Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(468)
- Faculty Publications (83)
- February 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Pierre Foods Acquisition of Advance Foods (A)
By: Guhan Subramanian and Mike Harmon
This case (A), and its related cases (B-E), establish a setting to discuss an M&A transaction and some of the key legal contracts that are associated with it. In 2010, private equity backed food manufacturer Pierre Foods is contemplating the acquisition of a key... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Shield AI
By: Mitchell Weiss and A.J. Steinlage
Shield AI’s quadcopter – with no pilot and no flight plan – could clear a building and outpace human warfighters by almost five minutes. This was not to say that it was better than the warfighters or would replace their jobs, but it was evidence that autonomous robots... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Artificial Intelligence; AI; Entrepreneurial Sales; Government; Defense; Shield AI; Brandon Tseng; Ryan Tseng; Andrew Reiter; Robots; Robotics; UAV; UAVs; Government Sales; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Sales; Government Administration; National Security; Business and Government Relations; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; United States
- 2020
- Working Paper
Incentive Power and Knowledge Sharing Among Employees: Evidence from the Field
By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin
There is consensus, both in the literature and in practice, about knowledge sharing within organizations being a key determinant of success. However, organizations struggle to sustain employees’ engagement in knowledge sharing. One challenge lies in the fact that,... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Knowledge Sharing; Employee Driven Innovation; Innovation Appropriability; Contract Design; High-powered Incentives; Low-powered Incentives; Incentives; Pay-for-Performance; Rank-and-file; Employees; Knowledge Sharing; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Creativity; Performance
- October 2017 (Revised January 2018)
- Case
Bitfury: Blockchain for Government
By: Mitchell Weiss and Elena Corsi
In the Republic of Georgia, legend had it their land was a precious gift from God he had intended to keep for his mother. But over time, the land had been under intermittent threat from without and within. In 2017, the Bitfury Group, which Valery Vavilov had... View Details
Keywords: Blockchain; Bitcoin; Cryptocurrency; Public Entrepreneurship; Public Innovation; Government Innovation; Property Rights; Property Registry; Technology Strategy; Distributed Networks; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Innovation and Invention; Technology Adoption; Business and Government Relations; Technology Industry; Real Estate Industry; Public Administration Industry; Georgia (nation, Asia); Tbilisi
- 2017
- Working Paper
International Business and Emerging Markets: A Long-Run Perspective
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper explores long-run patterns in the strategies of international business in developing countries. There was a massive wave of Western multinational investment in the developing world during the first wave of globalization before the 1920s. The... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
Entrepreneurship, Policy, and the Geography of Wind Energy
By: Geoffrey Jones
This study examines the geography of the global wind energy industry before 2000. Between 1980 and 2000, the global generating capacity of wind power grew from 13 megawatts to 17,400 megawatts, but two-thirds of that capacity was in Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the... View Details
- August 2016 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Videojet (A)
In 2005 Craig Purse, the CEO of Videojet, a company recently acquired by the conglomerate Danaher, is dealing with the unexpected failure of a new high-tech printer just launched in the market. The new product exemplified the first real instance in which the Videojet... View Details
- August 2016
- Supplement
Videojet (B)
In 2005 Craig Purse, the CEO of Videojet, a company recently acquired by the conglomerate Danaher, is dealing with the unexpected failure of a new high tech printer just launched in the market. The new product exemplified the first real instance in which the Videojet... View Details
- June 2016
- Teaching Note
Relating to Peapod
By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier
This case concerns the topics of relationship marketing, customer acquisition and retention, brand loyalty, service failure and recovery, new product introduction, and the use of consumer ethnography to study consumer behavior. Specifically, the case explores the... View Details
- 2016
- Article
The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence, and Exceptions
By: Lyra J. Colfer and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The mirroring hypothesis predicts that organizational ties within a project, firm, or group of firms (e.g., communication, collocation, employment) will correspond to the technical dependencies in the work being performed. This article presents a unified picture of... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence and Exceptions
By: Lyra J. Colfer and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The mirroring hypothesis predicts that organizational ties within a project, firm, or group of firms (e.g., communication, collocation, employment) will correspond to the technical patterns of dependency in the work being performed. A thorough understanding of the... View Details
Keywords: Modularity; Innovation; Product And Process Development; Organization Design; Design Structure; Organizational Ties; Mirroring Hypothesis; Industry Architecture; Product Architecture; Complex Technical Systems; Information Technology; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Relationships; Innovation and Invention; Product Development
- November 2015
- Article
Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel
Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details
- October 2015
- Article
Managing the Performance Tradeoffs from Partner Integration: Implications of Contract Choice in R&D Projects
By: Alan MacCormack and Anant Mishra
Formal contracts represent an important governance instrument with which firms exercise control of and compensate partners in R&D projects. The specific type of contract used, however, can vary significantly across projects. In some, firms govern partnering... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Customers and Investors: A Framework for Understanding Financial Institutions
By: Robert C. Merton and Robert T. Thakor
Financial institutions have both investors and customers. Investors, such as those who invest in stocks and bonds or private/public-sector guarantors of institutions, expect an appropriate risk-adjusted return in exchange for the financing and risk-bearing that they... View Details
Keywords: Financial Institutions
- Article
Formal Measures in Informal Management: Can a Balanced Scorecard Change a Culture?
By: Robert Gibbons and Robert S. Kaplan
Agency theorists, historically, have analyzed what kinds of performance measures should be used in formal incentive contracts. For example, after Kaplan-Norton proposed a balanced scorecard of both financial and non-financial measures, some envisioned its role only in... View Details
- Article
Real Effects of Relational Contracts
By: Steven Blader, Claudine Gartenberg, Rebecca Henderson and Andrea Pratt
How important are factors such as "firm culture" and "employee engagement" in driving firm performance? Increasing evidence from a wide range of fields suggests that productivity differs widely across firms, even after the inclusion of careful controls for factors such... View Details
- Article
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised February 2014)
- Teaching Note
Rana Plaza: Workplace Safety In Bangladesh (A) and (B)
By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez
On April 24, 2013 the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Over 1,100 people were killed in the worst industrial accident since the Union Carbide plant gas leak in Bhopal, India. Most of the victims worked for garment factories,... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Modularity and Intellectual Property Protection
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Joachim Henkel
Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property (IP) rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect IP. We investigate the impact... View Details