Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,044)
- Faculty Publications (1,023)
- 2024
- Working Paper
Old Moats for New Models: Openness, Control, and Competition in Generative AI
By: Pierre Azoulay, Joshua L. Krieger and Abhishek Nagaraj
Drawing insights from the field of innovation economics, we discuss the likely competitive environment shaping generative AI advances. Central to our analysis are the concepts of appropriability—whether firms in the industry are able to control the knowledge generated... View Details
- March–April 2024
- Article
Case Study: Navigating Labor Unrest
By: Jorge Tamayo
Paulo Ferreira, the president of Luna Brazil, has an ambitious plan to turn around the dismal performance of the plant he oversees in Campinas. The wrinkle is, he needs the buy-in of the powerful local union, which is still smarting from a 10-year-old labor conflict... View Details
- March 2024
- Case
Ava DuVernay's Array: Disrupting the Hollywood Film Industry
By: Anita Elberse and Morgan Brewton-Johnson
In February 2023 acclaimed filmmaker Ava DuVernay is filming her latest movie, Origin, a daring adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. With Origin, DuVernay is pioneering a method to finance the endeavor—through a combination of... View Details
- March 2024
- Teaching Note
CoPilot(s): Generative AI at Microsoft and GitHub
By: Frank Nagle and Maria P. Roche
This teaching note is the companion to case N9-624-010 CoPilot(s): Generative AI at Microsoft and GitHub, which takes place in late 2021. The case briefly describes the history of both GitHub and Microsoft with a particular focus on open source software (OSS)—software... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Anytime-Valid Inference in Linear Models and Regression-Adjusted Causal Inference
By: Michael Lindon, Dae Woong Ham, Martin Tingley and Iavor I. Bojinov
Linear regression adjustment is commonly used to analyze randomized controlled experiments due to its efficiency and robustness against model misspecification. Current testing and interval estimation procedures leverage the asymptotic distribution of such estimators to... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
Governing OpenAI (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan and Will Hurwitz
In late November 2023, OpenAI’s new board of directors took stock of the situation. The company, which sought to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computer systems with capabilities exceeding human abilities—was looking to regain its footing after a chaotic... View Details
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Board Of Directors; Board Decisions; Board Dynamics; Corporate Boards; Governance Changes; Governance Structure; Leadership Change; Legal Aspects Of Business; Nonprofit Governance; Strategy And Execution; Technological Change; AI and Machine Learning; Corporate Governance; Leadership; Management; Mission and Purpose; Technological Innovation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Resignation and Termination; Ethics; Nonprofit Organizations; Open Source Distribution; Partners and Partnerships; Technology Industry; San Francisco; United States
- 2024
- Book
Deals: The Economic Structure of Business Transactions
By: Guhan Subramanian and Michael Klausner
Drawing on real-life cases from a wide range of industries, two acclaimed experts offer a sophisticated but accessible guide to business deals, designed to maximize value for your side.
Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details
Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details
- February 2024
- Case
AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup
By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney
The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Startups; Small Business; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Platforms; Technological Innovation; Copyright; Management; Growth and Development; Market Timing; Ownership; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurial Finance; Computer Industry; Europe; Germany
- February 2024
- Supplement
JTC: Stronger Together with Shared Ownership: What JTC Did and Its Impact
By: Ethan Bernstein
Nigel Le Quesne, CEO of Jersey-based financial services firm JTC, firmly believed that "shared ownership" was at the heart of his company’s successful track record. The firm had seen its revenues, profits, and number of clients and staff grow steadily throughout its... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Open Devices and Slices: Evidence from Wi-Fi Equipment
By: Do Yoon Kim, Roberto Fontana and Shane Greenstein
Prior studies suggest that openness shapes the introduction of new products. This study
collects novel data on all routers and subcomponents introduced between 2000 and 2018. We
characterize each firm's position in a supply chain as upstream component providers... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Warnings and Endorsements: Improving Human-AI Collaboration Under Covariate Shift
By: Matthew DosSantos DiSorbo and Kris Ferreira
Problem definition: While artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms may perform well on data that are representative of the training set (inliers), they may err when extrapolating on non-representative data (outliers). These outliers often originate from covariate shift,... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups
By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein
How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth?
To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS
hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details
- January 2024
- Technical Note
Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds: A Primer
By: Jo Tango and Christina Wallace
How do venture capital and private equity funds actually work? This Technical Note covers the "when, who, and how" details:
- "When": fund length, extensions, and when investors can no longer initiate new investments.
- "Who": who is in the General... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Value of Open Source Software
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Frank Nagle and Yanuo Zhou
The value of a non-pecuniary (free) product is inherently difficult to assess. A pervasive
example is open source software (OSS), a global public good that plays a vital role in the economy
and is foundational for most technology we use today. However, it is... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends
In February 2021, Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources (an independent oil and gas company based in Texas), was considering the possibility of enhancing the firm’s capital return strategy by introducing a variable dividend tied to cash flows in... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Bootstrap Diagnostics for Irregular Estimators
By: Isaiah Andrews and Jesse M. Shapiro
Empirical researchers frequently rely on normal approximations in order to summarize and communicate uncertainty about their findings to their scientific audience. When such approximations are unreliable, they can lead the audience to make misguided decisions. We... View Details
- December 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
21Seeds: Taking Shots at Breakout Growth
21Seeds, a female-founded flavor-infused tequila startup launched in 2019, had made inroads into the alcoholic beverage industry by focusing on an underserved consumer segment in spirits—women, primarily in their 30s and 40s, many of whom were moms—and by following a... View Details
- December 18, 2023
- Article
Are Everywhere Stores the New Face of Retail?
By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
Historically, customer engagement and product fulfillment occurred in the same place — a traditional retail store. But today, retailers are beginning to explore how they can create opportunities for customers to engage with products in native environments. A related... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
'Care in Every Drop': Ayala Corporation and Manila Water (A)
By: Debora L. Spar, Paul Healy, Tricia Peralta and Julia M. Comeau
Since 1834, eight generations of the Ayala family have used their conglomerate to fund nation-building projects in the Philippines, including investments in tramcars, telecommunications, hospitals, and schools. In 1997, Ayala’s subsidiary, Manila Water, took control of... View Details
- November 2023
- Supplement
'Care in Every Drop': Ayala Corporation and Manila Water (B)
By: Debora L. Spar, Paul Healy, Tricia Peralta and Julia Comeau
Since 1834, eight generations of the Ayala family have used their conglomerate to fund nation-building projects in the Philippines, including investments in tramcars, telecommunications, hospitals, and schools. In 1997, Ayala’s subsidiary, Manila Water, took control of... View Details