Publications

March 1990
Case

Lehrer McGovern Bovis, Inc. (Abridged)

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Describes the growth of a construction management company and the operating problems it now encounters. Designed to introduce students to the value of competition in the construction industry, to show how the techniques of value analysis can be used to strategic... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Operations; Construction; Growth Management; Quality; Competition; Problems and Challenges; Performance Productivity; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Construction Industry

Educators

Web

PhD Programs - Doctoral

Business Economics The doctoral program in Business Economics, which includes Finance and Applied Economics tracks, provides scholars with rigorous training in economic theory and a particular focus on economic analysis as it applies to... View Details

04 May 2012
Working Paper Summaries

No News Is Good News: CSR Strategy and Newspaper Coverage of Negative Firm Events

Keywords: by Jiao Luo, Stephan Meier & Felix Oberholzer-Gee

November 2010
Article

Which of These People Is Your Future CEO?

By: Boris Groysberg, Andrew Hill and Toby Johnson

Americans have long believed that U.S. military officers-trained for high-stakes positions, resilience, and mental agility-make excellent CEOs. That belief is sound, but the authors' analysis of the performance of 45 companies led by CEOs with military experience... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Training; Leadership Style; Managerial Roles; Situation or Environment; United States

2023
Working Paper

Design-Based Confidence Sequences: A General Approach to Risk Mitigation in Online Experimentation

By: Dae Woong Ham, Michael Lindon, Martin Tingley and Iavor Bojinov

Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers’ decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Research and Development; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

Article

R&D: A Small Contribution to Productivity Growth

By: Diego Comin

In this paper I evaluate the contribution of R&D investments to productivity growth. The basis for the analysis are the free entry condition and the fact that most R&D innovations are embodied. Free entry yields a relationship between the resources devoted to R&D and... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Investment; Interest Rates; Performance Productivity; Technological Innovation; Perspective; United States

Web

Faculty & Research

codes and import origins, we construct custom price indices that isolate the direct effects of tariff changes across product categories and trading partners. Our analysis reveals rapid pricing responses, though their magnitude remains... View Details

March 2023
Article

Learning to Successfully Hire in Online Labor Markets

By: Marios Kokkodis and Sam Ransbotham

Hiring in online labor markets involves considerable uncertainty: which hiring choices are more likely to yield successful outcomes and how do employers adjust their hiring behaviors to make such choices? We argue that employers will initially explore the value of... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Analysis; Decision Choices and Conditions

August 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (A)

By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal

The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details

Educators

Article

A Feasibility Study Using Time-driven Activity-based Costing as a Management Tool for Provider Cost Estimation: Lessons from the National TB Control Program in Zimbabwe in 2018

By: J. Chirenda, B. Nhlema Simwaka, C. Sandy, K. Bodnar, S. Corbin, P. Desai, T. Mapako, S. Shamu, C. Timire, E. Antonio, A. Makone, A. Birikorang, T. Mapuranga, M. Ngwenya, T. Masunda, M. Dube, E. Wandwalo, L. Morrison and R. S. Kaplan

Background: This study used process maps and time-driven activity-based costing to document TB service delivery processes. The analysis identified the resources required to sustain TB services in Zimbabwe, as well as several opportunities for more effective and... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Provider Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Activity Based Costing and Management; Zimbabwe

January 1980 (Revised April 1994)
Case

New Balance Athletic Shoes

By: Kim B. Clark

Faced with growth exceeding 100% per year, James Davis, president of New Balance, must decide how to meet the need for additional capacity. Several factors contribute to a climate of extreme uncertainty. Several options are considered, ranging from a second shift to... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Strategy; Information; Growth Management; Organizational Design; Performance Capacity; Risk and Uncertainty; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Republic of Ireland

Educators

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

August 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Supplement

Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (B)

By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal

The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details

George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He co-leads a Lab, within Harvard's Digital, Data, Design Institute, and serves on the faculty steering commitee of Harvard University's Salata Institute. He... View Details

Keywords: asset management; insurance industry; automobiles; industrial goods; fashion; food; green technology

Person Page

Educational Technology

Streamlined Real-Time Slide Generation and Editing

Lets an instructor build slides during class, based on class discussion -- "the chalkboard alternative." Student view offers a clean display with no distracting details (no menus, toolbars, or the... View Details

Web

Capstone | MBA

Capstone MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Each student develops a capstone project in their second year of studies that challenges them to perform an in-depth structured scientific and business analysis... View Details

15 Jul 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger & Andrew F. Newman

July 2019
Article

'Forward Flow': A New Measure to Quantify Free Thought and Predict Creativity

By: Kurt Gray, Stephen Anderson, Eric Evan Chen, John Michael Kelly, Michael S. Christian, John Patrick, Laura Huang, Yoed N. Kenett and Kevin Lewis

When the human mind is free to roam, its subjective experience is characterized by a continuously evolving stream of thought. Although there is a technique that captures people’s streams of free thought—free association—its utility for scientific research is undermined... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Creativity; Forecasting and Prediction