Publications

January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Case

OpenAI: Idealism Meets Capitalism

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

In November 2023, the board of OpenAI, one of the most successful companies in the history of technology, decided to fire Sam Altman, its charismatic and influential CEO. Their decision shocked the corporate world and had people wondering why OpenAI had designed a... View Details

Keywords: AI; AI and Machine Learning; Governing and Advisory Boards; Ethics; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Leadership

01 Dec 2013
News

Faculty Opinion: Making It Better

delivery entrepreneur. Our faculty included the Swiss government's former top health official and HBS professors Hamermesh, Huckman, Quelch, and Rangan. “In global health care, we've found that a key driver of View Details

Keywords: Herzlinger, Regina; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

October 1991 (Revised November 1993)
Case

Philips' Compact Disc Introduction (A)

Asks that students adopt the perspective of Philips in 1979, after technical development of the CD was complete, but three years before it was introduced commercially. At that time, Philips' management had to decide whether to attempt to establish a CD standard through... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Product Launch; Standards; Product Development; Technology Industry

08 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

The Critical Computer Science Principles Every Strategic Leader Needs to Know

In an AI-world, leaders who speak technology’s language gain an edge. But that doesn’t mean every manager needs a computer science degree. A handle on a handful of basics goes a long way toward preparing strategic leaders for today’s... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

01 Mar 2021
Blog Post

Climate Finance SIP

In late January 2021, over seventy HBS MBA students gathered in a virtual classroom for four exciting days of a short intensive program (“SIP”) on Climate Finance, taught by professors George Serafeim and Vikram Gandhi. Through a series... View Details

02 Aug 2012
Working Paper Summaries

The Rich Get Richer: Enabling Conditions for Knowledge Use in Organizational Work Teams

Keywords: by Melissa A. Valentine, Bradley R. Staats & Amy C. Edmondson

Silvan Baier

Silvan Baier is a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior at HBS and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. He studies how social structures shape and are shaped by the organization, spread, and evaluation of ideas and people. In his research, he... View Details

December 2011 (Revised May 2014)
Case

ReSource Pro

By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr, Elisabeth Koll and David Lane

Matt Bruno, founder and general manager of ReSource Pro, left his job working for a New York City-based insurance program shortly after the World Trade Center bombing and arrived in China. Initially he planned to teach English, but soon the entrepreneurial spirit of... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Talent and Talent Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Insurance Industry; Service Industry; China

January 2014
Case

MIT Mystery Hunt: The Answer is Secondary

By: Willy Shih and Karen Robinson

The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzle-based scavenger hunt at MIT. It is run every year by a different team, and every year is slightly different as teams try new ideas and decide whether to keep or ignore new ideas from previous years. As the Mystery Hunt has... View Details

Keywords: Puzzle-solving; Puzzle Hunt; MIT Mystery Hunt; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Education Industry; Massachusetts; Cambridge; United States

December 2000 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Reverend Jeffrey Brown: Cops, Kids and Ministers

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Alexis Lefort

Introduces Reverend Jeffrey Brown, one of the cofounders of the Ten Point Coalition in Boston, Mass. The Ten Point Coalition, a group of ministers that worked to change the dynamics between the Boston Police Department and the kids on the street, was instrumental in... View Details

Keywords: Change; Civil Society or Community; Alliances; Interpersonal Communication; Power and Influence; Law Enforcement; City; Boston

16 Jun 2015
First Look

First Look: June 16, 2015

strategy. Without such a strategy, companies will have a hard time weighing the trade-offs of various practices-such as crowdsourcing and customer co-creation-and so may end up with a grab bag of approaches.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2020
Article

A Revolution in Economics? It's Just Getting Started...

By: Shawn A. Cole, William Pariente and Anja Sautmann

We have each experienced thrills and pain while supporting the mission of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, which facilitated many of the experiments described in the 2019 Nobel Prize citation. J-PAL in many ways seeks to fulfill what Angrist and Pischke... View Details

Keywords: Randomized Control Trials; Economics; Research; Innovation and Invention

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November 2012
Case

CSIRO: The Light Metals Flagship Decision

By: Willy Shih, Margaret P. Pierson and Dawn Lau

This case explores the challenge of investing in basic research as a public good. CSIRO was Australia's leading science and research agency, and it was chartered to enhance national prosperity through R&D. Its Flagships program was designed to align research interests... View Details

26 Feb 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Different Strokes for Different Folks: Experimental Evidence on Complementarities Between Human Capital and Machine Learning

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Evan Starr, and Rajshree Agarwal; Information Technology

2003
Case

Capston-White's Document Management and Production Services

By: Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble and Julie Lang

The development of multi-function devices that could copy, print, fax, and scan created a convergence in the markets for these devices. Copiers and printers had previously been purchased and managed in very different manners by large organizations. Facing an uncertain... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Service Delivery; Service Industry

02 Jun 2022
News

The Pivot to Web3 Is Going to Get People Hurt

2009
Chapter

Creativity, Improvisation, and Organizations

By: Colin M. Fisher and Teresa M. Amabile

Although the literatures on both organizational creativity and organizational improvisation have been expanding in recent years, the links between these literatures have not been deeply explored. This chapter explores those links to create a conceptualization of... View Details

Keywords: Body of Literature; Innovation and Invention; Organizational Culture; Research; Creativity; Theory

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January 2021
Article

State and Local Government Employment in the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Daniel Green and Erik Loualiche

Local governments are facing large losses in revenues and increased expenditures because of the COVID-19 crisis. We document a causal relationship between fiscal pressures induced by COVID-19 and the layoffs of state and local government workers. States that depend... View Details

Keywords: Local Government; Municipal Finance; Public Finance; Fiscal Capacity; Fiscal Policy; Governance; Local Range; Health Pandemics; Employment; Finance; Policy; Public Sector

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November 2019
Teaching Note

Magnus Resch: Transforming the Art Market Through Transparency

By: Henry McGee and Sarah Mehta

Teaching Note for HBS No. 319-002. This teaching note pairs with a case on economist and entrepreneur Magnus Resch, who is on a mission to make the art market more transparent. He has built the Magnus app, which catalogues the price and transaction history of millions... View Details

Keywords: Art Market; Transparency; Art Pricing; Business Startups; Innovation Strategy; Culture; Business Strategy; Mobile Technology; Fine Arts Industry; Information Technology Industry