Publications

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19 Nov 2014
Working Paper Summaries

The Search for Benchmarks: When Do Crowds Provide Wisdom?

Keywords: by Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma & Charles C.Y. Wang

September 2013
Case

Homestrings, Inc.: Diaspora-Based Financing and the Crowd Funding of Development

By: William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

Homestrings is an online investment platform for overseas diasporas to link financially with their home countries. The founder believes crowd-funding can become a pillar for development, but U.S. regulatory hurdles and resources constraints are substantial. The company... View Details

Keywords: Diasporas; Investments; Regulations; Africa; Crowd-funding; Development Finance; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Services Industry; Africa; United States

Educators

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05 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

Is the Business World Finally Ready for the Wisdom of Shibusawa?

story is the subject of the year-long drama series this year on NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.), the country’s version of PBS or the BBC, this year. Mentions of Shibusawa have... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones and Rei Morimoto; Financial Services; Retail

12 May 2015
Research & Ideas

How Crowds and Experts Kickstart the Arts

Philosophers have talked by turns about both the "wisdom" and "madness" of crowds. But when it comes to assessing and funding the arts, just how wise are crowds—and how does their wisdom compare to that... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ramana Nanda; Entertainment & Recreation

Article

Use of Crowd Innovation to Develop an Artificial Intelligence-Based Solution for Radiation Therapy Targeting

By: Raymond H. Mak, Michael G. Endres, Jin Hyun Paik, Rinat A. Sergeev, Hugo Aerts, Christopher L. Williams, Karim R. Lakhani and Eva C. Guinan

Importance: Radiation therapy (RT) is a critical cancer treatment, but the existing radiation oncologist work force does not meet growing global demand. One key physician task in RT planning involves tumor segmentation for targeting, which requires substantial... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; AI Algorithms; Health Care and Treatment; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; AI and Machine Learning

2023
Working Paper

Crowding in Private Quality: The Equilibrium Effects of Public Spending in Education

By: Tahir Andrabi, Natalie Bau, Jishnu Das, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Naureen Karachiwalla

We estimate the equilibrium effects of a public-school grant program administered through school councils in Pakistani villages with multiple public and private schools and clearly defined catchment boundaries. The program was randomized at the village-level, allowing... View Details

Keywords: Product Differentiation; Public Sector; Private Sector; Spending; Education; Competition

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Research Summary

Get in Line: Chapter 11 Restructuring in Crowded Bankruptcy Courts

This paper tests whether Chapter 11 restructuring outcomes are affected by time constraints in busy bankruptcy courts. On average, total bankruptcy filings rise by 32% during economic recessions, leaving bankruptcy judges with far less time per case exactly when... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Restructuring; Financial Distress; Insolvency and Bankruptcy

2019
Working Paper

Breaking and Reconfiguring the Boundaries Between Domain Experts and Crowds to Solve Complex R&D Problems through Partial Decomposition

By: Hila Lifshitz - Assaf and Zoe Szajnfarber

The need for domain experts is all but universally assumed when organizing for scientific and technological innovation. In contrast, we are witnessing a burgeoning of citizen science, crowdsourcing, and other “open” methods based on the opposite assumption that crowds... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Problem Solving; Expertise; Crowdsourcing; Nasa; Experience and Expertise; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Research and Development

04 Feb 2014
Working Paper Summaries

From Crowds to Collaborators: Initiating Effort and Catalyzing Interactions Among Online Creative Workers

Keywords: by Kevin J. Boudreau, Patrick Gaule, Karim R. Lakhani, Christoph Riedl & Anita Williams Woolley

January 2025
Case

Less Is More: Will Aldi's Expansion Plans Pay Off in a Crowded U.S. Grocery Market?

By: David Collis and Haisley Wert

In 2024, the discount grocery retailer Aldi announced bold U.S. expansion plans. Within five years, the German company would increase its store count by 30% to reach 3,200+ stores across the United States and approach becoming the fifth largest grocery retailer in the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Scope; Grocery; Strategy; United States

Educators

Article

The Inpatient Discharge Lounge as a Potential Mechanism to Mitigate Emergency Department Boarding and Crowding

By: Brian Franklin, Sharif Vakili, Robert S. Huckman, Sarah Hosein, Nicholas Falk, Katherine Cheng, Maria Murray, Sheila Harris, Charles A. Morris and Eric Goralnick

Delayed access to inpatient beds for admitted patients contributes significantly to emergency department (ED) boarding and crowding, which have been associated with deleterious patient safety effects. To expedite inpatient bed availability, some hospitals have... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Delivery; Emergency Room; Operations Improvement; Operations Management; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Operations; Management; Performance Improvement; Service Operations

2023
Article

Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control

By: Susanna Gallani

Can managers use monetary incentives to elicit cooperation from workers they cannot reward for their efforts? I study “conduit incentives,” an innovative incentive design, whereby managers influence bonus-ineligible workers’ effort by offering bonus-eligible employees... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior Modification; Peer Monitoring; Persistence Of Performance Improvements; Crowding Out; Implicit Incentives; Compensation; Healthcare; Social Pressure; Image Motivation; Incentives; Motivation; Performance; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; California

16 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Crowdsourcing Is Helping Hollywood Reduce the Risk of Movie-Making

Success at the movie box office can be difficult to predict. For every surprise hit film like Crazy Rich Asians, there’s a massive flame-out like Justice League. Unlike television, where a station can test a pilot before committing to a series, studios must spend... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Motion Pictures & Video

2025
Working Paper

Better Keep the Twenty Dollars: Incentivizing Innovation in Open Source

By: Annamaria Conti, Vansh Gupta, Jorge Guzman and Maria P. Roche

Open source is key to innovation yet is assumed to be done largely through intrinsic motivation. How can we incentivize it? In this paper, we examine the impact of a program providing monetary incentives to motivate innovators to contribute to open source. The Sponsors... View Details

Keywords: Open Source; Innovation; Incentives; Financial Rewards; Crowding Out; Open Source Distribution; Innovation and Invention; Motivation and Incentives; Technology Industry

2019
Working Paper

Using Technology to Augment Professionals, Instead of Replacing Them, for Innovative Problem Solving

By: Hila Lifshitz - Assaf, Felicia Ng, Aniket Kittur and Robert Kraut

While in some technological and scientific areas innovation is flourishing, in others it is stalling, leaving important problems unsolved for decades. One explanation is professionals’ limitations as problem solvers, as accumulating depth of knowledge enhances one’s... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Expertise; Future Of Work; Crowdsourcing; Artificial Intelligence; Problem Solving; Professionalism; Experience and Expertise; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Problems and Challenges; Research and Development

2014
Article

The Promise of Prediction Contests

By: Phillip E. Pfeifer, Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Kenneth C. Lichtendahl

This article examines the prediction contest as a vehicle for aggregating the opinions of a crowd of experts. After proposing a general definition distinguishing prediction contests from other mechanisms for harnessing the wisdom of crowds, we focus on... View Details

Keywords: Prediction; Forecasting and Prediction

2017
Other Book

Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

By: Matthew Taylor, Greg Marsh, Diane Nicol and Paul Broadbent

I was not the only person appointed to the Review. My fellow Review team members, Greg Marsh, Diane Nicol and Paul Broadbent have not only been an important source of ideas and wisdom throughout the process but have led in engaging with key groups of... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Labor Relations; Marketplaces; Employment; Labor and Management Relations; Labor; Markets

July–August 2016
Article

Minimum Advertised Pricing: Patterns of Violation in Competitive Retail Markets

By: Ayelet Israeli, Eric Anderson and Anne Coughlan

Manufacturers in many industries frequently use vertical price policies, such as minimum advertised price (MAP), to influence prices set by downstream retailers. Although manufacturers expect retail partners to comply with MAP policies, violations of MAP are common in... View Details

Keywords: Pricing Policies; Pricing; Channel Management; Legal Aspects Of Business; Price; Governance Compliance; Marketing Channels; Retail Industry

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August 2021
Article

Humanizing Strategy

By: Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi

In this article, we apply our latest thinking on knowledge to provide insights on how to reconceptualize strategy to cope with a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world, epitomized recently by COVID-19. We demonstrate that business leaders must... View Details

Keywords: Inside-out Approach To Strategy; Practical Wisdom; Future-making; Neuroscience; Sustainability; Strategy; Knowledge; Moral Sensibility