Publications

January 1971 (Revised August 1984)
Case

Dansk Designs Ltd.

Dansk Designs Ltd., a supplier of high quality, highly designed tableware products, plans to enter a new product area in housewares. Past growth and anticipated future expansion make organizational changes necessary. Overseas operations, design changes, supplier... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Expansion; Organizational Structure; Consumer Products Industry

Teaching Interest

Designing Winning Organizations

The course focuses on only one thing: how to design an organization that executes strategy better than competitors. This course will not teach you how to formulate strategy. Instead, taking strategy as given, you will learn the practical tools, tips, and techniques... View Details

March 2021 (Revised June 2021)
Course Overview Note

Marketplace Design

By: Scott Duke Kominers

January 2005 (Revised March 2008)
Exercise

New Service Design Exercise

By: Frances X. Frei

Used in the second module of a course on Managing Service Operations, which addresses the design of sustainable service models (606-031). Provides an opportunity for students to design a new service offering, paying careful attention to the link between strategic... View Details

Keywords: Design; Management; Service Operations; Strategy

Research Summary

Design Driven Innovation

By: Roberto Verganti

Firms, managers and scholars have often balanced between two approaches to innovation: user centered (where incremental innovation is pulled by the market) and technology push (where innovation comes from breakthrough development in technologies). However there is a... View Details

Article

Applying Human-Centered Design Principles to Digital Syndromic Surveillance at a Mass Gathering in India: Viewpoint

By: Ahmed Shaikh, Abhishek Bhatia, Ghanshyam Yadav, Shashwat Hora, Chung Won, Mark Shankar, Aaron Heerboth, Prakash Vemulapalli, Paresh Navalkar, Kunal Oswal, Clay Heaton, Sujata Saunik, Tarun Khanna and Satchit Balsari

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital health tools have been deployed by governments around the world to advance clinical and population health objectives. Few interventions have been successful or have achieved sustainability or scale. In India, government... View Details

Keywords: Digital Health Tools; Human-centered Design; Health Care and Treatment; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Design; Technology Adoption

2023
Working Paper

Market Design and Maintenance

By: Alvin E. Roth

Because no marketplace operates in isolation from the larger world, marketplace designs may need to adapt to changes in the larger environments. I discuss such changes in connection with the labor markets for new doctors, new Ph.D. economists, and for kidney exchange... View Details

Keywords: Market Design

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April 2020
Article

Designs for Estimating the Treatment Effect in Networks with Interference

By: Ravi Jagadeesan, Natesh S. Pillai and Alexander Volfovsky

In this paper, we introduce new, easily implementable designs for drawing causal inference from randomized experiments on networks with interference. Inspired by the idea of matching in observational studies, we introduce the notion of considering a treatment... View Details

Keywords: Experimental Design; Network Inference; Neyman Estimator; Symmetric Interference Model; Homophily

December 1975 (Revised January 1987)
Background Note

Note on Organization Design

By: Jay W. Lorsch

Deals with the organizational designer trying to create a structure, rewards, and a system of measurement that are compatible with the external environment, strategy, tasks, the members of the organization, management style, and the existing culture. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design

2008
Chapter

Matching and Market Design

By: Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and Tayfun Sonmez

Matching is the part of economics concerned with who transacts with whom and how. Models of matching, starting with the Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm, have been particularly useful in studying labour markets and in helping design clearinghouses to fix... View Details

Keywords: Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Outcome or Result; Mathematical Methods

December 1999 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Prime Designs

By: Paul W. Marshall

A student takes the role of the father who is the CEO of a family business. A non-family manager has asked for a meeting. Agenda topics are: your son's latest proposal and managers' desire to own equity. View Details

Keywords: Labor and Management Relations; Family Ownership; Employee Stock Ownership Plan

Research Summary

Markets and Market Design

The topic on which I currently spend the most of my research energy is the study of strategic interaction and reputation systems on eBay and similar markets from an applied, market design perspective. The rise of the Internet allowed a whole new generation of markets... View Details

August 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Systems Design West

By: Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Jenn Braus (HBS 2013) was halfway through the 90-day exclusivity period for her proposed acquisition of Systems Design West (SDW). She had completed her business and accounting due diligence. Just as she was about to ask her lawyer to begin drafting the purchase... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Price; Negotiation Offer; Decision Making

2016
Working Paper

Markets for Ideas: Prize Structure, Entry Limits, and the Design of Ideation Contests

By: Pavel Kireyev

Contests are a popular mechanism for the procurement of innovation. In marketing, design, and other creative industries, firms use freelance marketplaces to organize contests and obtain high-quality ideas for ads, new products, and even business strategies from... View Details

Keywords: Idea Generation; Crowdsourcing; Contest Design; Structural Estimation; Motivation and Incentives; Competition; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

April 2006
Background Note

Designing Sustainable Service Models

By: Frances X. Frei

Taught as the second module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Addresses the challenge of designing service models that effectively incorporate a customer operating role, as well as how to align operations to deliver value to both the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customers; Design; Managerial Roles; Consumer Behavior; Service Operations; Power and Influence; Value

2024
Working Paper

Winner Take All: Exploiting Asymmetry in Factorial Designs

By: Matthew DosSantos DiSorbo, Iavor I. Bojinov and Fiammetta Menchetti

Researchers and practitioners have embraced factorial experiments to simultaneously test multiple treatments, each with different levels. With the rise of technologies like Generative AI, factorial experimentation has become even more accessible: it is easier than ever... View Details

Keywords: Factorial Designs; Fisher Randomizations; Rank Estimators; Employer Interventions; Causal Inference; Mathematical Methods; Performance Improvement