Publications

2021
Case

Walmart's Blockchain Quest: Integrating New Technology into a Complex Supply Chain

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Blockchain is a digital, distributed, immutable ledger designed to build trust among parties without requiring an independent, third-party arbitrator or intermediary. The technology has potential to improve a variety of industries, including the complex, fragmented,... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Supply Chain Management; Technology Adoption

14 Mar 2014
News

NFL Players Association Will Independently Fund Medical School Research Initiative

November 1993 (Revised April 1995)
Background Note

Orientation to the Subarctic Survival Situation

By: Linda A. Hill

An orientation to the "Subarctic Survival Situation" (designed by and available from Human Synergistics, Inc., Plymouth, MI, tel. 313-459-1030), an experiental exercise that gives students an opportunity to learn about their personal influence style and their... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Decisions; Power and Influence; Groups and Teams; Decision Choices and Conditions

April 2018 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Gimlet Media: A Podcasting Startup

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

When digital distribution becomes an option for an analog industry, the effects on incumbents can be devastating. Is podcasting the beginning of the end of radio? Can it do what streaming video did to television and websites did to print? Two former public radio... View Details

Keywords: Podcasting; Business Ecosystem; Business Startups; Media; Disruption; Strategy

December 2003 (Revised February 2008)
Background Note

Law and Legal Reasoning: An Introduction

By: Henry B. Reiling

Gives prominence to Mr. Justice Holmes' Prediction Theory of the law as a practical--and by analogy to forecasting in finance and other functional areas of business--comfortable, and familiar way for businesspeople to think about the law. Law is defined as a forecast... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Law; Theory

2009
Chapter

Platform Rules: Multi-Sided Platforms As Regulators

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Andrei Hagiu

This chapter provides a basic conceptual framework for interpreting non-price instruments used by multi-sided platforms (MSPs) by analogizing MSPs as "private regulators" who regulate access to and interactions around the platform. We present evidence on Facebook,... View Details

Keywords: Price; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Multi-Sided Platforms; Strategy

Article

Testing Substitutability

By: John William Hatfield, Nicole Immorlica and Scott Duke Kominers

We provide an algorithm for testing the substitutability of a length-N preference relation over a set of contracts X in time O(|X|3⋅N3). Access to the preference relation is essential for this result: We show that a substitutability-testing algorithm with access only... View Details

Keywords: Substitutability; Matching; Communication Complexity; Preference Elicitation; Marketplace Matching; Communication; Mathematical Methods; Economics

January 1996 (Revised April 1996)
Case

Digital Imaging in 1995: Opportunities in the Descent to the Desktop

The dramatic shifts of the imaging industry from analog to digital technology is creating emerging markets in 1995. How can a competitor position itself to enter the market successfully? This case describes the key technologies, market segments, competitors, and... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

November 2006 (Revised November 2007)
Case

EFJ, Inc.

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Ajay Vinze and Mara Vatz

Michael Jalbert plans to transform EFJI, a land mobile radio manufacturer, into a leading radio systems and solutions provider. Taking advantage of new industry standards and the country's increased focus on public safety agencies and homeland security, Jalbert says... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Expansion

2015
Working Paper

Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency, and Marginal Returns: An Equivalence

By: John William Hatfield, Fuhito Kojima and Scott Duke Kominers

We show that a mechanism induces an agent to make efficient ex ante investment choices if and only if it rewards that agent with his marginal surplus; additionally, for an ex post efficient mechanism, these properties are equivalent to strategy-proofness for the agent.... View Details

Keywords: Strategy-proofness; Investment Efficiency; Providing Marginal Rewards; Vickrey-Clarke-Groves Mechanisms; Mechanism Design; Market Design; Human Capital

SSRN

2007
Working Paper

Coupled Search Processes: Why Is it so Difficult to Find that Organizational Design Matters?

By: Nicolaj Siggelkow and Jan Rivkin

Organizational design affects performance via coupled search processes. At low frequency, managers search for appropriate organizational designs. At higher frequency, managers use designs to search for high-performing operational choices. The two searches are coupled:... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Operations; Organizational Design; Performance; Networks; Research; Cognition and Thinking; Strategy

December 1994
Case

Intel's Pentium: When the Chips Are Down (A)

By: Stephen A. Greyser and Norman Klein

Intel, the largest-selling manufacturer of microprocessor computer chips, finds itself in a brand-threatening situation when a flaw is revealed in its top-of-the-line Pentium chip. The story is front-page news for weeks. The company invested tens of millions of dollars... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Engineering; Crisis Management; Brands and Branding; Production; Failure; Semiconductor Industry

Research Summary

Prudence in Bargaining

We investigate the outcome of Rubinstein’s (1982) alternating-offer bargaining game when noise is added to a player’s pay-off. We find that a risk-averse player typically increases his equilibrium receipts when his pay-off is made risky. This is because... View Details

28 Apr 2016
News

Health Care Dominates HBS Startup Comp

October 2018
Article

Africa Rising? A Historical Perspective

By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg

Sub-Saharan Africa’s recent economic boom has raised hopes and expectations to lift the regions’ ‘bottom millions’ out of poverty by 2030. How realistic is that goal? We approach this question by comparing the experiences of three front-runners of region-specific... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Economy; Transformation; Poverty; History; Africa

Article

Games of Threats

By: Elon Kohlberg and Abraham Neyman

A game of threats on a finite set of players, N, is a function d that assigns a real number to any coalition, S ⊆ N, such that d(S) = -d(N\S). A game of threats is not necessarily a coalitional game as it may fail to satisfy the condition d(Ø) = 0. We show that analogs... View Details

Keywords: Shapley Value; Coalitional Game; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods