Publications

May 2022
Case

What's Next

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Is there a typical long-term career path for people who become entrepreneurs through acquisition? What choices do searchers and investors make subsequent to their first search? The former searchers profiled here identified five common longer-term career paths and... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Entrepreneurship; Investment Portfolio; Decision Making; Financial Services Industry

April 2023
Technical Note

An Art & A Science: How to Apply Design Thinking to Data Science Challenges

By: Michael Parzen, Eddie Lin, Douglas Ng and Jessie Li

We hear it all the time as managers: “what is the data that backs up your decisions?” Even local mom-and-pop shops now have access to complex point-of-sale systems that can closely track sales and customer data. Social media influencers have turned into seven-figure... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Framework; Analytics and Data Science

30 Aug 2019
Blog Post

3 Growing Pains from my First Year at HBS: Academic, Social, and Career

unified identity as one firm. For instance, no matter which office you belong to, we can work as a team from day one because we have common values that guide our decision making and culture that View Details

September 2021
Article

Trials and Terminations: Learning from Competitors' R&D Failures

By: Joshua L. Krieger

I analyze project continuation decisions where firms may resolve uncertainty through news about competitors' research and development (R&D) failures, as well as through their own results. I examine the trade-offs and interactions between product-market competition and... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Projects; Failure; Decision Making; Learning

Find at Harvard

September 2018 (Revised October 2018)
Supplement

Lexoo: Building a Long-Lasting Platform

By: Chiara Farronato and Elena Corsi

Lexoo, a UK-based online marketplace for legal services, was facing the strategic choice of how to grow from early start-up to mature platform. Daniel van Binsbergen, Lexoo's CEO, and web developer Chris O'Sullivan, CTO, had set up Lexoo to help Small and Medium-Sized... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Legal Services; Growth Strategy; Technology Ventures; Pivot; Service Operations; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Small Business; Decision Making; Legal Services Industry

January 2025
Article

Automatic Enrollment with a 12% Default Contribution Rate

By: John Beshears, Ruofei Guo, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and James J. Choi

We study a retirement savings plan with a default contribution rate of 12% of income, which is much higher than previously studied defaults. Twenty-five percent of employees had not opted out of this default 12 months after hire; a literature review finds that the... View Details

Keywords: Retirement Savings; Defined Contribution Retirement Plan; Automatic Enrollment; Retirement; Saving; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions

20 Nov 2007
First Look

First Look: November 20, 2007

capitalist, author, and co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, announced his intention to build a PC so cheap as to make it possible to provide Internet- and multimedia-capable... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Feb 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Creating the Founders’ Dilemmas Course

suggests that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent will be founding a company within a decade of getting out of here," he says. Part one of Founders' Dilemmas helps students to figure out whether it makes sense to wait a while before... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

2023
Working Paper

Insufficiently Justified Disparate Impact: A New Criterion for Subgroup Fairness

By: Neil Menghani, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

In this paper, we develop a new criterion, "insufficiently justified disparate impact" (IJDI), for assessing whether recommendations (binarized predictions) made by an algorithmic decision support tool are fair. Our novel, utility-based IJDI criterion evaluates false... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Prejudice and Bias

Web

Frameworks - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

The Five Forces A Five Forces analysis can help companies assess which industries to compete in—and how to position themselves for success. Strategic Positioning Strategic positioning reflects choices a... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Delegation in Multi-Establishment Firms: Evidence from I.T. Purchasing

By: Kristina McElheran

Recent contributions to a growing theory literature have focused on the tradeoff between adaptation and coordination in determining delegation within firms. Empirical evidence, however, is limited. Using establishment-level data on decision rights over information... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business Headquarters; Decision Choices and Conditions; Operations; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Power and Influence; Adaptation; Cooperation

SSRN

March 2010 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Looking for Opportunity in Adversity: Iqbal Quadir and Grameenphone (A)

By: Bhaskar Chakravorti and David Lane

Iqbal Quadir, a former New York investment banker, set about to bring universal telecommunications to his native Bangladesh. He was convinced that, GSM, the same advanced wireless technology that penetrated developed countries in Europe was also the right solution for... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Personal Development and Career; Entrepreneurship; Problems and Challenges; Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Bangladesh

October 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Century Bank: Closing Time?

By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Bill Kwon

Barry Sloane, second-generation Chairman, President, and CEO of his family’s bank, Century Bank, weighed whether to sell to Eastern Bank. As a small regional bank, Century faced a number of challenging trends, such as digitization and market share decline in the coming... View Details

Web

Latin America - Global

Burgeoning Wine Industry In Latin America, female entrepreneurs are making a profound impact on economic growth and development. While much of this momentum comes from small enterprises, there are inspiring stories of women who succeed at... View Details

27 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Religion in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know

commission’s decision should be overturned because the group had shown inappropriate hostility toward Phillips’s religious views. “The court punted,” van Bever says. “But this will continue to come up, so, at some point, they’re going to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage; Apparel & Accessories

2018
Working Paper

Quantile Forecasts of Product Life Cycles Using Exponential Smoothing.

By: Xiaojia Guo, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl Jr. and Yael Grushka-Cockayne

We introduce an exponential smoothing model that a manager can use to forecast the demand of a new product or service. The model has five features that make it suitable for accurately forecasting product life cycles at scale. First, the trend in our model follows the... View Details

Keywords: New Product Development; Demand Forecasting; Product Adoption; Innovation Diffusion; Product Development; Demand and Consumers; Forecasting and Prediction; Adoption

SSRN

August 2017 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Ardian: Portfolio Company Governance

By: Lynn S. Paine, Emer Moloney and Tonia Labruyere

Leaders of the mid-cap buyout group at Ardian, the Paris-based private equity firm led by Dominique Senequier, have been asked to review and assess the governance model the firm uses for majority-owned companies in its portfolio. The case describes the governance model... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Strategy; Decision Making; Private Equity

September 2012 (Revised August 2015)
Case

Shanghai Pharmaceuticals

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Natalie Kindred

Shanghai Pharmaceuticals (SPH), a vertically integrated Chinese pharmaceutical conglomerate, was considering its strategic options in the context of a rapidly evolving industry, policy, and economic environment. The company—essentially a collection of subsidiaries... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Business Conglomerates; Vertical Integration; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mergers and Acquisitions; Consolidation; Health Care and Treatment; Global Strategy; State Ownership; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; Shanghai; United States; Europe