Publications

2013
Working Paper

Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space

By: Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent space as an approach to control for latent homophily, the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." In a series of... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Social Network; Mobile App; Peer Effects; Latent Homophily; Latent Space; Proxy Variables; Familiarity; Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Social and Collaborative Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Power and Influence; Social Media

2014
Article

Prosocial Spending and Happiness: Using Money to Benefit Others Pays Off

By: Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin and Michael I. Norton

While a great deal of research has shown that people with more money are somewhat happier than people with less money, our research demonstrates that how people spend their money also matters for their happiness. In particular, both correlational and... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Spending; Well-being; Happiness; Money; Spending; Welfare; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

November 2013
Case

GlaxoSmithKline in China (A)

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

Four GlaxoSmithKline employees were accused of bribing Chinese health care workers to prescribe the company's drugs. The accusations brought to light the questionable incentive structures of the Chinese health care system and the pressure on companies to adhere to... View Details

Educators

October 2013
Article

Ferguson's Formula

By: Anita Elberse and Sir Alex Ferguson

When Alex Ferguson took over as manager of the English football team Manchester United, the club was in dire straits: It hadn't won a league title in nearly 20 years and faced a very real threat of being relegated to a lower division. In 26 seasons under Ferguson,... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Business or Company Management; Management Style; Success; Sports; Sports Industry; England

July–August 2013
Article

Looking Up and Looking Out: Career Mobility Effects of Demographic Similarity among Professionals

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Katherine L. Milkman

We investigate the role of workgroup sex and race composition on the career mobility of professionals in "up-or-out" organizations. We develop a nuanced perspective on the potential career mobility effects of workgroup demography by integrating the social... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Race And Ethnicity; Ethnicity; Race; Personal Development and Career; Gender; Legal Services Industry

2013
Dissertation

Designing Freemium: A Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics

By: Clarence Lee, Vineet Kumar and Sunil Gupta

Abstract. Over the past decade "freemium" (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers... View Details

Keywords: Discrete-Continuous Choice Dynamic Structural Models; Bayesian Estimation; Word-of-Mouth; Digital Services; Freemium; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Motivation and Incentives; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Reference Programs; Business Startups

June–July 2013
Article

Firm Rivalry, Knowledge Accumulation, and MNE Location Choices

By: Juan Alcacer, Cristian Deszo and Minyuan Zhao

The international business (IB) literature has mostly emphasized the impact of location and firm characteristics on location choices. However, industries with a significant presence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are oligopolistic in nature, which suggests that... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Game Theory; Global Strategy

June 2013
Article

What Is Privacy Worth?

By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein

Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Rights; Valuation; Ethics; Identity

September 2013
Article

Cultures as Learning Laboratories: What Makes Some More Effective than Others?

By: Elaine Mosakowski, Goran Calic and P C Early

With a mandate to globalize, business school educators have increasingly embraced global service learning as an important technique for creating global mind-sets and enhancing cultural understanding in students. While we applaud this movement from the domestic to the... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Learning; Cognition and Thinking; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

Register to Read

February 2013
Article

Learning from Roger Fisher

By: James K. Sebenius

Roger Fisher's career and writings not only offer lessons about negotiation but also about how an academic, especially in a professional school such as law or business, can make an important, positive difference in the world. By his relentless engagement in vexing... View Details

Keywords: Roger Fisher; Dispute Resolution; Bargaining; Negotiation

2014
Working Paper

Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships

By: Sen Chai and Willy C. Shih

Scientific research and its translation into commercialized technology is a driver of wealth creation and economic growth. Partnerships to foster the translational processes from public research organizations, such as universities and hospitals, to private firms are a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Firm Performance; Public-private Partnership Funding; Translational Research; Small And Medium Enterprises; Partners and Partnerships; Public Sector; Private Sector; Performance; Science-Based Business; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

2013
Book

Porte à porte: Reconquérir la démocratie sur le terrain

By: Guillaume Liégey, Arthur Muller and Vincent Pons

From January to May 2012, campaign activists supporting François Hollande knocked at five millions doors, making this door-to-door effort the largest in Europe to date. This project was formed by Guillaume Liégey, Arthur Muller, and Vincent Pons, who had met at the... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Political Elections; United States; Europe

2013
Conference Paper

Preliminary Thoughts and Observation on the Boston Marathon Bombings

By: Dutch Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt

December 2012
Article

Inducement Prizes and Innovation

By: Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner and Tom Nicholas

We examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the Royal Agricultural Society of England at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939. We find that the effects of prizes on competitive entry are large, and we... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Information Technology; Growth and Development; England

2012
Working Paper

Modularity and Organizations

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Modularity describes the degree to which a complex system can be broken apart into subunits (modules) that can be recombined in various ways. Modularity is important for organizations and the economy because the boundaries of organizational units and corporations are... View Details

Keywords: Complex Systems; Information Hiding; Loosely-coupled Systems; Mirroring; Mirroring Hypothesis; Modules; Modularity; Near-decomposable Systems; Product Architecture; Option Value; Organizational Design; Complexity

November 2012
Article

Empirical Observations on Longer-term Use of Incentives for Weight Loss

By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Behavioral economic-based interventions are emerging as powerful tools to help individuals accomplish their own goals, including weight loss. Deposit contract incentive systems give participants the opportunity to put their money down toward losing weight, which they... View Details

Keywords: Weight Loss; Obesity; Behavioral Economics; Intervention; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

October 2012
Case

Brazil 2003: Inflation Targeting and Debt Dynamics (Abridged)

By: Laura Alfaro and Rafael Di Tella

In October 2002, Brazilians elected a left-wing president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, for the first time in that country's history. As markets faltered in response, Lula sought to reaffirm his commitment to fiscal discipline, a floating exchange rate, and inflation... View Details

Keywords: Brazil; Inflation; Emerging Markets; Inflation and Deflation; Brazil

Educators

Article

Exploring the Duality Between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the 'Mirroring' Hypothesis

By: Alan MacCormack, Carliss Y. Baldwin and John Rusnak

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that the organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details

Keywords: Organization Design; Architecture; Modularity; Open Source Software; Communication; Design; Governance; Management Practices and Processes; Open Source Distribution; Product Design; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Behavior; Software

December 2012
Article

Grand Innovation Prizes: A Theoretical, Normative, and Empirical Evaluation

By: Alan MacCormack, Fiona Murray, Scott Stern and Georgina Campbell

This paper provides a systematic examination of the use of a Grand Innovation Prize (GIP) in action—the Progressive Automotive Insurance X PRIZE—a $10 million prize for a highly efficient vehicle. Following a mechanism design approach we define three key dimensions for... View Details

Keywords: Design; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Performance; Auto Industry