Publications

September 2023 (Revised September 2024)
Case

IBJ, Inc. (A): Seeking Matrimony in Japan

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Akiko Saito

In March 2020, Shigeru Ishizaka, founder and CEO of IBJ, Inc., Japan's largest marriage matching service provider, faced a critical decision regarding the company’s planned ¥3.5 billion (US$32.8 million) acquisition of competitor ZWEI Co., Ltd. IBJ, founded in 2006,... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Risk and Uncertainty; Business Model; Corporate Strategy; Value

Lynda M. Applegate is a Baker Foundation Professor at HBS and is Chair of the Advisory Committee for Harvard University’s Masters Degree of Liberal Arts in Finance and Management at the Harvard University Extension School. She has also played a... View Details

June 2005 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Covisint (A): The Evolution of a B2B Marketplace

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins

Ford Motor Co., General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler--the three original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that dominated the automotive industry throughout the 20th century--launched Covisint in February 2000 as an industry supply chain exchange that would drive out cost... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Supply Chain Management; Business Startups; Management Teams; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States

2023
Working Paper

Channeled Attention and Stable Errors

By: Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch, Matthew Rabin and Joshua Schwartzstein

We develop a framework for assessing when somebody will eventually notice that she has a misspecified model of the world, premised on the idea that she neglects information that she deems—through the lens of her misconceptions—to be irrelevant. In doing so, we... View Details

Keywords: Attentional Stability; Cognition and Thinking; Attitudes; Information; Theory

October 1988 (Revised March 1989)
Case

Florida Power Light Quality Improvement (QI) Story Exercise (A)

Florida Power and Light (FPL) has developed a widely acclaimed quality improvement program (QIP). This exercise leads the students through the process that a division of FPL utilized in an attempt to "improve service." Specifically, the process requires students to... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Service Delivery; Performance Improvement; Business Processes; Utilities Industry; Florida

26 Aug 2013
Lessons from the Classroom

Built for Global Competition from the Start

generation ago. If you are a global entrepreneur, says Harvard Business School Associate Professor William R. Kerr, "you have to think much earlier and much faster." The new MBA second-year course Launching Global Ventures... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Education

March–April 2024
Article

Retailers and Health Systems Can Improve Care Together

By: Robert S. Huckman, Vivian S. Lee and Bradley R Staats

Health systems are struggling to address the many shortcomings of health care delivery: rapidly growing costs, inconsistent quality, and inadequate and unequal access to primary and other types of care. However, if retailers and health systems were to form strong... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Retail; Retailers; Consumer; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Consumer Behavior; Business Model; Partners and Partnerships; Health Industry; Retail Industry; United States

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Program

Real Estate Management Program

immersive experience where every aspect of the learning model has been carefully designed to facilitate your growth. Your learning will take place on your own, in your living group, and in the larger classroom, driven by the renowned HBS... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Real Estate

2019
Working Paper

Machine Learning Approaches to Facial and Text Analysis: Discovering CEO Oral Communication Styles

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Dan Wang, Natalie A. Carlson and Tarun Khanna

We demonstrate how a novel synthesis of three methods—(1) unsupervised topic modeling of text data to generate new measures of textual variance, (2) sentiment analysis of text data, and (3) supervised ML coding of facial images with a cutting-edge convolutional neural... View Details

Keywords: Spoken Communication; Business History; Analytics and Data Science; Finance; Performance

This paper explores the long-standing empirical fact of increased trading volume around news releases through the lens of canonical models of gradual information diffusion and differences of opinion. I use a unique dataset of clicks on news by key finance... View Details

Program

High Potentials Leadership Program

program across the company Mentors who can help build the next line of leaders Learning and Living at HBS When you participate in an Executive Education program on the HBS campus, you enter an immersive experience where every aspect of the learning View Details

October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers

By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru

This paper studies the impact of the arbitrator selection process on consumer outcomes by examining roughly 9,000 consumer arbitration cases in the securities industry. Securities disputes present a good laboratory: arbitration is mandatory for all disputes,... View Details

Keywords: Arbitration; Financial Advisers; Financial Advisors; Brokers; Consumer Finance; Financial Misconduct; Fraud; Personal Finance; Conflict and Resolution; Information; Fairness

SSRN

2011
Working Paper

Price Competition under Multinomial Logit Demand Functions with Random Coefficients

In this paper, we postulate a general class of price competition models with Mixed Multinomial Logit demand functions under affine cost functions. We first characterize the equilibrium behavior of this class of models in the case where each product in the market is... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Income Characteristics; Price; Product Marketing; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Segmentation

12 Nov 2008
Research & Ideas

The Marketing of a President

polling places on election day. This policy of inclusion meant that voting records were set in the general election and the primaries. Fifth, his advertising messages and his tone and demeanor throughout the campaign consistently... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

2021
Conference Presentation

An Algorithmic Framework for Fairness Elicitation

By: Christopher Jung, Michael J. Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth, Logan Stapleton and Zhiwei Steven Wu

We consider settings in which the right notion of fairness is not captured by simple mathematical definitions (such as equality of error rates across groups), but might be more complex and nuanced and thus require elicitation from individual or collective stakeholders.... View Details

Keywords: Algorithmic Fairness; Machine Learning; Fairness; Framework; Mathematical Methods

2020
Working Paper

Paying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak, Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver

COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) therapy is currently a leading treatment for COVID-19. At present, there is a shortage of CCP relative to demand. We develop and analyze a model of centralized CCP allocation that incorporates both donation and distribution. In order... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Convalescent Plasma; Vouchers; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Resource Allocation; Market Design

November 2015
Article

Multi-Sided Platforms

By: Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright

We study the economic tradeoffs that drive organizations to position themselves closer to or further away from a multi-sided platform (MSP) business model, relative to three traditional alternatives: vertically integrated firms, resellers or input suppliers. These... View Details

Keywords: Two Sided Markets; Reseller; Multi-Sided Platforms; Vertical Integration

summer 2003
Article

Patents, Invalidity, and the Strategic Transmission of Enabling Information

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

The patent system encourages innovation and knowledge disclosure by providing exclusivity to inventors. Exclusivity is limited, however, because a substantial fraction of patents have some probability of being ruled invalid when challenged in court. The possibility of... View Details

Keywords: System; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Dissemination; Courts and Trials; Competition; Patents; Corporate Disclosure