Publications

August 2024
Background Note

Mitigating Climate Change with Machine Learning

By: Michael W. Toffel, Kelsey Carter, Amy Chambers, Avery Park and Susan Pinckney

This note highlights how machine learning is being used to decarbonize (reduce GHG emissions) several key sectors including electricity, transportation, building, industrial processes, and agriculture -- and how machine learning is being used to accelerate efforts to... View Details

Keywords: Climate; Artificial Intelligence; Adaptation; Climate Change; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Invention

22 Aug 2019
News

Getting There

(via Bloomberg Technology) (via Bloomberg Technology) In an interview with Bloomberg Technology, Anthony Tan (MBA 2011) and Hooi Ling Tan (MBA 2011), the cofounders of Grab, chronicle the company’s explosive growth from an idea pitched at an HBS business plan... View Details

Keywords: Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation; Transportation

01 Dec 2016
News

Research Brief: So Many Sites, So Little Time

Shane Greenstein (photo by Russ Campbell) Shane Greenstein (photo by Russ Campbell) Understanding how people spend their time online is essential for any organization hoping to capture and keep consumer eyeballs—yet what we know about internet behavior is just... View Details

01 Jun 2010
News

MBAs on a Mission

Dallas Children’s Museum. One of her pressing details involves predicting the future of handheld technology at the museum. “Right now we need to figure out which handheld device people will own when the museum opens in three years,” says... View Details

Keywords: Sarah Auerbach;Deborah Blagg;Julia Hanna; Corporate Services; Management; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

01 Apr 1998
News

World Class Learning

presence," reports Martha B. Achenbaum, associate director of MBA Admissions. "For example, the HBS Club of Paris has been hosting an information reception for many years, and these sessions are very well-attended," she says. Achenbaum... View Details

Keywords: Eileen K. McCluskey

28 May 2019
News

INK: Maker’s Manual

dissatisfied with current approaches to solving a social dilemma, or they are excited about the potential of an alternative business model or a new technology to address a social need. Still others are simply responding when asked for... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint

11 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 11, 2008

executives during the initial stages of implementing the new strategy. Our analysis demonstrates that this firm's balanced scorecard contained useful and timely information for distinguishing between these alternatives. These results... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Apr 2023
News

Class of 2022 Startups Sweep Alumni New Venture Competition

and Sylvan Guo, for Hue, an e-commerce technology platform that helps brands and retailers to showcase short-form, customer-generated video reviews on their websites. The virtual audience then awarded the Crowd Favorite prize of $5,000 to... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

01 Sep 2007
News

Last Look - September 2007

Our thanks to MBA 1976 classmates John Adams, Dottie Stephenson (both Section C), Sam Yates (Section D), and many others who provided details about this model rocket launch in Harvard Stadium. Yates wrote: “We had a first-year Marketing case called ‘Estes Rocket... View Details

Keywords: Keith Larson; Space Research and Technology; Space Research and Technology; Space Research and Technology; Space Research and Technology

01 Jun 2017
News

Ask the Expert: On the Fly

(above: photo by Getty Images/Patrick Foto) A mathematics major, Don Carty (MBA 1971) has always seen the airline business as a huge puzzle, with the equation involving inventory and pricing, cruising allocations, weather, and holiday effects, to name just a few... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

01 Jun 2010
News

Get Well Soon

first-year required Technology and Operations Management course (TOM), the case offers valuable takeaways for future managers of any complex service organization. “It’s a good TOM case in that it includes hard numbers and rigorous... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

February 1998 (Revised June 1999)
Case

DigitalThink: Startup

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael J. Roberts and Christina L. Darwall

Describes a recent Berkeley MBA's attempts to start a business aimed at corporate training via the Internet. Describes the very early efforts at finding an attorney, accountant, and financing, and the interrelationships among these choices. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Service Industry

February 2024
Case

Does “Matter” Matter? Amazon and Open Standards in the Smart Home Industry

By: Frank Nagle

In early 2023, the smart home industry stood at a pivotal juncture. The recent launch of “Matter” version 1.0, an ambitious interoperability standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), promised to unify a fragmented market plagued by incompatible... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Resource Allocation; Standards; Business Strategy

April 2024
Article

A Machine Learning Algorithm Predicting Risk of Dilating VUR among Infants with Hydronephrosis Using UTD Classification

By: Hsin-Hsiao Scott Wang, Michael Lingzhi Li, Dylan Cahill, John Panagides, Tanya Logvinenko, Jeanne Chow and Caleb Nelson

Backgrounds: Urinary Tract Dilation (UTD) classification has been designed to be a more objective grading system to evaluate antenatal and post-natal UTD. Due to unclear association between UTD classifications to specific anomalies such as vesico-ureteral reflux (VUR),... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Health Testing and Trials; AI and Machine Learning; Health Industry

Read Now

February 2021
Tutorial

Assessing Prediction Accuracy of Machine Learning Models

By: Michael Toffel and Natalie Epstein

This video describes how to assess the accuracy of machine learning prediction models, primarily in the context of machine learning models that predict binary outcomes, such as logistic regression, random forest, or nearest neighbor models. After introducing and... View Details

Keywords: Statistics; Experiments; Forecasting and Prediction; Performance Evaluation; AI and Machine Learning

Article

Core Earnings: New Data and Evidence

By: Ethan Rouen, Eric C. So and Charles C.Y. Wang

Using a novel dataset, we show that components of firms' GAAP earnings stemming from ancillary business activities or transitory shocks are significant in frequency and magnitude. These components have grown over time and are dispersed across various sections of the... View Details

Keywords: Core Earnings; Transitory Earnings; Non-operating Earnings; Quantitative Disclosures; Equity Valuation; Big Data; Business Earnings; Financial Reporting; Valuation; Analytics and Data Science

June 2019
Teaching Note

Michael Rubin and Fanatics (A) and (B)

By: Robert F. Higgins and John Masko

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 819-077 and 819-082. View Details

Keywords: Fanatics; Licensed Merchandise; Sports; Internet and the Web; Vertical Integration; Expansion; Strategy; Sports Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States

April 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

BlackRock (D): Organizing for the Future (with video links)

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Aldo Sesia

By the end of 2015, BlackRock had succeeded beyond any of the early dreams of its founders. The firm remained the world’s largest asset manager, with more than $4.6 trillion under management, and other financial services companies used BlackRock’s Aladdin platform to... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States

January 2017 (Revised May 2020)
Case

Sesame Workshop (A): Bringing Big Bird Back to Health

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ryan Raffaelli and Jonathan Cohen

Sesame Workshop was transforming in 2016. CEO Jeff Dunn had reorganized and shifted the iconic institution to respond to digital disruption and a consensus culture. This case examines his efforts to turn Sesame Workshop around. It notes Sesame's storied history and the... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Information Technology; Education; Media; Strategy; Education Industry