Publications

July – August 2008
Article

When Virtue Is a Vice

By: Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz

Choosing duty over pleasure today can cause regret down the road—whereas regret over the reverse is fleeting. Marketers of luxury products and services should consider prompting customers to predict their future feelings about choices made now. View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Forecasting and Prediction; Moral Sensibility; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Emotions; Luxury

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July 2011
Article

Mixed Source

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gaston Llanes

We study competitive interaction between a profit-maximizing firm that sells software and complementary services and a free open source competitor. We examine the firm's choice of business model between the proprietary model (where all software modules are... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Open Source Distribution; Profit; Sales; Applications and Software; Service Operations; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Quality; Value Creation

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May 2017 (Revised November 2019)
Case

The Dubai International Film Festival

By: Rohit Deshpandé and Alpana Thapar

This case follows the conception and emergence of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF). In an already crowded and highly competitive industry, Abdulhamid Juma was attempting to define and establish a unique brand positioning for DIFF. Committed to its vision,... View Details

Keywords: Brand Positioning; Underdog Brand Building; Business Models; Non-profit; Managing Multiple Stakeholders; Film Entertainment; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Competitive Strategy; Decision Making; Growth and Development Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

December 2012 (Revised September 2022)
Case

BabbaCo

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Gaurav Jain

Having just raised a Series B financing, the case protagonist is faced with a tough decision: should she "step on the gas" and scale the customer base, or continue focusing on fine-tuning the product and business model. The case describes the various marketing channels... View Details

Keywords: Subscription; Marketing; Scaling; Product-market Fit; Online Marketing; Customers; Decisions; Expansion; Marketing Channels; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Marketing; Marketing Strategy

13 Apr 2015
News

Partners with Purpose

16 Nov 2010
First Look

First Look: November 16, 2010

explore interventions at the individual level and focus on recognized cognitive barriers from behavioral decision-making literature. In particular, we highlight three cognitive barriers that impede sound individual View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Jul 2006
First Look

First Look: July 5, 2006

case:http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=806121 EMC Corp.: Proposed Acquisition of VMware 806-153 This case involves the decision by the CEO of EMC Corp. whether to acquire VMware, a small... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Mar 2016
News

Faculty Q&A: Price Check

February 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Teaching Note

Renegotiating NAFTA

By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong

On January 16, 2020, the Senate passed a landmark trade deal that would replace the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Until the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed, considerable debate had surrounded it. The new agreement... View Details

Keywords: NAFTA; Trade; Agreements and Arrangements; Policy; Cost vs Benefits; North America

October 2006 (Revised April 2008)
Case

Ben Walter

By: Andre F. Perold and David S. Scharfstein

Ben Walter is thinking of purchasing Butler Lumber and needs to decide how he would run the business and how much to pay for it. View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Valuation

October 2019
Case

Feeling Machines: Emotion AI at Affectiva

By: Shane Greenstein and John Masko

In 2016, Affectiva—a Boston-based emotion AI software company with a long track record of building emotion-sensing software for market research—had attempted to expand into new verticals by releasing a mobile software development kit (SDK) that downloaders could adapt... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Market Research; Business Model; Finance; Revenue; Decision Making; Risk and Uncertainty; Market Entry and Exit; Applications and Software; AI and Machine Learning; Information Technology Industry; Auto Industry; United States

December 2004 (Revised July 2006)
Case

Celtel International B.V.

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon

Mo Ibrahim, chairman of Celtel International, the largest provider of cellular services in sub-Saharan Africa, must decide on his company's future. After an amazing six years that took it from minority positions in three countries to nearly $1 billion in revenues and... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Initial Public Offering; Business Growth and Maturation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Entrepreneurship; Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Africa

February 2015
Article

Location Choices under Strategic Interactions

By: Juan Alcacer, Cristian Dezso and Minyuan Zhao

The literature on location choices has mostly emphasized the impact of location and firm characteristics. However, most industries with a significant presence of multi-location firms are oligopolistic in nature, which suggests that strategic interaction among firms... View Details

Keywords: Location Strategies; Multinational Strategy; Oligopolistic Competition; Firm Heterogeneity; Geographic Location; Multinational Firms and Management; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Game Theory

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04 Jun 2013
News

Can Good Financial Behavior Be Taught In High School?

21 Apr 2016
News

Harvard Business School Breaks Ground on Large-Scale Convening Center

12 Nov 2018
Research & Ideas

'Always On' Isn't Always Best for Team Decision-Making

Essentially, subjects are shown dots on a screen representing 25 cities and asked to make a route that hits all of the cities and returns to their starting point. The goal:... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

25 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Walking Away from a $3 Billion Deal

investors in the firm—the so-called limited partners, who make money only when the firm makes good investments and generates superior returns," says El-Hage. Too Much... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services

2023
Working Paper

The Value of Professional Ties in B2B Markets

By: Navid Mojir and Sriya Anbil

We study how a particular form of social ties (i.e., professional ties proxied by past employment) aﬀects price and proﬁtability in business-to-business (B2B) markets. While most of the work on social ties focuses on information diﬀusion in business-to-consumer... View Details

Keywords: Professional Ties; Social Ties; Business-to-business Marketing; B2B Marketing; Repo; Individual Connections; B2B Pricing; Pricing; Decision-making In Financial Markets; Marketing; Relationships; Price; Financial Markets; Decision Making

SSRN

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2022
Book

Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs

By: Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald

Why is leading innovation in nascent business environments so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90% of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80% of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6%... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Organizational Culture; Leadership Style; Decision Making