Publications

Register to Read

May 2021
Case

The SMA Foundation: Steering Therapeutic Research and Development in a Rare Disease

By: Amitabh Chandra, Spencer Lee-Rey and Caroline Marra

This case explores incentives for rare disease drug development by chronicling the role of the Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Foundation in forming strategic partnerships with the scientific research community and pharmaceutical developers to transform the trajectory... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Strategy; Business or Company Management; Society; Health; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

April 2006
Case

Adrian Ivinson at the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair

By: Robert Steven Kaplan and Ayesha Kanji

Adrian Ivinson is the director of Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair (HCNR), a not-for-profit research center at the Harvard Medical School (HMS). The center was started in late 2000 with a gift of $37.5 million from an anonymous donor. Its mandate was to... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Power and Influence; Organizational Culture; Research and Development; Nonprofit Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Change Management; Alignment; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; Massachusetts

November 2009 (Revised January 2011)
Case

International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

By: Allen S. Grossman and Cathy Ross

Dedicated to accelerating the development of a safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccine, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) pioneered ways of addressing the inadequate incentive structures that prevented progress toward vaccines for AIDS and... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Globalized Firms and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Business and Government Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Research and Development; Social Enterprise; Health Industry

October–December 2023
Article

A Practical Guide to Conversation Research: How to Study What People Say to Each Other

By: Michael Yeomans, Katelynn Boland, Hanne K. Collins, Nicole Abi-Esber and Alison Wood Brooks

Conversation—a verbal interaction between two or more people—is a complex, pervasive, and consequential human behavior. Conversations have been studied across many academic disciplines. However, advances in recording and analysis techniques over the last decade have... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Analytics and Data Science; Research

April 12, 2022
Article

Evaluation of Individual and Ensemble Probabilistic Forecasts of COVID-19 Mortality in the United States

By: Estee Y. Cramer, Evan L. Ray, Velma K. Lopez, Johannes Bracher, Andrea Brennen, Alvaro J. Castro Rivadeneira, Michael Lingzhi Li and et al.

Short-term probabilistic forecasts of the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have served as a visible and important communication channel between the scientific modeling community and both the general public and decision-makers. Forecasting models... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Forecasting and Prediction; Health Pandemics; Mathematical Methods; Partners and Partnerships

Register to Read

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Aligning Collective Production with Demand: Evidence from Wikipedia

Economic markets align supply and demand through prices. However, many social phenomena lack pricing to inform producers about consumer demand. This can lead to the over- or under-production of certain goods and services. In this paper, I propose a social mechanism... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry

SSRN

April 27, 2022
Article

Inequality in Researchers' Minds: Four Guiding Questions for Studying Subjective Perceptions of Economic Inequality

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Shai Davidai, Daniela Goya-Tocchetto, Barnabas Szaszi, Martin Day, Stephanie Tepper, L. Taylor Phillips, M. Usman Mirza, Nailya Ordabayeva and Oliver P. Hauser

Subjective perceptions of inequality can substantially influence policy attitudes, public health metrics, and societal well-being, but the lack of consensus in the scientific community on how to best operationalize and measure these perceptions may impede progress on... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Perception; Analysis

05 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 5

all its emphasis on data and number crunching, conventional strategic planning is not actually scientific. It lacks the hypothesis generation and testing that's at the heart of the scientific method. To produce novel and successful... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2008
Article

Which Kind of Collaboration Is Right for You?

By: Roberto Verganti and Gary P. Pisano

Nowadays, virtually no companies innovate alone. Firms team up with a variety of partners, in a wide number of ways, to create new technologies, products, and services. But what is the best way to leverage the power of outsiders? To help executives answer that... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Framework; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Partners and Partnerships; Social and Collaborative Networks; Strategy

Research Summary

Clinical Trials as a setting for Health Policy and Management Research

The clinical trial marketplace is in flux. A decade ago, pharmaceutical firms almost exclusively conducted the study of their novel drug compounds within major academic medical centers. But today, industry-sponsored clinical trials are increasingly using community... View Details

September 2017
Case

Sensing (and Monetizing) Happiness at Hitachi

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton

Inspired by research linking happiness and productivity, Hitachi had invested in developing new “people analytics” technologies to help companies increase employee happiness. Hitachi had begun manufacturing high-tech badges that quantify a wearer’s activity patterns.... View Details

Keywords: People Analytics; Japan; Sociometers; Wearables; Interpersonal Communication; Human Resources; Happiness; Technology Industry; Japan

05 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

What Wall Street Doesn’t Understand About International Trade

research. What's more, firms that correlate their international trading activity with the local ethnic community significantly outperform those that don't—a fact that has escaped notice of financial analysts. The findings could help Wall... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

November 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Disrupting the Meat Industry: Tissue Culture Beef

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Matthew G. Preble

Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product—made entirely from muscle grown in his lab—to give it the same taste, texture and appearance of a traditional beef hamburger. A previous iteration of this product had... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Beef Production; Environmental Impacts Of Food Production; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Netherlands; United States; United Kingdom

2023
Working Paper

Mapping Organizational-Level Networks Using Individual-Level Connections: Evidence from Online Professional Networks

By: Shelley Xin Li, Frank Nagle and Aner Zhou

Organization-level networks facilitate the flow of information and business activities in the economy. Prior research relies solely on high-level connections to measure these networks. Therefore, to understand the role of employee connections at all job levels in... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Value; Social and Collaborative Networks; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Sharing; Employees; Social Media

SSRN

Research Summary

Energy, IT, real estate, and sustainability

By: Rebecca M. Henderson

Professor Henderson’s current research focuses on the energy, information technology, and real estate sectors and the challenges firms encounter as they attempt to act in more sustainable ways. This work is an outgrowth of her decade-long examination of the... View Details

09 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Called Back to the Office? How You Benefit from Ideas You Didn't Know You Were Missing

classrooms, labs, dining halls, and elsewhere on campuses have a unique influence on the course of scientific research, according to the study, coauthored by Eamon Duede, a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Data Design Institute at... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

2016
Article

Academia's Emerging Crisis of Relevance and the Consequent Role of the Engaged Scholar

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Universities are facing a crisis of relevance. While there are multiple reasons for this to be happening, one that deserves particular attention is the extent to which academic scholars do not see it as their role to engage in public and political discourse. However,... View Details

Keywords: Political Discourse; Public Engagement; Higher Education; Social Media