Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(620)
- Faculty Publications (169)
- March 2021 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
Bill Wilson: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the life choices of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. A young man with tremendous potential, Wilson hit rock bottom as a drunk. An epiphany, coupled with his personal drive, led him to build a worldwide organization that has helped... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
James Bryant Conant: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case traces the rise of James Conant from a working-class neighborhood in Boston to president of Harvard University. The case describes how Conant, as a young man interested in chemistry and physics, embarks on studies to build his academic credentials and the... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Henry Ford: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case traces the rise of Henry Ford from a small farm in Michigan to the controlling shareholder of the Ford Motor Company. The case describes how Ford, as young man, acquired engineering skills and the risks he took as he built and marketed one of the first... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
Marie Curie: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case describes the rise of Marie Curie from a poor family in Poland to the pinnacle of scientific fame. The case describes how Curie, as a young woman interested in science, found a way to earn a doctorate at the Sorbonne and perform pathbreaking research on... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
Sarah Breedlove: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the rise of Sarah Breedlove, who later called herself Madam C.J. Walker, from the cotton fields of Louisiana to the head of a successful, nationwide beauty company providing opportunity and hair care products to Black women. The case describes how... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Walt Disney: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case describes the rise of Walt Disney, founder of the worldwide entertainment company. The case describes how Disney, as a young artist, created memorable figures such as Mickey Mouse and went on to produce Academy-award-winning films and build the world’s most... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Muhammad Ali: Changing The World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the rise of Cassius Clay, who later called himself Muhammad Ali, from the poor streets of Louisville, Kentucky to international fame. The case describes how Ali won a gold medal in the Olympics, three heavyweight boxing titles, and became a role... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case describes the rise of Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower from a small town in Kansas to the pinnacle of power on the world stage. During his life, Eisenhower was leader of the Allied Forces in World War II, president of Columbia University, head of NATO, and president... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Bollywood, Skin Color and Sexism: The Role of the Film Industry in Emboldening and Contesting Stereotypes in India after Independence
By: Sudev Sheth, Geoffrey Jones and Morgan Spencer
This working paper examines the social impact of the film industry in India during the first four decades after Indian Independence in 1947. It shows that Bollywood, the mainstream cinema in India and the counterpart in scale to Hollywood in the United States, shared... 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
- January 2021
- Article
How Personality and Policy Predict Pandemic Behavior: Understanding Sheltering-in-Place in 55 Countries at the Onset of COVID-19
By: Friedrich M. Götz, Andrés Gvirtz, Adam D. Galinsky and Jon M. Jachimowicz
The spread of COVID-19 within any given country or community at the onset of the pandemic depended in part on the sheltering-in-place rate of its citizens. The pandemic led us to revisit one of psychology’s most fundamental and most basic questions in a high-stakes... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
(When) Does Appearance Matter? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Subhradip Sarker
While there is evidence about labor market discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, we know little about whether physical appearance leads to discrimination in labor market outcomes. We deploy a randomized experiment on 1,000 respondents in India between... View Details
- 26 Apr 2020
- Other Presentation
Towards Modeling the Variability of Human Attention
By: Kuno Kim, Megumi Sano, Julian De Freitas, Daniel Yamins and Nick Haber
Children exhibit extraordinary exploratory behaviors hypothesized to contribute to the building of models of their world. Harnessing this capacity in artificial systems promises not only more flexible technology but also cognitive models of the developmental processes... View Details
- November 2019
- Article
Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
When do conversations lead people to generate better ideas? We conducted a field experiment at a startup boot camp to evaluate the impact of informal conversations on the quality of product ideas generated by participants. Specifically, we examine how the personality... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low Income Households
By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis
The federal government currently spends over $100 billion per year on policies aimed to increase fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption among low income households. These include price-, nutrition education-, and access-related interventions. Currently, the government... View Details
- Article
Machine Learning Approaches to Facial and Text Analysis: Discovering CEO Oral Communication Styles
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Dan Wang, Natalie A. Carlson and Tarun Khanna
We demonstrate how a novel synthesis of three methods—(1) unsupervised topic modeling of text data to generate new measures of textual variance, (2) sentiment analysis of text data, and (3) supervised ML coding of facial images with a cutting-edge convolutional neural... View Details
- Article
Risk Attitudes and Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs and Venture Team Members
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Margaret Dalton
Personality distinctions between entrepreneurs, nonfounder CEOs/leaders, and inventor employees have received limited attention, especially in innovative settings where they are working together. We surveyed these groups, along with other employees of innovative firms,... View Details
- September 2019
- Article
The Self-Presentational Consequences of Upholding One's Stance in Spite of the Evidence
By: Leslie John, Martha Jeong, Francesca Gino and Laura Huang
Five studies explore the self-presentational consequences of refusing to “back down” – that is, upholding a stance despite evidence of its inaccuracy. Using data from an entrepreneurial pitch competition, Study 1 shows that entrepreneurs tend not to back down even... View Details
- 2010
- Article
I May Not Agree With You, but I Trust You: Caring About Social Issues Signals Integrity
By: Julian Zlatev
What characteristics of an individual signal trustworthiness to other people? I propose that individuals who care about contentious social issues signal to observers that they have integrity and thus can be trusted. Critically, this signal conveys trustworthiness... View Details
- Winter 2019
- Article
Leadership Forged in Crisis
By: Nancy F. Koehn
Five great leaders from history (Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Ernest Shackleton, Rachel Carson, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer), according to Koehn, had their leadership forged in crisis. She writes that “leaders can emerge from many different backgrounds, genders,... View Details