Publications

2008
Working Paper

Opening Platforms: How, When and Why?

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne

Platform-mediated networks encompass several distinct types of participants, including end users, complementors, platform providers who facilitate users' access to complements, and sponsors who develop platform technologies. Each of these roles can be opened-that... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Governance Controls; Market Participation; Digital Platforms

May 2019 (Revised June 2021)
Case

State of Charge: The Massachusetts Energy Storage Initiative

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In early 2017, Judith Judson (Harvard Business School MBA, 2000), Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER), was reflecting on the results of the initiative she had led to identify the contribution advanced electricity storage could make... View Details

Keywords: Energy Storage; Energy Generation; Programs; Policy; Strategy; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Massachusetts

May 2023
Article

Competition in Pricing Algorithms

By: Zach Y. Brown and Alexander J. MacKay

We document new facts about pricing technology using high-frequency data, and we examine the implications for competition. Some online retailers employ technology that allows for more frequent price changes and automated responses to price changes by rivals. Motivated... View Details

Keywords: Pricing Algorithms; Pricing Frequency; Commitment; Online Competition; Price; Information Technology; Competition

02 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

6 Strategies for Building Socially Responsible—and Profitable—Companies

A dozen years ago, Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim wondered why some companies operated with an eye toward the greater good, while most did not. Back then, he always got the same response: Corporate leaders thought social and environmental practices... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

14 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Process and Performance

Keywords: by Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim; Accounting

October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin

In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details

Keywords: Water; Pricing; Nonprofit Organizations; Projects; Price; Decision Making; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Equity; Green Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Africa; Dubai

05 Jun 2009
What Do You Think?

What Does Slower Economic Growth Really Mean?

Summing Up If not useful growth, what are we measuring? And why? This column does not thrive on general agreement. And this past month discussants came close to general agreement on the proposition that... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

Article

Evaluating and Managing Tramp Shipping Lines Performances: A New Methodology Combining Balanced Scorecard and Network DEA

By: Ying-Chen Hsu, Cheng-Chi Chung, Hsuan-Shih Lee and H. David Sherman

The shipping industry is essential for the economic development of nations like Taiwan as a means delivering and receiving cargo. Shipping has been depressed since 2008 as a result of the financial crisis increasing pressure for the shipping lines to operate more... View Details

Keywords: Network Data Envelopment Analysis; Shipping Line; Centralized Approach; Cross-efficiency; Balanced Scorecard; Performance Evaluation

2011
Chapter

An Exploration of the Japanese Slowdown during the 1990s

By: Diego A. Comin

Why was the 1990s a lost decade for Japan? How is it possible that the Japanese economy stagnated for a decade if none of the shocks that arguably hit the economy seemed to have persisted for much more than three years or so? In this paper I show that the endogenous... View Details

Keywords: Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods; Research and Development; Technology Adoption; Japan

Research Summary

Overview

Professor McDonald studies how firms successfully navigate new markets. He examines how widely accepted strategic prescriptions can actually undermine managers’ attempts to develop a viable business model or stake out a defining new market position, and considers the... View Details

June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Background Note

Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor

Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost... View Details

Keywords: Grocery Delivery; Grocery; Digitalization; Fulfillment; Delivery; Supply Chain; Disruption; Food; Supply Chain Management; Market Design; Trends; Value Creation; Goods and Commodities; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Transformation; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; China

June 2007
Article

Efficient Kidney Exchange: Coincidence of Wants in a Structured Market

By: A. E. Roth, Tayfun Sonmez and M. Utku Unver

Patients needing kidney transplants may have donors who cannot donate to them because of blood or tissue incompatibility. Incompatible patient-donor pairs can exchange donor kidneys with other pairs only when there is a "double coincidence of wants." Developing... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Size; Emotions; Human Needs; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Infrastructure; Supply Chain Management; Fairness; Performance Improvement; Health Industry

30 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Return on Political Investment in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004

Keywords: by Hui Chen, Katherine Gunny & Karthik Ramanna

03 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Transforming Manufacturing Waste into Profit

It's been said that "one man's trash is another man's treasure." HBS Assistant Professor Deishin Lee, however, has taken that old adage a step further in her recent working paper Turning Waste into By-Product by showing how it's possible for companies to turn... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

Article

The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States

By: Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Stefanos A. Zenios

Even though epidemiological evidence links specific workplace stressors to health outcomes, the aggregate contribution of these factors to overall mortality and health spending in the United States is not known. In this paper, we build a model to estimate the excess... View Details

Keywords: Occupational Health; Health Costs; Mortality; Applied Optimization; Health

June 1983
Article

A Comparison of Tournaments and Contracts

By: Jerry R. Green and Nancy Stokey

Tournaments, reward structures based on rank order, are compared with individual contracts in a model with one risk-neutral principal and many risk-averse agents. Each agent's output is a stochastic function of his effort level plus an additive shock term that is... View Details

Keywords: Tournaments; Contracts

28 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes

Keywords: by William R. Kerr & Scott Duke Kominers; Technology

Research Summary

Financial reporting quality and its consequences

Does reporting quality have real economic consequences? Professor Yu addresses this question in her research, which examines the channels through which reporting quality affects the behavior of economic agents, namely managers and investors. Her particular focus is... View Details

March 2020
Case

Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Carole Carlson

This case describes a difficult choice faced by Victor Wang, Managing Director of Singapore-based Eurasian Brewing Company (EBC), concerning the competing product launch plans of Le Jie, Vice President of EBC's China and East Asian operations, and Vivian Chin, EBC's... View Details

Keywords: Subsidiary Management; Craft Brewing; Strategy; Decision Making; Organizational Structure; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Management Style; Food and Beverage Industry; China; East Asia