Weakness Of Will - Publications - Faculty & Research

24 Aug 2020
Working Paper Summaries

When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects

Keywords: by Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani

July 2019
Teaching Note

Arlan Hamilton and Backstage Capital

By: Laura Huang

Teaching Note for HBS No. 419-029. Frustrated by an inability to convince existing venture capital firms to invest in companies led by women, people of color, and LGBT founders, Arlan Hamilton started her own firm, Backstage Capital, in 2015. Hamilton understood the... View Details

Keywords: Black Leadership; LGBTQ; People Of Color; Entrepreneurship; Mission and Purpose; Venture Capital; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Identity; Personal Characteristics; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Gender; Race

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March–April 2019
Article

The Future of Leadership Development

By: Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu

The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that... View Details

Keywords: Talent Management; Executive Education; Leadership Development; Business Education; Management Skills; Learning; Online Technology

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2014
Working Paper

The Decoupling Effect of Digital Disruptors

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Peter Jamieson

While the Internet's first wave of disruption was marked by the unbundling of digital content, the second wave, decoupling, promises to generate more casualties in an even broader array of industries. Digital start-ups are disrupting traditional businesses by inserting... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Information Technology

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19 Jun 2009
Research Event

Business Summit: The Evolution of Agribusiness

being low-margin commodity producers to higher-margin providers of "solutions." The future for this massive industry will be both exciting and complex. To feed the world, production must double by... View Details

Keywords: Re: David E. Bell & Ray A. Goldberg; Agriculture & Agribusiness

May 2022
Article

Investment as the Opportunity Cost of Dividend Signaling

By: Zach Kaplan and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos

We provide evidence that firms with weak investment opportunities (those whose current earnings justify a greater valuation than firms with strong investment opportunities) signal their permanent earnings level through their dividends. In the cross-section, we show... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Earnings; Investment Opportunities; Payout Policy; Signaling; Capital Structure; Business Earnings; Investment; Opportunities

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25 Sep 2014
News

The look of a leader

2011
Article

The Consumer Psychology of Mail-in Rebates

By: John T. Gourville and Dilip Soman

Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an anchoring and adjustment approach to predicting the likelihood of redeeming a rebate. In keeping with... View Details

Keywords: Product Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Sales; Motivation and Incentives

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The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As... View Details

August 2013
Article

The Timing of Pay

By: Christopher Parsons and E. Van Wesep

There exists large and persistent variation in not only how, but when employees are paid, a fact unexplained by existing theory. This paper develops a simple model of optimal pay timing for firms. When workers have self-control problems, they under-save... View Details

Keywords: Payday Lending; Hyperbolic Discounting; Self-control Problems; Pay Frequency; Payday Loan Legislation; Paycheck Frequency; Time Inconsistency; Wages; Behavior; Employee Relationship Management

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2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

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December 2014
Article

The Discipline of Business Experimentation

By: Stefan Thomke and Jim Manzi

The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As a... View Details

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2010
Article

Hiring for Strength, Hiring for Weakness: Evidence of Internal Strategic Fit from the NFL

By: Andrew Hill

Firms may hire senior managers to shore up a weakness or to build on a strength. Using evidence on the hiring of NFL head coaches, this paper finds that teams that hire for strength outperform teams that hire for weakness. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Selection and Staffing; Performance; Sports; Sports Industry

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2009
Book

The Adventures of an IT Leader

By: Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan and Shannon O'Donnell

Becoming an effective IT manager presents a host of challenges-from anticipating emerging technology to managing relationships with vendors, employees, and other managers. Ultimately, a good IT manager must be a strong business leader, not just a technical... View Details

Keywords: Books; Leadership; Crisis Management; Personal Development and Career; Relationships; Safety; Information Technology

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03 Oct 2018
HBS Seminar

Chad Syverson, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Winter 2012
Article

Is a Nuclear Deal with Iran Possible?: An Analytical Framework for the Iran Nuclear Negotiations

By: James K. Sebenius and Michael K. Singh

Varied diplomatic approaches by multiple negotiators over several years have failed to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran. Mutual hostility, misperception, and flawed diplomacy may be responsible. Yet, more fundamentally, no mutually acceptable deal may exist. To assess... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear Proliferation; Zone Of Possible Agreement; International Relations; Negotiation; Iran; United States

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01 Dec 2023
News

A Continuum of Innovation

students’ ability to really dig into the implications of new technologies, such as GAI. In terms of the EC year, as faculty members are increasing their expertise in various aspects View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie

February 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Stock Reform of Shenzhen Development Bank

By: Li Jin, Li Liao, Aldo Sesia and Jianyi Wu

Shenzhen Development Bank, China's first publicly traded company, was undergoing the non-tradable share reform. Its current controlling shareholder, private equity firm Newbridge Capital LLC, needs to negotiate with its diverse minority shareholders to find a... View Details