Publications

January 2010 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Meetup

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and David Chen

Meetup, an on-line company providing means of arranging face-to-face meetings, is deciding between two options of increasing its revenue by investing to: (i) increase new sign ups, (ii) improve the engagement of existing users. View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Strategy; Web Services Industry

September 2000
Case

Jardines: Tapping the Asian E-Commerce Market

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Melissa Dailey and Fred Young

"We have made significant progress in reshaping the group in the current cycle of change," announced the homepage of Jardine Matheson & Co.'s web site. Percy Weatherall, newly appointed managing director of the company, knew all too well about change. In his previous... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decisions; Information Technology; Corporate Strategy; Technology Adoption

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01 Jan 2006
News

Who Has the D

Keywords: Paul Rogers, Marcia Blenko

September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Spire, the CubeSat Revolution, and the Government as a Space Data Customer

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Mehak Sarang and Brendan L. Rosseau

This case outlines the rise of Spire Global, a young space company using CubeSats to provide weather data and weather prediction services. In addition to tracing the evolution of a space startup from novel idea to publicly-traded company, the case also examines the... View Details

Keywords: Space; Government Contracting; Remote Sensing; Satellites; Business Startups; Public Sector; Cost vs Benefits; Competition; Weather; Forecasting and Prediction

16 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

What Football Firings Teach Managers About Staying Relevant

Six National Football League head coaches were fired on December 31, or “Black Monday,” as it’s known in the sport. The infamous tradition begins immediately after the conclusion of each NFL regular season and represents efforts by underperforming View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

April 2011 (Revised April 2011)
Exercise

Raptor Oil Company: An Exercise

The exercise, which adapts a famous experiment by experimental psychologist Thomas Gilovich, is designed to show both the ubiquity of analogy or associative thinking more generally and its potential perils. Students are presented with a scenario in which an oil company... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Cognition and Thinking; Prejudice and Bias; Strategy

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October 2010
Teaching Note

The International Criminal Court (TN)

By: Rafael M. Di Tella and Natalie Kindred

Teaching Note for 710060. View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Political Elections; Decisions; Balance and Stability; Kenya

September 2007 (Revised October 2010)
Case

DermaCare: Zapping Zits Directly

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Lauren Barley

DermaCare has developed an innovative new product for the treatment of acne that they hope to sell to consumers via direct-response television. The unconventional nature of the product and its distribution has led the company to seek angel financing. The Silicon Valley... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Product; California

August 2003 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative at the Ten-Year Mark, The

By: James E. Austin, Stacey M. Childress and Cate Reavis

In mid-2003, as the 10-year anniversary of Harvard Business School's Social Enterprise Initiative approached, the group's faculty and staff decided to analyze its past performance and to formulate its future strategy. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Evaluation; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise

June 2001 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Sampa Video, Inc.

A video rental store is considering offering home delivery service. Management must value the project under different financing strategies and methods, specifically adjusted present value (APV) and weighted average cost of capital (WACC). View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Cost of Capital; Entertainment; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

September 1996
Case

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (B)

By: Marco Iansiti and Alan D. MacCormack

After the release of the "Challenge" computer in 1993, Silicon Graphics executives meet to discuss the follow-up project. Should they pursue an incremental improvement to the Challenge, or opt for a radically new design recently demonstrated at Stanford University? View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Technological Innovation; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Hardware; Computer Industry

1984
Article

Children's Artistic Creativity: Effects of Choice in Task Materials

By: T. M. Amabile and J. Gitomer

Preschool boys and girls made collages using a subset of a large array of materials. Half of the children were allowed to choose those materials they would use. For the rest of the children, the choice was made by the experimenter. Children in the no-choice condition... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Early Childhood Education; Social Psychology; Decision Choices and Conditions

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2022
Article

Which Explanation Should I Choose? A Function Approximation Perspective to Characterizing Post hoc Explanations

By: Tessa Han, Suraj Srinivas and Himabindu Lakkaraju

A critical problem in the field of post hoc explainability is the lack of a common foundational goal among methods. For example, some methods are motivated by function approximation, some by game theoretic notions, and some by obtaining clean visualizations. This... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Decision Choices and Conditions; Analytics and Data Science

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October 2011
Supplement

An Interview with Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar

By: David A. Garvin

Zensar is a rapidly growing, mid-sized Indian IT services company with a collaborative management philosophy and innovative HR policies. One of its practices, Vision Communities, is an inclusive forum for innovation and strategy formulation. As the company grows,... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Human Resources; Employees; Leadership Style; Management; Organizational Culture; Information Technology Industry; India