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- November 2024
- Article
Leadership and Plumbing
“Leadership” is a growth industry. Amazon lists over 60,000 books on the topic. Most focus on emotional intelligence, charisma, avoiding narcissism (usually someone else’s problem, according to these authors, not their problem) and other personality traits. But as... View Details
Keywords: Leadership Development
- November–December 2024
- Article
Retire Without Regrets
By: Teresa M. Amabile, Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas T. "Tim" Hall and Kathy E. Kram
This article explores the significant transition of retirement and offers insights into creating a satisfying postcareer life. It highlights the contrasting experiences of Irene and Lawrence, two retirees who navigated this change differently. Irene embraced retirement... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
How Do Global Portfolio Investors Hedge Currency Risk?
By: Robin Greenwood and Alex Cheema-Fox
We use monthly portfolio data from one of the world’s largest custodian banks, with over $40 trillion assets under custody, to study how global portfolio investors hedge foreign exchange risk in their equity and fixed income portfolios over the past 25 years. The data... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Generative AI and the Nature of Work
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate considerable potential to
complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity
effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details
- October 2024
- Case
Sacoor Brothers: From Co-Family CEOs to No Family CEOs?
By: Lauren Cohen, David Ager and Alpana Thapar
Sacoor Brothers, a luxury clothing retail company, was founded in 1989 in Lisbon, Portugal, by four brothers—Malik, Salim, Rahimo, and Moez. After establishing a strong presence in Portugal, the brothers were drawn to the rapidly growing retail markets in the Middle... View Details
Keywords: Growth; Geographic Mobility; Family Office; Professionalization; Institutional Development; Second-generation; Third-generation; Family Business; Private Equity; Investment; Governance; Transition; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Succession; Market Entry and Exit; Family and Family Relationships; Expansion; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Middle East; United Arab Emirates; Saudi Arabia; Portugal; Jordan; Dubai
- 2024
- Working Paper
Ponzi Funds
By: Philippe van der Beck, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Dario Villamaina
Many active funds hold concentrated portfolios. Flow-driven trading causes price pressure, which
pushes up the funds’ existing positions resulting in realized returns. We decompose fund returns
into a price pressure (self-inflated) and a fundamental component and... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Strategic Decision Making at Platform Transitions: The Case of Nokia (2010-2011).
By: Timo O. Vuori and Michael Tushman
We studied Nokia’s decision to adopt the Windows platform in 2011 to induce new theory on the emotional dynamics of incumbent firms’ strategic decision making at platform transitions. We find that platform companies’ entry into an established industry activates a... View Details
- September 24, 2024
- Article
4 Steps That Can Optimize Your Sales Process
By: Frank V. Cespedes, Scott Peterson and Daniel Weinfurter
Sales is a performance art where outcomes matter, so most advice here focuses on closing the sale. But a close is the result of actions and choices that occur earlier in the process: how much time and effort to spend on customer discovery (understanding what and to... View Details
- September 2024 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
River Remedy: Navigating Mississippi’s Medical Marijuana Market
By: Robin Greenwood, Richard S. Ruback and Robert Ialenti
MBA student William Chism, the founder of a fully integrated medical marijuana company based in Mississippi, must respond to a significant disruption in the fledgling industry. In late 2023, Rapid Analytics, one of two active licensed testing facilities, has its... View Details
Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Business Growth and Maturation; Forecasting and Prediction; Microeconomics; Local Range; Government Legislation; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Competitive Strategy; Governance Controls; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Mississippi
- September 2024
- Article
Activist Directors: Determinants and Consequences
By: Ian D. Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper examines determinants and consequences of hedge fund activism, focusing on activist directors, i.e., directors appointed in response to activist demands. Using a sample of 3,259 activism events from 2004 to 2016, we identify 1,623 activist directors.... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
How AI Can Power Brand Management
By: Julian De Freitas and Elie Ofek
Marketers have begun experimenting with AI to improve their brand-management efforts. But unlike other marketing tasks, brand management involves more than just repeatedly executing one specialized function. Long considered the exclusive domain of creative talent, it... View Details
- August 2024 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Discerene Group: Long-Term Public-Markets Investing
By: Luis M. Viceira and Brent Schwarz
This case discusses active investing based on fundamental valuations and price distortions created by market events, and whether contractual terms between investment managers and their investors can help align incentives between long-term investors and active managers.... View Details
- August 20, 2024
- Article
Sexual Assault Victims Face a Penalty for Adjacent Consent
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers
Across 11 experimental studies (n = 12,257), we show that female victims of sexual assault are blamed more and seen as less morally virtuous if their assault follows voluntary sexual intimacy, a factor we term “adjacent consent”. Moreover, we illuminate a... View Details
- July 2024 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
Shell’s Balancing Act: Resource Allocation and the Green Transition (Abridged)
By: David Collis and Haisley Wert
In mid-2023, amid pressure from climate change activists, shareholder activists, and confronting enormous uncertainty about the future demand for and price of fossil fuels, new Shell CEO Wael Sawan (Harvard MBA 2003) announced a change in strategy for the U.K. oil... View Details
- 2024
- Chapter
Corporations as the Central Institutions of Society
Mark Twain observed that, “Prediction is very difficult—particularly when it involves the future,” and he was right. One way to reduce the risk of becoming an infamous forecaster—like the experts who told us the Internet would quickly collapse, that Apple would never... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Golden Revolving Door
By: Ling Cen, Lauren Cohen, Jing Wu and Fan Zhang
Using both the onset of the US-China trade war in 2018 and the most recent Russia-Ukraine war and associated trade tensions, we show a counterintuitive pattern in global trade. Namely, while the average firm trading with these nations significantly decreases their... View Details
- July 2024
- Article
The Passive-Ownership Share Is Double What You Think It Is
By: Alex Chinco and Marco Sammon
Each time a stock gets added to or dropped from a benchmark index, we ask: “How much money would have to be tracking that index to explain the huge spike in rebalancing volume we observe on reconstitution day?” While index funds held 16% of the US stock market in 2021,... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Webmunk: A New Tool for Studying Online Behavior and Digital Platforms
By: Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin and Chris Karr
Understanding the behavior of users online is important for researchers, policymakers, and private companies alike. But observing online behavior and conducting experiments is difficult without direct access to the user base and software of technology companies. We... View Details
- June 2024
- Module Note
Value Creation Potential of New Business Models
By: David J. Collis
A business model is composed of three elements. These describe a generic way of creating value and identify the maximum potential value of that model for customers. The elements of a business model are the “job to be done” for the customer, the asset configuration, or... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
AI Companions Reduce Loneliness
By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet K. Uğuralp, Zeliha O. Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni
Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers in the domain of relationships, providing a potential coping solution to widescale societal loneliness. Behavioral research provides little insight into whether these applications are... View Details