Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(340)
- Faculty Publications (81)
- January 2020
- Article
Jack of All Trades and Master of Knowledge: The Role of Diversification in New Distant Knowledge Integration
By: Frank Nagle and Florenta Teodoridis
We consider the role of individual-level diversification as a mechanism through which skilled researchers engage in successful exploration—recognizing and integrating new knowledge external to one’s domains of expertise. To approach an ideal experiment, we (1) employ a... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
From Know-It-Alls to Learn-It-Alls: Executive Development in the Era of Self-Refining Algorithms, Collaborative Filtering and Wearable Computing
By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas
We examine the future of executive education on a technological and cultural landscape that is imminent but different to the one we are accustomed to. We show how the contextualization, socialization and personalization of learning—avowed but distal goals of current... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Google: To TVC or Not to TVC?
By: William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg
In late 2018, evidence emerged that many of Google’s temporary help agency workers, vendors, and independent contractors (“TVCs”) were unhappy with the company. TVCs, who reportedly made up 49.95% of Google’s 170,000-person global workforce, had raised concerns of... View Details
Keywords: Workforce; Independent Contractors; Talent Management; Silicon Valley; Google; Employee Attitude; Employee Compensation; Employee Engagement; Future Of Work; Innovation; Innovation And Strategy; Inequality; Talent Acquisition; Labor; Talent and Talent Management; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Employees; Attitudes; Innovation and Management; Human Resources; Equality and Inequality; Information Technology Industry; United States; San Francisco
- 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
- April 2019 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Clear Link Technologies, LLC: Driving Sales with Peer Effects
By: Christopher Stanton, Richard Saouma and Olivia Hull
The importance of a good peer or coworker is widely discussed, but understanding the glue that makes coworkers valuable is less understood. This case sheds light on the importance of peers and the practices and environments that make a group greater than the sum of its... View Details
Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Interactive Communication; Experience and Expertise; Decision Making; Training; Design; Compensation and Benefits; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Human Capital; Working Conditions; Measurement and Metrics; Outcome or Result; Performance; Performance Improvement; Research; Sales; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Telecommunications Industry; Utah; United States
- August 2017 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Busbud: Building a Data Company
By: Srikant M. Datar, Alistair Croll and Caitlin N. Bowler
The case features the work of LP Maurice (HBS '08) as he decides to take on the fragmented bus travel industry and launch an online business that aggregates and shares bus schedules for routes around the world. His first challenge: finding that the data he needs is... View Details
- Article
Repositioning and Cost-Cutting: The Impact of Competition on Platform Strategies
By: Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu
Organizational structures are increasingly complex. In particular, more firms today operate as multi-sided platforms. In this paper, we study how platform firms use repositioning and cost-cutting in response to competition, elucidate external and internal factors that... View Details
- April 2017
- Teaching Plan
An Intern's Dilemma (A) and (B)
By: Sandra J. Sucher
Teaching Plan for HBS Nos. 316-128 and 316-129. View Details
- December 2015
- Case
An Intern's Dilemma (A)
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Matthew Preble
An HBS student is asked to misrepresent himself during the course of his summer internship by his employer in order to obtain data from industry competitors. View Details
- December 2015
- Supplement
An Intern's Dilemma (B)
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Matthew Preble
An HBS student is asked to misrepresent himself during the course of his student internship by his employer in order to obtain data from a competitor. This case describes how the student handled the situation and what he learned about himself from it. View Details
- January 2015
- Article
Competing with Privacy
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
We analyze the implications of consumer privacy for competition in the marketplace. We consider a market where firms set prices and disclosure levels for consumer information, and consumers observe both before deciding which firm to patronize and how much information... View Details
- July–August 2014
- Article
Sustainability in the Boardroom: Lessons from Nike's Playbook
By: Lynn S. Paine
One surprising role of Nike's corporate responsibility committee is to provide support for innovation. More and more companies recognize the importance of corporate responsibility to their long-term success—and yet the matter gets short shrift in most boardrooms,... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
The Organizational and Geographic Drivers of Absorptive Capacity: An Empirical Analysis of Pharmaceutical R&D Laboratories
By: Francesca Lazzeri and Gary P. Pisano
Scholars and practitioners alike now recognize that a firm's capacity to assimilate and use know-how from external sources—what Cohen and Levinthal (1990) called "absorptive capacity"—plays a central role in innovation performance. In recent years, a common strategy... View Details
- October 2013
- Article
Corporate Venturing
By: Josh Lerner
For decades, large companies have been wary of corporate venturing. But as R&D organizations face pressure to rein in costs and produce results, companies are investing in promising start-ups to gain knowledge and agility. The logic of corporate venturing is... View Details
- July 2013 (Revised November 2021)
- Module Note
Exploration vs. Exploitation
By: Willy Shih
This module note introduces James March's concept of exploration and exploitation, and the management challenge of balancing the allocation of resources to the two activities in the firm. The note also touches on the O'Reilly and Tushman paper on the ambidextrous... View Details
Keywords: Exploration And Exploitation; Exploitation; Research; Scientific Research; Product Commercialization; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Strategic Planning; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Corporate Strategy; Knowledge Sharing; Biotechnology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- June–July 2013
- Article
Firm Rivalry, Knowledge Accumulation, and MNE Location Choices
By: Juan Alcacer, Cristian Deszo and Minyuan Zhao
The international business (IB) literature has mostly emphasized the impact of location and firm characteristics on location choices. However, industries with a significant presence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are oligopolistic in nature, which suggests that... View Details
- April 2013
- Teaching Note
Bluefin Labs: The Acquisition by Twitter
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
What is the value of Bluefin Labs's social listening data to Twitter? Acquired by Twitter in 2013, Bluefin had built a system that gathered millions of online comments in an effort to develop new metrics for TV programs and brand advertising. With data from Twitter and... View Details
- June 2011
- Case
Fighting a Dangerous Financial Fire: The Federal Response to the Crisis of 2007-2009
By: David Moss and Cole Bolton
By the summer of 2009, many observers concluded that a catastrophic financial collapse- which seemed all but imminent the previous fall and winter - had been averted. Although the recession had still yet to be declared over and the economy's footing remained far from... View Details
- June 2011
- Article
Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor
By: Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
It is often difficult for donors to predict the value of charitable giving because they know little about the persons who receive their help. This concern is particularly acute when making contributions to organizations that serve heterogeneous populations. While we... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Overconfidence by Bayesian Rational Agents
This paper derives two mechanisms through which Bayesian-rational individuals with differing priors will tend to be relatively overconfident about their estimates and predictions, in the sense of overestimating the precision of these estimates. The intuition behind one... View Details