure

Research Center lab. When it didn't see the results it sought, Xerox terminated further funding for projects that we know today as Ethernet (by 3Com) and PostScript (by Adobe). These projects were evaluated within Xerox and judged not to... View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough; Health; Pharmaceutical

02 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Have Marketers Ignored America’s Man-of-Action Hero?

behavior shaped modern American business? A: American business history is chock full of man-of-action hero stories: Edison, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, on and on. But the man-of-action hero receded in the postwar era through the... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

17 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

How ‘Hybrid’ Nonprofits Can Stay on Mission

difficult to make the best hiring decisions because of their own preexisting biases. Battilana explains the problem in a yet-to-be-published paper, tentatively titled "Neither Corporations Nor Not-For-Profits But a Combination of the Two:... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

24 Jul 2013
Op-Ed

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy: HBS Faculty Weigh In

Research Triangle in North Carolina think very hard about focus in order to create a virtuous cycle of complementary successful ventures. The results have been extraordinary. A generation ago, it would have seemed farfetched to predict... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber, Robert C. Pozen, Eric D. Werker & Benjamin Kennedy; Auto

09 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 9, 2008

project goes poorly, and Hrad is left with the decision of how to rescue the relationship and avoid a similar problem in the future. The case allows the examination of how to manage an outsourcing project and permits a general discussion... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Jul 2014
Op-Ed

Reform Tax Law to Keep US Firms at Home

I am a Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Recent merger transactions highlight long-simmering problems in the US... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai; Pharmaceutical

18 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

Caught in the Cogs: When Manufacturing and IT Meet

instead, it has become integrated with the whole manufacturing process—David Upton But once that decision has been made, "sitting" is far from the operative word for IT systems, which require the same kind of continuous... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

unchanging over relatively long periods of time" and which were "necessarily more responsive to changes in the marketplace and the pressures of other environmental forces." This distinction was crucial because "the strategic View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

08 May 2020
In Practice

Nonprofits Hurt by COVID-19 Must Hoard Cash to Hold On

circumstances: ensure the survival of the organization. For this, cash is king. Accordingly, the immediate priority is to halt the outflow of cash. Any dollar leaving the organization is a high-level decision and any payment that does not... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

02 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

Retail Reaches a Tipping Point—Which Stores Will Survive?

Alvarez, and research associate Dan Greenberg (Harvard MBA 2012). Their new book Retail Revolution: Will Your Brick-and-Mortar Store Survive?, predicts, among many other things, the continuing decline of major brick and mortar brands... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

08 Jul 2015
What Do You Think?

Do Americans Work Too Much and Think About Work Too Little?

people spend less time at work by empowering them to take decisions without 2- or 3- levels up approvals ." Tema Frank said that "we need to move to a system where people are compensated based on results achieved rather than... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

19 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Should Compete for Your Privacy

information to provide." “Focusing on a single revenue source is the most profitable strategy when firms compete for consumer information” It's clear from their research that the marketplace has plenty of room for two types of Internet... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Consumer Products

29 Feb 2016
HBS Case

Bigbelly's Big Bet on the Digital Trash Can

advertising. “Government is a giant customer. They buy a lot of stuff” Harvard Business School professor Mitchell Weiss explores this strategy pivot in a new case on Bigbelly, co-written with case researcher Christine Snively, that looks... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy

02 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Excerpt: ‘A Social Strategy’

book excerpt What My Research Revealed, In Broad Strokes From A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media By Mikolaj Jan Piskorski As I began my research, it quickly became clear that there are two major ways in which companies... View Details

15 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Find Your Pragmatic Path through Radical Uncertainty

activities. These days, we need to plan more carefully because small decisions can have dire consequences for ourselves and for others. Consider the newly stressful task of grocery shopping. Should I order groceries online for home... View Details

Keywords: by Howard Stevenson, Eugene B. Kogan, and Shirley Spence

22 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

CEO Succession: The Case at Ford

Jim Aisner, Director of Media Relations at Harvard Business School. Jim Aisner: With me today is Harvard Business School professor Joseph Bower, an expert on corporate strategy and leadership. His most recent research focuses on CEO... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner; Auto; Employment

29 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 29

Abstract—Learning in organizations is a key determinant of individual and organizational success, and one valuable source of this learning is prior failure. Previous research finds that although individuals can learn from failed... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Publications