Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(3,478)
- Faculty Publications (732)
- 2025
- Working Paper
Using Satellites and Phones to Evaluate and Promote Agricultural Technology Adoption: Evidence from Smallholder Farms in India
By: Shawn Cole, Grady Killeen, Tomoko Harigaya and Aparna Krishna
This paper evaluates a low-cost, customized soil nutrient management advisory service in India. As a methodological contribution, we examine whether and in which settings satellite measurements may be effective at estimating both agricultural yields and treatment... View Details
- January 2025
- Supplement
Hippo: Weathering the Storm of the Home Insurance Crisis (B)
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan
Rick McCathron, CEO of Hippo, was optimistic about the InsurTech's path to profitability after navigating the financial uncertainties of 2022. By bundling their home insurance services with third-parties and established insurance incumbents, Hippo was adopting a... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Underwriters; Big Data; Homeowners' Insurance; Catastrophe Risk; Global Warming; Environment; Business Economics; Vertical Specialization; Bundling; Economies Of Scale; Business Model; Forecasting and Prediction; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Technological Innovation; Natural Environment; Natural Disasters; Weather; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Business Earnings; Insurance; Social Issues; Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Insurance Industry; California; United States
- January 2025
- Technical Note
Get Cool: Air Conditioning Industry Background
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small
The “air conditioning paradox” is tied to climate change: the more the planet warms, the greater the need for cooling (due to the dangers of extreme heat as well as comfort within buildings), but the use of electricity-powered AC contributes to further warming. There... View Details
- January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Blue Frontier: Disrupting Air Conditioning
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small
Serial entrepreneur Daniel Betts founded Blue Frontier in South Florida to offer a climate-friendly solution to increase air conditioning efficiency and dehumidify using new technology he developed. Backed by significant venture capital, Blue Frontier had to choose... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Redwood & Strong: The Value of a Consulting Engagement
By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti
The board of Redwood & Strong LLP (R&S), the American branch of a large global law firm, is meeting to review the findings of a recent strategic initiative designed to identify potential merger candidates. The request for the engagement originated from Daniel Crawford,... View Details
- January–February 2025
- Article
Why People Resist Embracing AI
The success of AI depends not only on its capabilities, which are becoming more advanced each day, but on people’s willingness to harness them. Unfortunately, many people view AI negatively, fearing it will cause job losses, increase the likelihood that their personal... View Details
- January–February 2025
- Article
Why People Resist Embracing AI: The Five Main Obstacles—and How To Overcome Them
The success of AI depends not only on its capabilities, which are becoming more advanced each day, but on people’s willingness to harness them. Unfortunately, many people view AI negatively, fearing it will cause job losses, increase the likelihood that their personal... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Scaling Core Earnings Measurement with Large Language Models
By: Matthew Shaffer and Charles CY Wang
We study the application of large language models (LLMs) to the estimation of core earnings, i.e., a firm's persistent profitability from its core business activities. This construct is central to investors' assessments of economic performance and valuations. However,... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Ather Energy: The Future of Mobility
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan and Malini Sen
Ather Energy, India’s third-largest electric scooter maker by volume, was founded in 2013. Five years later, the start-up launched its first electric scooter, Ather 450, which was powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), to navigate... View Details
Keywords: Energy Policy; Climate Change; Alternative Energy; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Transportation; Transformation; Green Technology; Technology Adoption; Communication Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Strategy; Segmentation; Asia; India
- 2024
- Working Paper
How Do Global Portfolio Investors Hedge Currency Risk?
By: Robin Greenwood and Alex Cheema-Fox
We use monthly portfolio data from one of the world’s largest custodian banks, with over $40 trillion assets under custody, to study how global portfolio investors hedge foreign exchange risk in their equity and fixed income portfolios over the past 25 years. The data... View Details
- October 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Lanco Medical Group: Fostering Happiness for Growth
By: Susanna Gallani, Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago and Katherine Sonnefeldt
This case describes how Lanco Medical Group, a fast-growing pharmaceutical distributor serving Latin America, approached the design of their employee benefits and incentives program. After learning about gaps between what leadership believed motivated employees and... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Canary Categories
By: Eric Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli and Duncan Simester
Past customer spending in a category is generally a positive signal of future customer spending. We show that there exist “canary categories” for which the reverse is true. Purchases in these categories are a signal that customers are less likely to return to that... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
When Batteries Meet Hydrogen: Dual-Storage Investments for Load-Shifting Purposes
By: Christian Kaps and Simone Marinesi
Power systems account for nearly 40% of global emissions. As the world tries to reduce emissions by increasing renewable penetration, storage technologies are playing an increasingly important role in matching variable renewable supply with demand. Batteries have... View Details
- September 2024
- Exercise
Assessing the Value of Unifying and De-Duplicating Customer Data
By: Elie Ofek and Hema Yoganarasimhan
This exercise provides an opportunity for students to gain hands on experience with assessing the value of unifying various customer databases that a firm may have (e.g., across the different brands it markets) and of properly identifying customers to avoid duplication... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Determinants of Top-Down Sabotage
By: Hashim Zaman and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate the conditions that motivate managers to impede the growth of talented subordinates due to fears of future competition for their own positions. Our research expands on existing tournament and contest theory literature that considers peer-to-peer sabotage... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
The Walt Disney Company: Management Guidance
By: Joseph Pacelli and James Weber
In November 2023, financial analyst Aurora Fee was forecasting The Walt Disney Company’s earnings and stock price, with the goal of providing an investment recommendation to her clients. Disney, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies, had just... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
People, Practices, and Productivity: A Review of New Advances in Personnel Economics
By: Mitchell Hoffman and Christopher T. Stanton
This chapter surveys recent advances in personnel economics. We begin by presenting evidence showing substantial and persistent productivity variation among workers in the same roles. We discuss new research on incentives and compensation; hiring practices; the... View Details
- July 2024
- Case
Knowledge-Enabled Financial Advice: Digital Transformation at Edward Jones
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan
Edward Jones, a wealth management advisory firm that prided itself on its interpersonal connections and face-to-face interactions, was eager to augment their services with AI capabilities. Built on 1-to-1 close-knit relationships, the firm had more than 15,000 offices... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Innovation And Strategy; Financial Advisors; Big Data; Artificial Intelligence; Digitization; Financial Institutions; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Business Plan; Technological Innovation; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Communication Strategy; Transformation; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Customer Relationship Management; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Strategy; Financial Services Industry; St. Louis; Missouri; United States; Canada
- June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard
By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad
Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the... View Details
Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Restructuring; Training; Supply Chain Management; Distribution; E-commerce; Business Model; Business Plan; Decision Choices and Conditions; Marketing Strategy; Alignment; Brands and Branding; Negotiation; Joint Ventures; Strategic Planning; Salesforce Management; Competition; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; India
- June 2024
- Article
Counterparty Risk and Counterparty Choice in the Credit Default Swap Market
By: Wenxin Du, Salil Gadgil, Michael Gordy and Clara Vega
We investigate how market participants price and manage counterparty credit risk using confidential trade repository data on single-name credit default swap (CDS) transactions. We find that counterparty risk has a modest impact on the pricing of CDS contracts but a... View Details