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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(11,468)
- People (55)
- News (3,596)
- Research (5,288)
- Events (106)
- Multimedia (130)
- Faculty Publications (2,597)
- November 2004 (Revised September 2019)
- Background Note
The U.S. Health Club Industry in 2004
By: John R. Wells, Gabriel Ellsworth and Benjamin Weinstock
In 2004, the $16.8 billion U.S. health club industry continued its strong record of growth. There were almost 27,000 health clubs in the United States, up from 6,700 two decades earlier, and these clubs claimed 41 million members, over 14% of the U.S. population.... View Details
Keywords: Health Clubs; Fitness; Gyms; Chain; Weight Loss; Obesity; Exercise; Personal Training; Bally Total Fitness; 24 Hour Fitness; YMCA; Gold's Gym; Curves; Franchise; Franchising; Subscription; Promotional Sales; Promotions; Fixed Costs; Body; Accrual Accounting; Revenue Recognition; Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Trends; Customers; Demographics; Age; Income; Private Equity; Financing and Loans; Profit; Revenue; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Health; Nutrition; Business History; Employees; Retention; Human Capital; Working Conditions; Contracts; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Industry Growth; Industry Structures; Operations; Service Operations; Franchise Ownership; Private Ownership; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Salesforce Management; Situation or Environment; Opportunities; Nonprofit Organizations; Welfare; Sports; Strategy; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Expansion; Segmentation; Hardware; Health Industry; United States
Wells, John R., Gabriel Ellsworth, and Benjamin Weinstock. "The U.S. Health Club Industry in 2004." Harvard Business School Background Note 705-445, November 2004. (Revised September 2019.)
Building small business utopia: how artificial intelligence and Big Data can increase small business success
Small business lending has remained unchanged for decades, laden with frictions and barriers that prevent many small businesses from accessing the capital they need to succeed. Financial technology, or “fintech,” promises to change this trajectory. In 2010, new fintech... View Details
- 21 Sep 2023
- Blog Post
Hands-on Learning About Global Markets
visiting a senior center in a Boston suburb to understand how comfortable seniors were with technology. In Buenos Aires, the team used design thinking to identify new marketing ideas and iterate based on the... View Details
- September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
GreenFire Energy, 2020: Geothermal Innovation
By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock
In June 2020, GreenFire Energy Inc. (GreenFire) presented its report to the California Energy Commission indicating that its proof of concept project to demonstrate its new geothermal electricity generation technology, ECO2G™, had been a success. While conventional... View Details
Keywords: Geothermal Electricity; Renewable Energy; Energy Generation; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions
Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "GreenFire Energy, 2020: Geothermal Innovation." Harvard Business School Case 721-392, September 2020. (Revised June 2021.)
- November 2012
- Article
The Organization of Firms Across Countries
By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We argue that social capital as proxied by trust increases aggregate productivity by affecting the organization of firms. To do this we collect new data on the decentralization of investment, hiring, production, and sales decisions from Corporate Headquarters to local... View Details
Keywords: Decentralization; Social Capital; Theory Of The Firm; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Management Of Technological Innovation And R&D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Diffusion Processes; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Trust; Technology Adoption; Multinational Firms and Management
Bloom, Nicholas, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen. "The Organization of Firms Across Countries." Quarterly Journal of Economics 127, no. 4 (November 2012). (Slides from 2008, Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-005, August 2011.)
- December 2011
- Case
Roger Caracappa: Package Deals for the Estée Lauder Companies
Roger Caracappa must negotiate a cost-saving, innovative proposal from a potential French supplier that could displace the otherwise satisfactory, long-time incumbent supplier. Shortly after being promoted to executive vice president of the Estée Lauder Companies with... View Details
Keywords: Operations; Supply Chain Management; Change; Innovation and Invention; Cost vs Benefits; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry
Sebenius, James K. "Roger Caracappa: Package Deals for the Estée Lauder Companies." Harvard Business School Case 912-003, December 2011.
- February 2011 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
Utilis: Designing, Producing, and Selling Rapid Deployment Shelters for a Troubled World
By: Herman B. Leonard, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Simon Harrow
How can a company that supplies disaster response and humanitarian agencies best handle the intrinsically unpredictable and highly volatile demand for its products? Utilis is a French supplier of rapid-deploy high-end tent solutions for civilian and military uses (such... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Strategic Planning; Natural Disasters; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Industrial Products Industry; France
Leonard, Herman B., Daniela Beyersdorfer, and Simon Harrow. "Utilis: Designing, Producing, and Selling Rapid Deployment Shelters for a Troubled World." Harvard Business School Case 311-096, February 2011. (Revised May 2011.)
- 2011
- Working Paper
Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time-series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details
Keywords: Business Cycles; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Banks and Banking; Bonds; Financial Markets; Financing and Loans; Banking Industry
Becker, Bo, and Victoria Ivashina. "Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 10-107, June 2010. (Revised August 2011.)
- 2023
- Article
Experimental Evaluation of Individualized Treatment Rules
By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li
The increasing availability of individual-level data has led to numerous applications of individualized (or personalized) treatment rules (ITRs). Policy makers often wish to empirically evaluate ITRs and compare their relative performance before implementing them in a... View Details
Keywords: Causal Inference; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects; Precision Medicine; Uplift Modeling; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning
Imai, Kosuke, and Michael Lingzhi Li. "Experimental Evaluation of Individualized Treatment Rules." Journal of the American Statistical Association 118, no. 541 (2023): 242–256.
- 09 Feb 2016
- First Look
February 9, 2016
that emerged from experimentation. Interpretation of such observations leads us to new propositions about the interplay of design and identity in times of radical change. Overall, the propositions suggest... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- 20 Nov 2012
- First Look
First Look: November 20
advertising agency services and the slow pace of change over several decades. We model an agency's decision as a tradeoff between the fixed cost to the advertiser of establishing a relationship with an agency and pecuniary economies of scale from media services... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- Profile
Brett Laffel
One thing I realized about myself is that it is important for me to be able to learn new things on a regular, if not daily basis. This has shaped my career path because as I search for the ideal job, ensuring that View Details
- Teaching Interest
DESIGN THEORY AND PRACTICE ES285
By: Roberto Verganti
Any organization, business or venture grounds its value on how “meaningful” are its products (functionally, symbolically and emotionally). Design Theory and Practice (DTP) empowers students to create products that are meaningful, to people who use them and to... View Details
Keywords: Integrated Design; Leadership; User Experience Design; Design; Strategy; Technology; Product Design
- August 2018
- Article
Creative Sparks or Paralysis Traps? The Effects of Contradictions on Creative Processing and Creative Products
By: Goran Calic and Sébastien Hélie
Paradoxes are an unavoidable part of work life. The unusualness of attempting to simultaneously satisfy contradictory imperatives can result in creative outcomes that simultaneously satisfy both imperatives by inducing search for, and selection of, novel and useful... View Details
Calic, Goran, and Sébastien Hélie. "Creative Sparks or Paralysis Traps? The Effects of Contradictions on Creative Processing and Creative Products." Art. 1489. Frontiers in Psychology 9 (August 2018).
- 5 Feb 2013
- Conference Presentation
Financing Entrepreneurial Growth
By: Tom Alberg, Andrew A. Bogan, Harold Bradley, Robert D. Cooter, Monika Gruter Cheney, Oliver R. Goodenough, William R. Hambrecht, Frank Hatheway, Thomas F. Hellmann, Marianne Hudson, Jared Konczal, Josh Lerner, Robert E. Litan, Diane Mulcahy, Ramana Nanda, Frank Partnoy, Joe Ratterman, Nava Ravikant, Jay R. Ritter, Alicia Robb, David T. Robinson, Allison Schrager, Barry Silbert, E. R. Sirri, Daniel Stangler and Sharon Vosmek
Despite recent innovations in entrepreneurial finance, particularly at the early stage of business creation, many new and young companies continue to face hurdles to acquire capital.
The Kauffman Foundation addressed current challenges and opportunities in... View Details
Alberg, Tom, Andrew A. Bogan, Harold Bradley, Robert D. Cooter, Monika Gruter Cheney, Oliver R. Goodenough, William R. Hambrecht, Frank Hatheway, Thomas F. Hellmann, Marianne Hudson, Jared Konczal, Josh Lerner, Robert E. Litan, Diane Mulcahy, Ramana Nanda, Frank Partnoy, Joe Ratterman, Nava Ravikant, Jay R. Ritter, Alicia Robb, David T. Robinson, Allison Schrager, Barry Silbert, E. R. Sirri, Daniel Stangler, and Sharon Vosmek. "Financing Entrepreneurial Growth." Paper presented at the State of Entrepreneurship Address, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Washington, DC, USA, February 5, 2013.
- September 1992 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
Kaiser Steel Corporation, 1987
By: Timothy A. Luehrman
Kaiser Steel entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in early 1987. Nine months later it still faces several difficult obstacles to reorganization, including litigation, environmental liabilities, and pension and medical benefits for retired employees. Students are... View Details
Keywords: Business Plan; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Employee Relationship Management; Resource Allocation; Opportunities; Conflict and Resolution; Steel Industry; United States
Luehrman, Timothy A. "Kaiser Steel Corporation, 1987." Harvard Business School Case 293-019, September 1992. (Revised March 2007.)
- December 2019
- Technical Note
Technical Note on Bayesian Statistics and Frequentist Power Calculations
By: Amitabh Chandra and Ariel Dora Stern
This Technical Note provides an introduction to Bayes’ Rule and the statistical intuition that stems from it. In this note, we review the concepts that underlie Bayesian statistics, and we offer several simple mathematical examples to illustrate applications of Bayes’... View Details
Chandra, Amitabh, and Ariel Dora Stern. "Technical Note on Bayesian Statistics and Frequentist Power Calculations." Harvard Business School Technical Note 620-032, December 2019.
- 2016
- Working Paper
PathBreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation
By: Sonia Bhalotra, Irma Clots-Figueras and Lakshmi Iyer
We investigate whether the event of a woman being competitively elected as a state legislator encourages the subsequent political participation of women, using a regression discontinuity design on constituency level data from India. We find that female incumbents are... View Details
Keywords: Political Participation; Women; Candidates; Gender Bias; Backlash; Minority Representation; Regression Discontinuity; India; Prejudice and Bias; Political Elections; Gender; Public Administration Industry; India
Bhalotra, Sonia, Irma Clots-Figueras, and Lakshmi Iyer. "PathBreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 14-035, November 2013. (Revised January 2016.)
- July 2007
- Article
Geographical Segmentation of U.S. Capital Markets
Demographic variation in savings behavior can be exploited to provide evidence on segmentation in US bank loan markets. Cities with a large fraction of seniors have higher volumes of bank deposits. Since many banks rely heavily on deposit financing, this affects local... View Details
Keywords: Age; Economy; Capital Markets; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Local Range; United States
Becker, Bo. "Geographical Segmentation of U.S. Capital Markets." Journal of Financial Economics 85, no. 1 (July 2007): 151–178.
- 2007
- Working Paper
How Is Foreign Aid Spent? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
By: Eric D. Werker, Faisal Z. Ahmed and Charles Cohen
We use oil price fluctuations to construct a new instrument to test the impact of transfers from wealthy OPEC nations to their poorer Muslim allies. The instrument identifies plausibly exogenous variation in foreign aid. We investigate how aid is spent by tracking its... View Details
Werker, Eric D., Faisal Z. Ahmed, and Charles Cohen. "How Is Foreign Aid Spent? Evidence from a Natural Experiment." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 07-074, April 2007. (Revised December 2007, July 2008.)