Publications

March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Perplexity: Redefining Search

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak

By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry; United States

06 Aug 2018
Research & Ideas

Supersmart Manufacturing Tools are Lowering Prices on TVs, Bulbs, and Solar Panels

apprentice? Probably, but it will take time and practice to learn all the tricks and perfect the art, making a lot of mistakes along the way. Yet there are View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing; Electronics

July 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Compass Ethics: Governing Through Ethical Principles at WeCorp Industries

By: Elisabeth Kempf and Jesse M. Shapiro

Andrew Hill is Chief Information Officer at WeCorp, a UK-based defense technology startup specializing in drone technology. WeCorp faces decisions about international licensing and AI integration in its drones. In partnership with Compass Ethics, Hill aims to establish... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Decision Making; Ethics; Entrepreneurial Finance; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; United Kingdom

2022
Working Paper

Communicating Corporate Culture in Labor Markets: Evidence from Job Postings

By: Joseph Pacelli, Tianshuo Shi and Yuan Zou

We examine how firms craft their job postings to convey information about their culture and whether doing so helps attract employees. We utilize state-of-the-art machine learning methods to develop a comprehensive dictionary of key corporate values across the near... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Culture Significance; Labor Markets; Disclosure; Organizational Culture; Recruitment; Talent and Talent Management

SSRN

01 Dec 1998
News

Year 2000 Computer Problem and You: Disaster for Some, Lessons for All

buy a new computer, you don't throw away your old software. You may have a new machine that's running your software faster and faster, but the software was still written a while ago. Do you remember whether... View Details

09 Dec 2015
Research Event

How Do You Predict Demand and Set Prices For Products Never Sold Before?

predict demand and set prices to maximize revenue of products that have no historical sales data? To that end, they set out to develop a pricing decision support tool that would use existing data to maximize revenue on new products. The... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Apparel & Accessories

March 2024
Simulation

'Storrowed'

By: Mitchell Weiss

The game was built to accompany "Storrowed": A Generative AI Exercise, available through Harvard Business Publishing. The game adds a timing element to "Storrowed" and enables the teacher to reward teams for strong prompts or penalize teams for believing AI... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Decision Choices and Conditions; Risk and Uncertainty

13 Mar 2019
News

The First Five Years: Sierra Smith and Taylor Wiegele (both MBA 2017)

enhancements (did you know there is a synthetic shoe odor molecule you can buy? It smells.), pitching a new retailer, making a new animated GIF of feet sweating or something else wacky, designing packaging for a different section of a retail store, View Details

June 2023
Article

When Does Uncertainty Matter? Understanding the Impact of Predictive Uncertainty in ML Assisted Decision Making

By: Sean McGrath, Parth Mehta, Alexandra Zytek, Isaac Lage and Himabindu Lakkaraju

As machine learning (ML) models are increasingly being employed to assist human decision makers, it becomes critical to provide these decision makers with relevant inputs which can help them decide if and how to incorporate model predictions into their decision... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Decision Making

Read Now

03 Apr 2019
Book

Fintech's Game-Changing Opportunities for Small Business

removal business, you’re on your own. This must change. A more complicated set of regulatory issues is looming around big data and artificial intelligence. My book focuses attention and predictions on what... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Banking; Financial Services

04 Dec 2024
HBS Seminar

Mert Demirer, MIT Sloan School of Management

Web

Chinese Competition and Emerging Technologies - A Chronicle of the China Trade

40 In addition to adopting modern managerial and financial systems, the Chinese compradors played a significant role in the early industrialization of the country by investing their wealth in modern business enterprises, including... View Details

October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Loris

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Das Narayandas, Stacy Straaberg and David Lane

In December 2022, Loris’s executive team considered their go-to-market strategy. Loris was an artificial intelligence (AI) software startup for the customer service industry with two products on the market: 1) Agent Assist which provided customer service agents (CSAs)... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Marketing Strategy; Sales; Technology Industry; United States

November 2015 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Aspiring Minds

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

By 2015, India-based employment assessment and certification provider Aspiring Minds had helped facilitate over 300,000 job matches through its assessment tools. Aspiring Minds' flagship product, the Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT), used machine learning... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Strategy; Higher Education; Technological Innovation; Employment; Technology Industry; India; China

2021
Book

The Future of Executive Development

By: Mihnea C Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven by digital disruption and a widening gap between the skills that participants and their organizations demand and those provided by their executive programs. This work delves into the... View Details

Keywords: Executive Education; Leadership Development; Management Skills; Education Industry