Publications

2022
Working Paper

The Effect of Employee Lateness and Absenteeism on Store Performance

By: Caleb Kwon and Ananth Raman

We empirically analyze the effects of employee lateness and absenteeism on store performance by examining 25.5 million employee shift timecards covering more than 100,000 employees across more than 500 U.S. retail grocery store locations over a four year time period.... View Details

Keywords: Absenteeism; Lateness; Scheduling; Performance Productivity; Employees; Retail Industry

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16 Oct 2007
First Look

First Look: October 16, 2007

idea is formally evaluated as the basis of a commercial venture. Users also tend to engage in collective creative activity prior to firm formation—often within the social context provided by user communities—that results in the View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Aug 2015
What Do You Think?

What Happened to the ‘Innovation, Disruption, Technology’ Dividend?

How Patient Should We Be In Waiting for the Tech Productivity Dividend? Respondents to this month’s column cited a number of factors accounting for the fact that there is no discernable increase in the rate of View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Computer; Technology

November 2017 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Royal Philips: Designing Toward Profound Change

By: Srikant M. Datar, Rajiv Lal and Caitlin N. Bowler

This case explores Royal Philips CEO Frans van Houten's bold use of design research to inform a critical strategic decision: Should Philips leave its storied lighting business behind in favor of complete focus on health technology and consumer lifestyle products?... View Details

Keywords: Design Research; Health Technology; Innovation; Design; Research; Decision Choices and Conditions; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation

The field of customer experience (CX) design — which aims to ensure that customers have positive touch points with companies while buying and consuming their products and services — has grown quickly in recent years. Research has shown that memorable experiences,... View Details

September–October 2020
Article

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details

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March 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Deepa Bachu (A): Design Thinking at Pensaar Design

By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal

In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details

17 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 17, 2009

Working PapersFemale Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines Authors:Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin Abstract Female 'empowerment' has increasingly become a policy goal, both as an end to itself... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January 2019
Supplement

The De Beers Group: Launching GemFair for Artisanal Diamonds

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

In April 2018, the De Beers Group launched a pilot project called GemFair to create a new supply of ethically and environmentally sourced diamonds from artisanal and small-scale mines (ASM) in Sierra Leone. Whether this project would yield a meaningful supply of rough... View Details

Keywords: Diamonds; New Business; Strategy Development; Strategy Execution; Scope; ESG; Supply; Corporate Strategy; Business Strategy; Value Creation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Sierra Leone; United Kingdom

05 Nov 2019
Blog Post

Environmental Change and Ground-level Impact

What do you do on a day-to-day basis? It varies quite a lot. In general, I’m focused on thinking about how we’ll scale up our production, first to make more prototypes, and eventually to the point where we are a mature company with View Details

28 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Six Lessons from Mobile Money Ventures in Developing Countries

And many are jumping in without doing their homework to determine the distinct financial needs of consumers in the countries they are targeting. “Successful operators deal with the unique circumstances of countries to provide a product... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Financial Services; Telecommunications

March 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Amperity: First-Party Data at a Crossroads

By: Elie Ofek, Hema Yoganarasimhan and Alexis Lefort

In the summer of 2023, Amperity management was facing a critical decision on its future direction. Given the dramatic changes occurring within the digital advertising ecosystem, as concerns over consumer privacy placed limits on the ability to engage in third-party... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Business Strategy; Digital Marketing; Price; Product; Business or Company Management; Advertising Industry

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Jumia's Path to Profitability

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details

14 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 14, 2009

Competition Between Differentiated Products with Demand for More Than One Variety Author: Andrei Hagiu Abstract We analyze the existence of pure strategy symmetric price equilibria in a generalized version of Salop's (1979) circular model... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

22 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Humans vs. Machines: Untangling the Tasks AI Can (and Can't) Handle

highly-skilled tasks with and without AI. After establishing a performance baseline, consultants were randomly divided into two groups. The first group would “conceptualize and develop new product ideas, focusing on aspects such as... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

November 2001 (Revised December 2003)
Case

Whirlpool Europe

By: Richard S. Ruback, Sudhakar Balachandran and Aldo Sesia

This case presents a capital budgeting problem. Whirlpool Europe is evaluating an investment in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that would reorganize the information flow throughout the company. Students derive the cash flows from working capital, sales,... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Cash Flow; Investment; Capital Budgeting; Consumer Products Industry; Europe

March 2023
Supplement

Deepa Bachu (B): Insights and Experiments at Pensaar Design

By: Thomas Graeber, Joshua Schwartzstein and Amram Migdal

In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company’s zero-accident goal. The... View Details

November 1990 (Revised October 1991)
Case

John Crane UK Ltd.: The CAD-CAM Link

Describes the improvement of manufacturing performance in a job shop through the application of a variety of techniques such as group technology, manufacturing cells, and CAD-CAM. As well as exploring the limitations and merits of these methods, the case explores the... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Production; Information Technology; Performance Improvement; Manufacturing Industry; United Kingdom