Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(9,941)
- Faculty Publications (915)
- Article
The Feeling of Not Knowing It All
By: Haiyang Yang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton
How do consumers assess their mastery of knowledge they have learned? We explore this question by investigating a common knowledge consumption situation: encountering opportunities for further learning. We argue and show that such opportunities can trigger a... View Details
- Summer 2019
- Article
The Price Effects of Cross-Market Mergers: Theory and Evidence from the Hospital Industry
By: Leemore S. Dafny, Katherine Ho and Robin S. Lee
We consider the effect of mergers between firms whose products are not viewed as direct substitutes for the same good or service but are bundled by a common intermediary. Focusing on hospital mergers across distinct geographic markets, we show that such combinations... View Details
- July–August 2019
- Article
The Soul of a Startup
By: Ranjay Gulati
There’s an essential, intangible something in start-ups—an energy, a soul. It inspires enthusiasm and fosters a sense of deep connection and mutual purpose. While this spirit persists, engagement is high and businesses keep their edge.
But all too often,... View Details
But all too often,... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Why Do User Communities Matter for Strategy?
By: Sonali K. Shah and Frank Nagle
User communities represent a unique organizing structure for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. They are organizations composed primarily of users working collaboratively, voluntarily, and with minimal oversight to freely and openly develop and exchange knowledge... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Who Do We Invent for? Patents by Women Focus More on Women's Health, but Few Women Get to Invent
By: Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila and John-Paul Ferguson
Has the increase in female medical researchers led to more medical advances for women? In this paper, we investigate if the gender of inventors shapes their types of inventions. Using data on the universe of U.S. biomedical patents, we find that patents with women... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Biomedical Research; Innovation and Invention; Diversity; Gender; Research; Health; United States
- June 2019
- Article
Debt Redemption and Reserve Accumulation
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
In the past decade, foreign participation in local-currency bond markets in emerging countries increased dramatically. We revisit sovereign debt sustainability under the assumptions that countries can accumulate reserves and borrow internationally using their own... View Details
- June 2019
- Article
Fraud Allegations and Government Contracting
By: Jonas Heese and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos
This paper examines whether fraud allegations affect firms’ contracting with the government. Using a dataset of whistleblower allegations brought under the False Claims Act against firms accused of defrauding the government, we find that federal agencies do not reduce... View Details
- May 2019
- Article
Who Consumes Firm Disclosures? Evidence from Earnings Conference Calls
By: Anne Heinrichs, Jihwon Park and Eugene F. Soltes
Using a set of proprietary records, we examine who consumes quarterly earnings conference calls and under which circumstances the calls are consumed. While there is significant interest in calls by institutional investors and sell-side analysts, we find that investors... View Details
- May–June 2019
- Article
Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Judith K. Wallenstein and Alice de Chalendar
In 2018 the Project on Managing the Future of Work at HBS teamed up with the BCG Henderson Institute to survey 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the various forces reshaping the nature of work. The responses revealed a surprising gap: While the executives... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
rTSR: Properties, Determinants, and Consequences of Benchmark Choice
By: Paul Ma, Jee-Eun Shin and Charles C.Y. Wang
We develop a measurement-error framework for assessing the quality of relative-performance metrics designed to filter out the systematic component of performance and analyze relative total shareholder return (rTSR)—the predominant metric market participants use to... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Bank Boards: What Has Changed Since the Financial Crisis?
By: Shiva Rajgopal, Suraj Srinivasan and Forester Wong
Several government-mandated committees investigating the financial crisis highlighted four key deficiencies in the composition of bank boards before the crisis: (i) group think among bank board members; (ii) absence of prior banking experience of board members; (iii)... View Details
- April 2019 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
Handy: The Future of Work? (A)
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Kieron Stopforth
Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy’s founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments... View Details
- Spring 2019
- Article
Fluid Teams and Knowledge Retrieval: Scaling Service Operations
By: Melissa A. Valentine, Tom Fangyun Tan, Bradley R. Staats and Amy C. Edmondson
To scale service operations requires retrieving knowledge across the organization. However, prior work highlights that individuals on the periphery of organizational knowledge networks may struggle to access useful knowledge at work. A knowledge repository has the... View Details
- March 2019
- Case
Wattpad
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
How to run a platform to match four million writers of stories to 75 million readers? Use data science. Make money by doing deals with television and filmmakers and book publishers. The case describes the challenges of matching readers to stories and of helping writers... View Details
Keywords: Platform Businesses; Creative Industries; Publishing; Data Science; Machine Learning; Collaborative Filtering; Women And Leadership; Managing Data Scientists; Big Data; Recommender Systems; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Intellectual Property; Analytics and Data Science; Publishing Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Canada; United States; Philippines; Viet Nam; Turkey; Indonesia; Brazil
- 2019
- Working Paper
Government Technology Policy, Social Value, and National Competitiveness
By: Frank Nagle
This study seeks to better understand the impact that government technology procurement regulations have on social value and national competitiveness. To do this, it examines the impact of a change in France’s technology procurement policy that required government... View Details
- March 2019 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Growth Investing at Totem Point
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Charles C.Y. Wang and Jonah Goldberg
The case describes the investment of hedge fund, Totem Point Management in Analog Semiconductors (ADI) as a way to discuss forecasting and valuation in growth companies. In June 2016, hedge fund Totem Point invested in ADI at around $55 a share. In general, Totem Point... View Details
- Article
The Right and Wrong Way to Do ‘CEO Activism’
By: Aaron K Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
CEO activism—where leaders take public stands on controversial social and political issues that aren’t related to their company’s bottom line—has become increasingly common. CEO activism has attracted favorable media attention, but has also resulted in backlash and... View Details
- February 2019
- Teaching Note
Talent@Tencent
By: Tarun Khanna
Late in 2016, two senior human resources (HR) executives at Tencent Holdings (Tencent), China’s leading Internet services firm, are assessing the effectiveness of the company’s talent management practices in responding to Tencent’s sustained hypergrowth. Over the... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
Behavioral Economics and Health-Care Markets
By: Amitabh Chandra, Benjamin Handel and Joshua Schwartzstein
This chapter summarizes research in behavioral health economics, focusing on insurance markets and product markets in health care. We argue that the prevalence of choice difficulties and biases leading to mistakes in these markets establish a special place for them in... View Details
- February 2019
- Article
The Ethnic Migrant Inventor Effect: Codification and Recombination of Knowledge Across Borders
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Do Yoon Kim
Ethnic migrant inventors may differ from locals in terms of the knowledge they bring to host firms. We study the role of first-generation ethnic migrant inventors in cross-border transfer of knowledge previously locked within the cultural context of their home regions.... View Details
Keywords: Skilled Migration; Ethnic Migration; First-generation Migrant; Cultural Context; Knowledge Flows; Knowledge Reuse; Knowledge Recombination; Recombinant Creation; H1B Visas; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Knowledge Dissemination; Immigration; Ethnicity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues