Systems Thinking - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Food Stamp Entrepreneurs: How Public Assistance Enables Business Bootstrapping

non-eligible households. The rate of new business births rose by 13 percent among households that qualified for SCHIP. The survival rate of new businesses rose by 8 percent. Olds took care to find out whether the businesses were serious, sustainable endeavors.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

17 Nov 2015
First Look

November 17, 2015

evolving structure of corporate debt markets—and given rise to new questions about the private and social costs and benefits of leverage and, in particular, the role of leverage in affecting the likelihood and extent of systemic financial... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

27 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Employee-Suggestion Programs That Work

the list until you run out of either time or money." But Tucker and Singer's findings diverge from previous research and theory. About half the hospitals that participated in their study chose to do some kind of prioritization—the analysis approach. Using a View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry

08 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

Handgun Waiting Periods Prevent Hundreds of Homicides Each Year

Brady Act, plus a 6 percent reduction in gun suicides. When the permanent provisions of the Brady Act took effect on Nov. 30, 1998, and an instant background check system was introduced, many states decided to discard their waiting... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

28 Oct 2009
Lessons from the Classroom

HBS Begins Teaching Consumer Finance

And consumer finance businesses are the touch points between the financial system and millions of consumers. Despite its size and importance, we had ignored this sector almost entirely in our curriculum. Q: Was HBS alone in not offering a... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Financial Services; Education

10 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Prospective Students Steer Clear of Schools Rocked by Scandal

They collected application data using the US Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System database, and when data for a particular college wasn’t available, they contacted the school’s admissions office for... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education

04 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

The Fantastic Horizon: How to Invest in a New City

has an obligation—and opportunity—to intervene. I'm interested in the opportunity. I'm interested in sustainability as defined by economic competitiveness and the resource-stretching aspects of environmentalist thinking. I think back to a... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction; Real Estate

29 May 2013
Research & Ideas

Faculty Symposium Showcases Breadth of Research

how best to motivate contest entrants, and the research team has focused on these motivating factors. One important finding: Independent innovators are more likely to enter a contest if they don't know who the other entrants are. While hosts might View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

02 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

George C. Lodge

HBS, he believes his lack of graduate degrees may have proved an advantage, allowing him to transcend the confines of particular disciplines and think holistically. Whether the subject is Third-World development or national... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

13 Nov 2007
Research & Ideas

Six Steps for Reinvigorating America

restrictions included the ability to get visas for highly talented foreign workers and graduate students. One of the great strengths of America is our phenomenal system of higher education; we have educated the world's engineers and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

20 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

Risky Business with Structured Finance

to rate these securities to the best of their abilities, and Wall Street kept telling them to rate more. They had a sense they were doing something wrong, but they were trying to improve their models as quickly as they could. I don't View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Banking; Financial Services

23 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Psychology, Pathology, and the CEO

market share. Its Mach3 shaving system was a blockbuster product, but the company was suffering the effects of its own reliance on trade loading—the practice of offering discounts to retail customers at the end of a quarter in order to... View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

11 Mar 2001
Research & Ideas

Evolving for Success [Part Two]

company. While they needed some independence and autonomy to get started, the problem is that an Arrow customer is just as likely to use the Web one day and a sales rep the next, yet wants to know that he or she is in the same system with... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

01 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 1

centers. It uses a transfer-pricing system designed to account for interdependencies between profit centers and to induce coordination. Further, profit center managers are incentivized with own-level residual income measures. The use of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Jan 2001
Research & Ideas

Gurus in the Garage

phrase "tragedy of the commons" to describe a system in which people acting rationally and in their own self-interest destroy the very resources they all share for their livelihood. His original example was of colonial farmers.... View Details

Keywords: by Dorothy Leonard & Walter Swap

04 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

Worried About the Great Resignation? Be a Good Company to Come From

exodus. Generational expectations about what makes a good job are changing, employees are fatigued from the year-long pandemic and there are labor shortages everywhere. Employees have had the time and space to think about what really... View Details

Keywords: by Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta

24 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

The Trick of Balancing Business and Government

transportation systems as well as the creation of a free press, said Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "I think we have to be very careful about... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

17 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

Can China Maintain Its Economic Power?

preserve it, even as they have become leading players in a global marketplace. They also have very long outlooks. They don’t keep score in quarterly earnings. They do a lot of their thinking one or two generations into the future. That’s... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

reversion to very early hiring or the use of a centralized matching system such as that used for medical residencies. We suggest, however, potential avenues by which the clerkship market could stabilize at something like its present... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

Until the nineteenth century, the scope for applying (imperfectly) competitive thinking to business situations appeared to be limited: Intense competition had emerged in many lines of business, but individual firms apparently often lacked... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

Publications