Publications

28 Jul 2016
Op-Ed

Where is TripAdvisor for Doctors?

reviewed by patients often enough for the overall ratings to carry credibility. The number of hotel night stayovers far exceeds the number of doctor visits. The same chicken-and-egg issue faces all website... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Health

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

The Right Connections

of the picture, a young company must clear many hurdles before convincing potential investors that its future prosperity is a good bet. New research by HBS associate professor Monica Higgins and Associate Professor Ranjay Gulati of the... View Details

Keywords: by Judith A. Ross

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Global Brands: Connecting With Consumers Across Boundaries

panelists at a Global Alumni Conference session addressing the topic "Global Brands: Connecting with Consumers across Boundaries," chaired by HBS associate professor Nancy F. Koehn, a business historian and author of the... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner

March 2021
Article

Loan Guarantees and Credit Supply

By: Natalie Bachas, Olivia S. Kim and Constantine Yannelis

The efficiency of federal lending guarantees depends on whether guarantees increase lending supply or simply act as a subsidy to lenders. We use notches in the guarantee rate schedule for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to estimate the elasticity of bank... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Credit

Read Now

08 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Fashion Your New E-Business Model

the value chain framework to define the set of activities through which products and services are created and delivered to customers.6 Once activities are defined, it is then possible to analyze the economics at each step in the chain by... View Details

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate

29 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

How Economics May Lead to Better Football Games

from schoolchildren to attorneys—and even carries the potential to help sustain life itself. Sarah Jane Gilbert: What led you to research football teams? Are you a sports fan? Al Roth: I'm a matching fan. Q: What is matching, and why... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Sports

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Why Innovations Sit on the Shelf

leadership has the courage to initiate the measures necessary to do so. We've discovered that standard initiatives such as employee surveys, interviews by external consultants, and even relatively straightforward, one-on-one conversations... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat & Derek Schrader

June 2003 (Revised March 2008)
Case

India on the Move

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Emily Thompson

By 2003, India had been growing at almost 6% annually since 1992, after it suffered a financial collapse, abandoned import substitution, and moved gradually to adopt the Washington Consensus. Now, financial controls and competition barriers are less burdensome,... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Entrepreneurship; Foreign Direct Investment; Business and Government Relations; India

December 2005 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Cynthia Fisher and the Rearing of ViaCell

By: Robert F. Higgins, Richard G. Hamermesh and Ingrid Vargas

Describes the start up of Viacord, a Boston-based medical services firm founded by Cynthia Fisher (HBS MBA) in 1993. Told from Fisher's perspective, the entrepreneur details the conceptualization and launch of the business and the many obstacles and expenses faced in... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Roles; Business Growth and Maturation; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Service Industry; Health Industry; Boston

June 2005 (Revised September 2008)
Class Lecture

Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

By: Bharat N. Anand, Stephen P. Bradley, Pankaj Ghemawat, Tarun Khanna, Cynthia A. Montgomery, Michael E. Porter, Jan W. Rivkin, Michael G. Rukstad, John R. Wells and David B. Yoffie

It's great to have a blockbuster quarter or a revolutionary product or service, but true business excellence demands sustainability. Maintaining your competitive advantage requires a strategy that makes your business unique and carries you forward as the world around... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage

07 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Dividends from Schumpeter’s Noble Failure

Business Cycles was Joseph Schumpeter's least successful book when measured by its professed aims and several other yardsticks. Yet the book contains two vital aspects that have largely been overlooked. First, the prodigious research that... View Details

Keywords: by Thomas K. McCraw

January 2010 (Revised February 2010)
Case

IBM Retail Business Assessment at Dillard's, Inc.: Managing Staffing Levels to Improve Conversion

This case illustrates the challenges associated with matching staffing levels with variable workload in retail stores and highlights how decisions related to staffing and scheduling affect operational performance and the quality of labor at the stores. The case... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Market Transactions; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Performance Improvement; Retail Industry

October 2009
Case

Low-k Dielectrics at IBM

By: Willy C. Shih and Giovanni Carraro

Innovations at the frontiers of technology carry enormous risk of making wrong choices. This case examines a decision made by IBM in its semiconductor process technology strategy: a material to use as a dielectric insulator in its leading edge silicon chip technology.... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Science; Creativity; Semiconductor Industry; United States