Publications

November 2015 (Revised August 2016)
Case

Unilever's New Global Strategy: Competing through Sustainability

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

In January 2009, when Paul Polman was appointed CEO of Unilever, he inherited a company in long-term decline at the beginning of a major global financial crisis. As the first outsider ever recruited to lead the company, Polman lost little time in challenging the... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Competitive Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Products Industry

29 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

The $1 Trillion Link Between Mental Health and Economic Productivity

understanding the link between mental health and economics as we could be,” says Ashraf, an associate professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets unit at Harvard Business School. “And that’s on both sides—both in the way mental health can affect economic... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

11 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 11

treated with unproductive therapies while more easily uncovering therapeutic signals. However, such research initiatives alone will not deliver new medicines to patients in the absence of strong incentives to bring View Details

03 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Succeed With Your New Boss

Your new boss will have more impact than anyone else over whether you succeed or fail. Your boss establishes benchmarks for your success, interprets your actions for other key players, and controls resources you need. Building a View Details

Keywords: by Michael Watkins

May 2006
Article

Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines

By: Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan and Wesley Yin

We designed a commitment savings product for a Philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology. The savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings, and who were sophisticated enough to... View Details

Keywords: Information; Product; Philippines

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11 Jan 2000
Lessons from the Classroom

New Game, New Rules: Developing Managers for a Competitive World

are the first to learn of changing customer needs, first to see competitors' marketing strategies in action, and first to encounter new regulatory initiatives. Top management increasingly relies on the ability of its geographically and... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

18 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 18, 2018

leveraging their market power to gain traction for lower quality products when they use a tying strategy. In this paper, we empirically explore this question by examining Google’s decision to tie its new... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

17 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

How Our Brain Determines if the Product is Worth the Price

Think of the last time you went shopping. By the time you decided to buy a product, you knew both what you were buying and how much it cost. But was your decision affected by whether you saw the price or the product first? That's the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

06 Nov 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, November 6, 2018

opportunity that is unmet in a market and the requisite fundraising to launch a new business. Mented co-founders became the 15th and 16th African-American women to raise over $1 million in startup funding.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2001
Chapter

Publicly Funded Science and the Productivity of the Pharmaceutical Industry

By: Rebecca Henderson and Ian Cockburn

U.S. taxpayers funded $14.8 billion of health related research last year, four times the amount that was spent in 1970 in real terms. In this paper we evaluate the impact of these huge expenditures on the technological performance of the pharmaceutical industry. While... View Details

Keywords: Public Sector; Science-Based Business; Research and Development; Sovereign Finance; Pharmaceutical Industry

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02 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 2, 2018

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55043 Machine Learning and Human Capital: Experimental Evidence on Productivity Complementarities By: Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Evan Starr, and Rajshree Agarwal Abstract—Machine learning... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

July 2019
Case

Four Products: Predicting Diffusion (2019)

By: John Gourville

One job of product managers, marketers, strategic planners, and other corporate executives is to predict what the demand will be for a new product. This task is easier for certain classes of new products than for others. For new consumer package goods, for instance,... View Details

Keywords: Diffusion Processes; Product Adoption; Marketing; Forecasting and Prediction; Demand and Consumers; Product; Adoption; Product Launch

June, 2023
Article

Walking the Purpose-Talk Inside a Large Company: Sustainable Product Development as an Instance of Divergent Change

By: Marissa Kimsey, Thijs Geradts and Julie Battilana

There is a growing interest in large companies pursuing a new purpose—changing their core reason for being from a singular focus on financial gain to a renewed responsibility to people and the planet alongside profit. Yet knowledge of how a large company can walk that... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Environmental Sustainability; Mission and Purpose; Leading Change

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August 2018
Case

Four Products: Predicting Diffusion (2018)

By: John Gourville

One job of product managers, marketers, strategic planners, and other corporate executives is to predict what the demand will be for a new product. This task is easier for certain classes of new products than for others. For new consumer package goods, for instance,... View Details

Keywords: Diffusion Processes; Product Adoption; Marketing; Forecasting and Prediction; Demand and Consumers; Adoption; Product Launch

February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space (A)

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella

Jeff Bezos, six years after starting a revolution in retailing with Amazon.com, turned his life-long passion for space into a start-up, Blue Origin. Blue (as it was called) was a part of the New Space industry, a collection of startup aerospace engineering companies... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Partners and Partnerships; Transportation; Business Startups; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations; Aerospace Industry

October 2018 (Revised July 2023)
Case

The Boston Beer Company (A): New CEO

By: Christina R. Wing and Marco Iansiti

In 1984, when the Boston Beer Company’s Samuel Adams Boston Lager was first sold, founder Jim Koch had helped ignite a craft beer movement by making small-batch premium beers in an era of industry consolidation. By 2018, Boston Beer was a publicly traded company that... View Details

Keywords: Beer/brewing Industry; Succession; Leadership; Change; Supply Chain; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Supply Chain Management; Management Succession; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Boston

November 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Praava Health: A New Model for Bangladesh

By: Michael Chu

Launched in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2018, Praava Health (‘Praava’) delivered high-quality in-clinic primary and specialist care, backed by its own high quality diagnostic laboratories, imaging and pharmacy. Praava was founder Sylvana Sinha’s response to what she saw as a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Investment Return; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Bangladesh; Asia