Publications

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Interviewing - Alumni

which you are interviewing. What You Need to Know Prepare. The work and research you do prior to your interview conversation is essential to a successful interview. Meaningful preparation leads to a productive and positive conversation.... View Details

Research Summary

Social Learning

One major area of my research is social learning: the ways and extent to which people discover what they want and need from the behavior and opinions of others. Social learning takes many forms. Probably most obvious is word of mouth—the advice and... View Details

February 2025
Article

Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency

By: Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi

Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Customer Selection; Customer Compatibility; Retention; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Australia

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2007
Working Paper

Competition in Modular Clusters

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard

The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated "clusters," "networks," or "ecosystems" of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, distribution, and system integration may be split up among hundreds or even thousands... View Details

Keywords: Price; Profit; Digital Platforms; Industry Clusters; Competition; Horizontal Integration; Vertical Integration

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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 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details

November 2007
Article

The Accidental Entrepreneur: The Emergent and Collective Process of User Entrepreneurship

By: Sonali K. Shah and Mary Tripsas

We develop a process model of how users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and commercialize their ideas. We compare and contrast our model to the classic model of the entrepreneurial process, highlighting the emergent and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Valuation; Business Model; Commercialization; Adoption; Adaptation; Product; Civil Society or Community

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February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Tennant Company

By: Toby E. Stuart, Lynda M. Applegate and James Weber

Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine how to create, finance, structure, staff, govern, measure, and manage a new venture for developing a fundamentally new product line. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Product Development; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Research and Development

October 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Kering Eyewear

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Dante Roscini and Elena Corsi

In June 2024, Roberto Vedovotto, CEO of Kering Eyewear, prepared to discuss the future of the recently acquired brands LINDBERG, a Danish optical eyewear brand, and Maui Jim, an American sunglasses brand. Vedovotto founded Kering Eyewear in 2014, convincing... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Luxury; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Italy; Europe; China

July 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Teaching Note

MC Tool

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld

Sean Witty and Jason Premo acquired MC Tool, a machine shop located in South Carolina in 2007 with the intent to transform it into a precision manufacturer. Witty and Premo were able to more than double revenue to $6 million in their first year of managing MC by... View Details

Keywords: Small ＆ Medium-sized Enterprises; Small Business; Production; Transformation; Problems and Challenges; Financial Condition; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; United States

26 Sep 2006
First Look

First Look: September 26, 2006

Working PapersScale Without Mass: Business Process Replication and Industry Dynamics Authors:Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Michael Sorell, and Feng Zhu Abstract Since the mid-1990s, productivity growth has accelerated in the U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Nov 2023
News

So You Want to Join a Startup

making it up as you go along when you're working in an early stage company. The focus is on building the product and trying to get customers, and a lot of times the HR aspects of the company get set aside. I also talk about in startups... View Details

February 2010 (Revised October 2010)
Case

Re-THINK-ing THINK: The Electric Car Company

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron

On January 5, 2010, 48-year-old Richard Canny was on his way to meet the governor of Indiana. He was reading his newly issued press release announcing that THINK planned to start automobile production in Elkhart County, Indiana to launch its THINK City battery-operated... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Global Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Product Development; Production; Pollutants; Environmental Sustainability; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Norway; Indiana