Happy End Problem - Publications - Faculty & Research

14 May 2020
Research & Ideas

What Leaders Can Do to Fight the COVID Fog

goes, ‘Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students.’ So, if time is of the essence, how to best think and frame the problems we need to solve with our teams to survive this crisis? What is sequence of those... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

10 Apr 2006
Research & Ideas

Lessons from the Browser Wars

diffused into the market. The debate was this: Did Microsoft win because its Internet Explorer was the technologically superior product to Netscape Navigator, or was Microsoft just more successful at the distribution end by convincing... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Computer; Consumer Products; Technology

10 Dec 2012
Research & Ideas

Why We Blab Our Intimate Secrets on Facebook

wife, or partner of a friend?" and ending with the relatively tame "In the last year, have you eaten meat, poultry, or fish?" Participants also were more likely to admit to unethical behavior if they were told that other participants had... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

16 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Can Applied Economics Save Homeless Puppies?

loving family” As with the work that won the Nobel Prize, “with Wagaroo, we’re trying to solve some standard economic problems related to market design,” says Exley, who joined the Harvard Business School faculty in June, as an assistant... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

27 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Building Businesses in Turbulent Times

Battered by contracting markets and frozen credit, many businesses today are fighting for survival. Indeed, the current global financial crisis provides a mandate for restructuring. But survival is not the end goal, says Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

12 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Untold Story of ‘Green’ Entrepreneurs

another influential factor in the development of the wind turbine business following the oil shocks of the 1970s. Suddenly faced with the end of the cheap oil era, the United States, Denmark, and Germany made significant investments in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

21 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

It Matters That Your CEO Doesn't Know Much About Sales

more specialists are needed to stay up to date with functional best practices. The problem that this influx of specialists creates, Cespedes says, is that fewer senior executives are responsible for integrating activities across the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

22 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 22

forces within the team. Ends with a discussion of bridging differences in teams across both geographic and cultural divides. Purchase this note: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/410051-PDF-ENG Radiant Cosmetics: What's in a Pout?... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Government’s Positive Role in Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship

Two well-documented problems can derail government programs to boost new venture activity. First, they can simply get it wrong: allocating funds and support in an inept or, even worse, counterproductive manner. Decisions that seem... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

01 Jun 2020
What Do You Think?

Will Challenged Amazon Tweak Its Retail Model Post-Pandemic?

Walmart, and Etsy ate that part of Amazon’s lunch that Amazon couldn’t finish. One problem for Amazon was its inability to meet the tremendous demand surge for online services and products. Its stockouts increased and delivery times... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Companies Must Forget—and Borrow

reimagined what it looks like in the online world, Anand said. HBX opted for active, edge-of-the-seat learning by including short video lectures and cases mapped out through videos in which people describe business problems while... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education; Advertising

05 Dec 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Walmart Defying Economic Gravity?

Given the nature of some unusually thoughtful responses, there was no consensus on the question of whether Walmart has reached its full potential. Comments raised even more interesting questions surrounding the dynamic of relationships between the benefits of scale and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

12 Mar 2013
First Look

First Look: March 12

blend the two models? Paper: http://hbr.org/2013/03/do-you-really-want-to-be-an-ebay/ar/1 Prize-based Contests Can Provide Solutions to Computational Biology Problems Authors:Lakhani, Karim R., Kevin J. Boudreau, Eva C. Guinan, Carliss Y.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Operations and the Competitive Edge

operations took somewhat of a back seat. There were just too many new things to think about and explore, and everybody's attention was focused on "breakthrough improvements," so the mandate for operations became "just keep up with business while we... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

05 Jun 2006
Research & Ideas

Using Competition to Reform Healthcare

The ills of the U.S. healthcare system are well chronicled—soaring costs, low customer satisfaction, increasing problems with quality, and restricted coverage lead the list. But do we really understand the underlying issues well enough to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter; Health

29 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors

smaller) communities and collaborations of inventors. Fleming and his colleagues found, for example, that at the end of the last decade, half of the patented inventors in Silicon Valley could trace an indirect collaborative path to one... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Publishing

21 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Will American Brands Be a Casualty of War?

upper Amazon, they brought people a taste of America, along with the promise of freedom and prosperity. The end of the Cold War signaled victory for Brand America. As closed economies opened up to foreign trade and investment, Brand... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

24 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

With Millions of Workers Juggling Caregiving, Employers Need to Rethink Support

the workforce. Companies also pay a price, both directly and indirectly, often in ways they don’t fully understand, the report found. The Gazette spoke with its author Joseph B. Fuller, professor of management practice and co-chair of the Managing the Future of Work... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

04 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 4

selection problem (consumption complementarities often lead to multiple equilibria, which result in different utility levels for the users); and (iii) a coordination problem (lacking perfect foresight, it is... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

04 Apr 2005
What Do You Think?

Can an Organization’s “Deep Smarts” Be Preserved?

But it isn't easy. It requires that carefully-selected individuals possessing deep smarts devote significant amounts of time to the coaching of a self-selected protégé by creating a learning process that the authors term "guided experience" (including... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

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