Publications

10 May 2015
Conference Presentation

Building a Competitive Jerusalem

By: Michael E. Porter and Christian H.M. Ketels

Jerusalem 2020 is a five-year growth plan for Jerusalem's economic development based on Professor Michael E. Porter's theory of competitive advantage. The plan was presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the goal of significant investment by the... View Details

Keywords: Israel; Economics; Israel

05 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Six Ways to Build Trust in Negotiations

understands what the other side values. Label your concessions Actions may speak louder than words, but actions in negotiation are often ambiguous. Concessions, unilateral or otherwise, are only influential in building trust or... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

October 2000 (Revised March 2001)
Case

eLance.com: Building a Professional Services Marketplace

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Kristin Kohler

Launched as an eBay for services, eLance promises to leverage the capabilities of the Internet to not only change the way services are bought and sold, but change the fundamental dynamics of the global economy. Building on theories posited in the HBR article by Tim... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Job Search; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Web Sites; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry

2020
Working Paper

To Infinity and Beyond: Scaling Economic Theories via Logical Compactness

By: Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Scott Duke Kominers and Ran I. Shorrer

Many economic-theoretic models incorporate finiteness assumptions that, while introduced for simplicity, play a real role in the analysis. Such assumptions introduce a conceptual problem, as results that rely on finiteness are often implicitly nonrobust; for example,... View Details

Keywords: Markets; Analysis; Game Theory

SSRN

2013
Chapter

Beyond Platinum: Making the Case for Titanium Buildings

By: Jock Herron, Amy C. Edmondson and Robert G. Eccles

Buildings are the nation's greatest energy consumers. Forty percent of all our energy is used for heating, cooling, lighting, and powering machines and devices in buildings. And despite decades of investment in green construction technologies, residential and... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Energy; Attitudes; Environmental Sustainability; Construction Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States

Article

Matriarch: A Python Library for Materials Architecture

By: Tristan Giesa, Ravi Jagadeesan, David I. Spivak and Markus J. Buehler

Biological materials, such as proteins, often have a hierarchical structure ranging from basic building blocks at the nanoscale (e.g., amino acids) to assembled structures at the macroscale (e.g., fibers). Current software for materials engineering allows the user to... View Details

Keywords: Building Block; Category Theory; Hierarchical Protein Materials; Molecular Design; Open-Source Software; Structure Creation

Research Summary

THEME #2: BUILDING CAPABILITIES THROUGH VARIATION

Prior work has yet to establish definitively the role that variation (e.g. in individuals' activities or organizational processes) plays in the development of capabilities. Variation is usually either not considered (e.g., the learning curve examines... View Details

September–October 2022
Article

Seeking Purity, Avoiding Pollution: Strategies for Moral Career Building

By: Erin Reid and Lakshmi Ramarajan

This study builds theory on how people construct moral careers. Analyzing interviews with 102 journalists, we show how people build moral careers by seeking jobs that allow them to fulfill both the institution’s moral obligations and their own material aims. We... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Moral Sensibility

Article

Resources and Relationships in Entrepreneurship: An Exchange Theory of the Development and Effects of the Entrepreneur-Investor Relationship

By: Laura Huang and Andrew P. Knight

We develop a theoretical model, grounded in exchange theory, about the process through which relationships between entrepreneurs and investors develop and influence the growth of new ventures. Our theory highlights the multifaceted relationships that entrepreneurs and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Relationships; Business Startups; Business and Shareholder Relations; Theory

22 Dec 2003
Research & Ideas

How to Build a Better Board

wrote in your book, more and more boards have been adopting at least some best practices. But even boards that have adopted all of them find it difficult to integrate theory and practice. Tell us about some of the stumbling blocks. A:... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2020
Working Paper

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used as an observation for further inductive or abductive research, but should not be treated as the result of a... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Theory Building; Induction; Decision Trees; Random Forests; K-nearest Neighbors; Neural Network; P-hacking; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis

SSRN

May 2021
Case

The International Space Station, Principal-Agent Problems, and NASA's Quest to Keep Humans in Space

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang

In building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA opened the door to the development of a robust in-space economy in low-Earth Orbit, and yet the decision to build the station, and continue to extend its lifetime, placed a huge burden on NASA’s Human Spaceflight... View Details

Keywords: Aerospace; Nasa; Space Economy; Principal-agent Theory; Policy; Commercialization; Aerospace Industry

Educators

2015
Book

Strong Brands, Strong Relationships

By: Susan Fournier, Michael Breazeale and Jill Avery

From the editorial team of the ground-breaking Consumer-Brand Relationships: Theory and Practice comes this new volume. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships is a collection of innovative research and management insights that build upon the foundations of... View Details

Keywords: Brand Building; Brand Management; CRM; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Advertising; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Advertising Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry

2014
Chapter

Building an Infrastructure for Empirical Research on Social Enterprise: Challenges and Opportunities

By: Matthew Lee, Julie Battilana and Ting Wang

Purpose: Despite the increase in empirical studies of social enterprise in management and organization research, the lack of a cohesive knowledge base in this area is concerning. In this chapter, we propose that the underdevelopment of the attendant research... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship

14 Jun 2023
Research & Ideas

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

The idea went mainstream in 2012, when Google’s Project Aristotle identified psychological safety as a key component in successful teams. Edmondson says the theory took on more urgency as organizations faced uncertainty and complexity... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

09 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation

in what situation—to guide their decision making around innovation. Managers typically grow impatient when we tell them this. "Theory?" they say. "That sounds like theoretical. That sounds like impractical." But theory... View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor & Scott D. Anthony

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

coauthor of the new book Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, for an intimate, powerful conversation that touches on: the mistake people make in thinking that money, power, and fame will bring them happiness;... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

March 2015
Article

Business Model Evaluation: Quantifying Walmart's Sources of Advantage

By: Humberto Brea-Solís, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Emili Grifell-Tatjé

We develop an analytical framework on the basis of the economics of business performance to provide quantitative insight into the link between a firm's business model choices and its profit consequences. The method is applied to Walmart by building a qualitative... View Details

Keywords: Business Models; Quantitative Analysis; Walmart; Production Theory; Business Model; Competitive Advantage; Profit