Publications

January 2006
Case

Jack Strang at SequenceLabs

By: Mukti Khaire, John J. Gabarro and Lynda M. Applegate

How can entrepreneur manage his firm if things go wrong despite having a great idea, a solid team, and financial backing? Jack Strang founded a biotech firm with his friend Peter Evans, to develop molecular pathway-based "cures" for metabolic disorders. The idea was... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business or Company Management; Venture Capital; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Business Growth and Maturation; Failure; Biotechnology Industry

April 1989 (Revised March 1990)
Case

Burlington Northern (B)

By: Janice H. Hammond

Describes the experiences of a seasoned Burlington Northern (BN) sales representative after the introduction of ShipSmart, a decision support system developed by the BN to help its employees and customers analyze logistics problems. After a brief description of a... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Expansion; Rail Transportation; Logistics; Distribution Channels; Truck Transportation; Innovation and Invention; Sales; Rail Industry; United States

22 Jan 2015
News

Sex Abuse, Priests, and Corporate Conspiracy

23 Dec 2017
News

Exploring a New Agenda for Corporate Sustainability

31 May 2017
News

The 21 Most Powerful People in Boston Business

30 Mar 2017
HBS Seminar

David McKenzie, World Bank

Act Like a Scientist: Great Leaders Challenge Assumptions, Run Experiments, and Follow the Evidence

Though they’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of overrelying on gut instinct and personal experience, managers keep failing to critically examine—much less challenge—the ideas their decisions are based on. To correct this problem they need to think and... View Details

05 Mar 2009
What Do You Think?

How Frank or Deceptive Should Leaders Be?

around a plan to move forward and communicate his confidence in the plan ." Terri Bonar-Stewart suggested to leaders that they, "Lay out the facts, ask for employees' help (they have been waiting for you to ask), use humor (you... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

28 Oct 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization

Keywords: by Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen; Technology

28 Aug 2008
Working Paper Summaries

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

Keywords: by Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman & Max H. Bazerman

17 Jan 2007
Op-Ed

Learning from Private-Equity Boards

If Enron had been owned and controlled by a small group of private-equity investors, could the monitoring and control practices of a professionally run buyout shop have protected Enron's shareholders and employees from the problems that destroyed the company and... View Details

Keywords: by Malcolm Salter; Financial Services

17 Aug 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Unfinished Business: The Impact of Race on Understanding Mentoring Relationships

Keywords: by Stacy Blake-Beard, Audrey Murrell & David Thomas

Research Summary

Moral Muscle

By: Sandra J. Sucher

Can we get better at moral decision making? How is the capacity to exercise moral leadership developed? One answer to these questions is the notion of “moral muscle,” which is a combination of moral awareness (the ability to recognize situations that can be... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Ethics; Decision Making

2022
Working Paper

Pricing Power in Advertising Markets: Theory and Evidence

By: Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro, Frank Yang and Ali Yurukoglu

Existing theories of media competition imply that advertisers will pay a lower price in equilibrium to reach consumers who multi-home across competing outlets. We generalize and extend this theoretical result and test it using data from television and social media... View Details

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October 18, 2021
Article

To Regulate Network-Based Platforms, Look at Their Data

By: Chiara Farronato and Daniel Björkegren

Historically, antitrust authorities have taken a laissez-faire approach under the assumption that it is better to err on the side of not intervening when there is uncertainty. This has allowed companies like Google and Facebook to go on a shopping spree to acquire... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust Issues And Policies; Risk and Uncertainty; Digital Platforms; Competitive Advantage; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Innovation and Invention; Information Technology Industry

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April 2021
Case

Glass-Shattering Leaders: Michele Hooper

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Michele Hooper joined the board of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation when she was in her late thirties, becoming the company’s youngest director as well as the only woman and the only person of color in the boardroom. Such “firsts” were not unusual for Hooper, who had been... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Diversity; Corporate Governance; Personal Development and Career

July 2024
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Labor Markets; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Human Capital; Change Management; Globalized Firms and Management; Employment; Global Range; Employment Industry

Article

Soul and Machine (Learning)

By: Davide Proserpio, John R. Hauser, Xiao Liu, Tomomichi Amano, Burnap Alex, Tong Guo, Dokyun (DK) Lee, Randall Lewis, Kanishka Misra, Eric Schwarz, Artem Timoshenko, Lilei Xu and Hema Yoganarasimhan

Machine learning is bringing us self-driving cars, medical diagnoses, and language translation, but how can machine learning help marketers improve marketing decisions? Machine learning models predict extremely well, are scalable to “big data,” and are a natural fit to... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Marketing Applications; Knowledge; Technological Innovation; Core Relationships; Marketing; Applications and Software