Publications

Educators

01 Jun 2024
News

Leveraging Generative AI

Four decades after HBS became the first business school in the country to require the use of personal computers in the MBA Program, the School is undergoing a different kind of technological transformation, one that leverages generative... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie

April 2021
Article

A Model of Multi-Pass Search: Price Search Across Stores and Time

By: Navid Mojir and K. Sudhir

In retail settings with price promotions, consumers often search across stores and time. However, the search literature typically only models one pass search across stores, ignoring revisits to stores; the choice literature using scanner data has modeled search across... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Search; Multi-pass Search; Price Search; Store Search; Spatial Search; Temporal Search; Spatiotemporal Search; Dynamic Structural Models; MPEC; Price Promotions; Store Loyalty; Consumer Behavior; Price; Spending; Marketing; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

January – February 2012
Article

When One Business Model Isn't Enough

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Jorge Tarzijan

Trying to operate two business models at once often causes strategic failure. Yet LAN Airlines, a Chilean carrier, runs three models successfully. Casadesus-Masanell, of Harvard Business School, and Tarziján, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, explore how... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Failure; Business Model; Service Operations; Asset Management; Value; Complexity; Competency and Skills; Business Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Risk and Uncertainty; Customer Relationship Management; Air Transportation Industry

January – February 2011
Article

How to Design a Winning Business Model

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart

Most executives believe that competing through business models is critical for success, but few have come to grips with how best to do so. One common mistake is enterprises' unwavering focus on creating innovative models and evaluating their efficacy in standalone... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Design; Strength and Weakness; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage

July 2024
Article

Chatbots and Mental Health: Insights into the Safety of Generative AI

By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni

Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers. Due to the ‘black box’ nature of the algorithms, it is impossible to predict in advance how these conversations will unfold. Behavioral research provides little insight into potential safety... View Details

Keywords: Autonomy; Chatbots; New Technology; Brand Crises; Mental Health; Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Behavior; Well-being; Technological Innovation; Ethics

Research Summary

Models of optimal experience (flow)

Flow is a state of profound task-absorption, involvement, and intrinsic enjoyment that makes the person feel one with the activity. Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory states that flow is more likely to occur in situations in which the person feels that the activity is very... View Details

Article

DEA Model with Shared Resources and Efficiency Decomposition

By: Yao Chen, Juan Du, H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has proved to be an excellent approach for measuring performance of decision making units (DMUs) that use multiple inputs to generate multiple outputs. In many real world scenarios, DMUs have a two-stage network process with shared input... View Details

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Efficiency; Intermediate Measure; Performance Efficiency

2018
Working Paper

Semi-Parametric Estimation of Dynamic Discrete Choice Models

By: David Hao Zhang

I develop a new method for estimating counterfactuals in dynamic discrete choice models, a widely used set of models in economics, without requiring a distributional assumption on utility shocks. Applying my method to the canonical Rust (1987) setting, I find that the... View Details

Keywords: Semiparametrics; Dynamic Discrete Choice; Consumer Choice; Mathematical Methods

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July 2023
Supplement

Honeycomb (B): Jumping on The Generative AI Bandwagon?

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar

Honeycomb, an audio app enabling users to record stories and save family memories, considers pivoting to embrace generative AI. What should the co-founders business model look like if they pursued this new direction? View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Operations; Business Startups; Business Model; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; United States

In this paper, we propose a neurocomputational model of altruistic choice and test it using behavioral and fMRI data from a task in which subjects make choices between real monetary prizes for themselves and another. Our model captures key patterns of choice,... View Details

Article

Pattern Detection in the Activation Space for Identifying Synthesized Content

By: Celia Cintas, Skyler Speakman, Girmaw Abebe Tadesse, Victor Akinwande, Edward McFowland III and Komminist Weldemariam

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently achieved unprecedented success in photo-realistic image synthesis from low-dimensional random noise. The ability to synthesize high-quality content at a large scale brings potential risks as the generated samples may... View Details

Keywords: Subset Scanning; Generative Models; Synthetic Content Detection

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August 2019
Article

When and How to Diversify—A Multicategory Utility Model for Personalized Content Recommendation

By: Yicheng Song, Nachiketa Sahoo and Elie Ofek

Sometimes we desire change, a break from the same or an opportunity to fulfill different aspects of our needs. Noting that consumers seek variety, several approaches have been developed to diversify items recommended by personalized recommender systems. However,... View Details

Keywords: Recommender Systems; Personalization; Recommendation Diversity; Variety Seeking; Collaborative Filtering; Consumer Utility Models; Digital Media; Clickstream Analysis; Learning-to-rank; Consumer Behavior; Media; Customization and Personalization; Strategy; Mathematical Methods

September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

AI21 Labs in 2023: Strategy for Generative AI

By: David Yoffie, Orna Dan and Elena Corsi

Israeli generative artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs was founded in 2017 to realize the vision of true machine intelligence. It sought to reinvent writing and reading and in 2020 it launched Wordtune, an app using GenAI software to offer alternate text... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry; Israel

Educators

29 Aug 2013
Working Paper Summaries

X-CAPM: An Extrapolative Capital Asset Pricing Model

Keywords: by Nicholas Barberis, Robin Greenwood, Lawrence Jin & Andrei Shleifer

01 Sep 2013
News

HBS's Unique Economic Model

Rick Melnick Harvard Business School is renowned for educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Less well known is the economic model that enables HBS to do this—model that is unique in higher education. HBS is a living example... View Details

Keywords: Melnick, Richard; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

02 Feb 2016
Blog Post

A Summer Internship in General Management

previously. How did you go about securing your summer internship? I first learned about the General Mills internship at a company presentation during a career day in October. I signed up for additional... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

June 2024
Module Note

Value Creation Potential of New Business Models

By: David J. Collis

A business model is composed of three elements. These describe a generic way of creating value and identify the maximum potential value of that model for customers. The elements of a business model are the “job to be done” for the customer, the asset configuration, or... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Corporate Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

2023
Chapter

Inflation and Misallocation in New Keynesian Models

By: Alberto Cavallo, Francesco Lippi and Ken Miyahara

The New Keynesian framework implies that sluggish price adjustment results in a distorted allocation of resources. We use a simple model to quantify these unobservable distortions, using data that depict the price-setting behavior of firms, specifically the frequency... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Price; Analytics and Data Science; Cost

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January 2003 (Revised August 2003)
Case

General Mills and the Hawthorne Huddle (A)

Examines the role of General Mills in the formation and leadership of the Hawthorne Huddle. The Huddle was in the Hawthorne neighborhood in Northern Minneapolis, which in 1997 was plagued with high crime and poverty. The Huddle served as a forum, held the first... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Management Succession; Social Issues; Consumer Products Industry; Minneapolis