Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,949)
- Faculty Publications (288)
- March 2021
- Case
P.F. Chang's
By: Ashish Nanda, Nitin Nohria and Margaret Cross
Excited yet apprehensive after being named CEO of P.F. Chang’s beginning July 1st, 2020, Damola Adamolekun was well aware of the extraordinary challenges facing the firm. The closure of businesses deemed “nonessential” owing to the COVID-19 pandemic had devastated the... View Details
- June 2021
- Article
From Predictions to Prescriptions: A Data-driven Response to COVID-19
By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Léonard Boussioux, Ryan Cory-Wright, Arthur Delarue, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Alexander Jacquillat, Driss Lahlou Kitane, Galit Lukin, Michael Lingzhi Li, Luca Mingardi, Omid Nohadani, Agni Orfanoudaki, Theodore Papalexopoulos, Ivan Paskov, Jean Pauphilet, Omar Skali Lami, Bartolomeo Stellato, Hamza Tazi Bouardi, Kimberly Villalobos Carballo, Holly Wiberg and Cynthia Zeng
The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges worldwide. Strained healthcare providers make difficult decisions on patient triage, treatment and care management on a daily basis. Policy makers have imposed social distancing measures to slow the disease, at... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Getaway
By: Ryan W. Buell and Amy Klopfenstein
Since its founding, Getaway’s service offering – tiny, modern cabins in the woods, located within a two-hour drive of major metropolitan areas – had been met with tremendous demand. Overworked and overconnected city dwellers reveled in the opportunity to take a break... View Details
- September–October 2020
- Article
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
In-housing Digital Marketing at Sprint Corp.
By: David E. Bell, Rajiv Lal and Olivia Hull
In the fall of 2019, Sprint’s Chief Digital Officer Rob Roy reflected on the telecom’s efforts to improve the effectiveness of its digital marketing campaigns. Digital media buying had long been handled by an outside agency, but in 2017, Sprint brought those functions... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability
By: George Serafeim
Combining corporate sustainability performance scores based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with big data measuring public sentiment about a company’s sustainability performance, I find that the valuation premium paid for companies with strong... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment Management; Investment Strategy; Big Data; Machine Learning; Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Performance; Asset Pricing; Investment; Management; Strategy; Human Capital; Public Opinion; Value; Analytics and Data Science
- 2020
- Article
Mutual Funds: Skill and Performance
By: Jonathan B. Berk, Jules van Binsbergen and Max Miller
The authors summarize the recent literature on mutual fund manager skill and performance. They discuss the latest contributions in the field and reinterpret them through the lens of the rational expectations framework (efficient market hypothesis). They further discuss... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
Ninja: Which Platform Wins Esports' Biggest Star?
By: Anita Elberse and Michal T. Leszczynski
It is July 2019, and the business of esports and gaming is booming. Tyler Blevins—better known as Ninja—has risen to stardom playing the immensely popular shooter game Fortnite. He has become the most followed streamer in the world and, helped by his management company... View Details
- December 16, 2019
- Article
Why Your Startup Won't Last
By: Ranjay Gulati and Vasundhara Sawhney
Why do some startups that have crossed the threshold of “product-market fit” and have a viable business model still fail? This article begins by exploring the argument that most startups need more professionalization to thrive. Founders resist putting in place... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
The Genesis Lab at Novartis
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Ranjay Gulati, Patrick J. Healy and Kerry Herman
Novartis' Genesis Labs program, launched in 2016 as part of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), hosted pitch competitions where teams of NIBR scientists proposed ideas to explore that aimed to revolutionize drug discovery. The goal was to break down... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
From Know-It-Alls to Learn-It-Alls: Executive Development in the Era of Self-Refining Algorithms, Collaborative Filtering and Wearable Computing
By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas
We examine the future of executive education on a technological and cultural landscape that is imminent but different to the one we are accustomed to. We show how the contextualization, socialization and personalization of learning—avowed but distal goals of current... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Unifying Divisions: Joro's Mission to Preserve the Planet
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Marilyn Morgan Westner
The case focuses on the initial startup team and Founders’ agreements. In March 2018, Sanchali Pal proposed renegotiating the informal founders’ agreement and equity split she and her co-founders had drafted the previous spring. They had been working together for over... View Details
- June 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Technical Note
Note on the Future of Commerce
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and Nathaniel Schwalb
In 2019, the retail and consumer product industries were undergoing a significant transformation. Over the past 50 years, what was once a highly fragmented industry began to consolidate, digitize, and increase convenience while lowering costs. The winning enterprises... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Why Do User Communities Matter for Strategy?
By: Sonali K. Shah and Frank Nagle
User communities represent a unique organizing structure for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. They are organizations composed primarily of users working collaboratively, voluntarily, and with minimal oversight to freely and openly develop and exchange knowledge... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 15 The IBM PC
The IBM PC was the first digital computer platform that was open by as a matter of strategy, not necessity. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the IBM PC as a technical system and set of organization choices in light of the theory of how technology shapes... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
New Balance: Managing Orders and Working Conditions
By: Michael W. Toffel, Eileen McNeely and Matthew Preble
New Balance Athletics, Inc., a major U.S.-based athletic footwear and apparel brand, sources most of its footwear products from independent suppliers whose factories are located in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Monica Gorman, vice president of responsible leadership... View Details
Keywords: Footwear; Athletic Footwear; Manufacturing; CSR; Sustainability; Quality Management; Supply Chains; Operations; Management; Production; Working Conditions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Labor and Management Relations; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry
- June 2018
- Case
Candor at Clever
By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala
Clever, a high-growth EdTech company based in San Francisco, had grown quickly in market share and headcount. As with many high-growth companies, however, early employees (many of whom had never managed people before) had been given the opportunity to manage teams, and... View Details
Keywords: Performance Feedback; Talent Development And Retention; Talent Management; Feedback; Difficult Conversations; Radical Candor; Scaling Start-ups; Scaling And Growth; Developing Effective Managers; Effective Managers; First-time Managers; Kim Scott; Clever; Bay Area; Silicon Valley; Interpersonal Communication; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources; Leadership Development; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Management Style; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Conflict and Resolution; Technology Industry; Education Industry; San Francisco; United States
- May 2018 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
Argentina Power—Don't Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
In 2016, Bruce Wayne, Managing Director of Energy Finance Corporation (“EFC”), was refining the Investment/Credit Committee materials for the development of up to 10 power generating plants in Argentina. As a subsidiary of the much larger International Conglomerate... View Details
Keywords: Cross Border; Energy Markets; Infrastructure Finance; Infrastructure Development; Business Subsidiaries; Business Cycles; Macroeconomics; Energy Generation; International Finance; Project Finance; Government and Politics; Demand and Consumers; Infrastructure; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Argentina; Latin America
- May–June 2018
- Article
Structure That's Not Stifling: How to Give Your People Essential Direction—Without Shutting Them Down
By: Ranjay Gulati
Most leaders view employee freedoms and operational controls as antagonists in a tug-of-war. They tend to focus on regulating workers’ behavior, often putting a damper on commitment, innovation, and performance without realizing it. But freedom and control aren’t zero... View Details
- April 2018
- Article
Effective Sales Training: What Are the Foundational Elements?
Across industries, turnover in sales positions averages about 25–30% annually. This means that, at many firms, the equivalent of the entire sales force must be replaced and trained every four years or so. No other function has an ongoing talent management task of that... View Details