Margins - Publications - Faculty & Research

26 Jan 2016
First Look

January 26, 2016

entrepreneurial channel using data from the Longitudinal Business Database of the U.S. Census Bureau. The marginal effect of taxation for growth for a state at the 10th or 25th percentile of corruption is significantly positive; on the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Profile

Rob Casper

great idea. I want to get my hands dirty creating a real product. I'm less interested in scaling a company than making marginal improvements and running the daily business successfully." Because his search is still in progress, Rob... View Details

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Why Innovations Sit on the Shelf

excess inventory was a perennial problem for the company. The inventory could be sold off only via heavy discounting, which tended to depress margins for all sales. Since the warehouse was close to a major Canadian city, a group of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat & Derek Schrader

05 Dec 2007
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Marketing

direct sales? Should I break out individual costs on a price tag? How Can Marketing Better Align With Corporate Strategy? Fixing the Marketing—CEO Disconnect In many companies, the marketing function has wandered far from the firms' overall strategy. The result: lower... View Details

29 May 2001
Research & Ideas

How Technological Disruption Changes Everything

market where customers are being overserved by the prevailing offerings. The concept of "overshooting" suggests that companies try to keep prices and margins high by developing products with many more features than customers can... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

01 Mar 2018
News

Democratizing Data to Favor Farmers

grain prices during the commodities boom at the start of the decade. But when grain prices collapsed—the price of corn has fallen in half since 2012—seed and input prices were not restored downward. Now those inputs eat a disproportionately large share of whatever... View Details

Keywords: Sasha Issenberg

11 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 11

and the growth of shadow banking. While recognizing some of the benefits of professional asset management, we are skeptical about the marginal value of active asset management. We then raise concerns about whether the potential benefits... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

09 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

How Social Entrepreneurs Can Increase Their Investment Impact

supporting aren't going to put their marginal dollars to good use, you can take them back.” Relative to donors, impact investors may also push Husk Power to grow its business and increase profitability. For example, if Husk Power were to... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

22 Feb 2022
News

Savings and Loam

use marginal farmland. “The reason that’s critical is because it’s an important source of incremental income for a farm,” Cummings explains. He wants to support the Davids of the sustainable food world that have long lived in the shadows... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Funds, Trusts, and Other Financial Vehicles; Finance

01 Dec 2016
News

Ask the Expert: Energy’s Next Era

renewables, in particular solar and wind, means that our electricity system is going to be Capex-driven, and the marginal cost of power will essentially be zero much of the time. Matching demand closer to supply, rather than the other way... View Details

01 Jan 2011
News

Peter Harf, MBA 1974

focusing the company on consumer goods. "We had a lot of marginal pieces in our portfolio," explains Harf. In those early years, Harf acquired around 25 companies. "I'm not afraid of taking risks. I'm not afraid of losing. I'm not afraid... View Details

26 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

Why the US-China Tariff Standoff Hurts American Companies More

accepting lower profit margins for other products, such as those from China. Overall, Cavallo and his colleagues found little difference between the impact on prices of affected and unaffected goods. The comparison indicates that many... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Retail; Manufacturing; Steel

22 Nov 2022
Blog Post

Leading in Tough Times: HBS Faculty member Amy C. Edmondson on Psychological Safety

diversity and inclusion, but inclusion itself is more elusive. To be genuinely inclusive, the work environment must be psychologically safe for everyone—including people in historically marginalized or underrepresented groups.... View Details

14 Feb 2007
Op-Ed

Tata-Corus: India’s New Steel Giant

underestimated a relentless backlash that unwound the deal. While politics and steel are not alien to each other, there is nothing in Tata-Corus like the level of political concern in the CNOOC-Unocal situation. Second, TCL acquired Thomson's assets from a position of... View Details

Keywords: by Tarun Khanna

30 Aug 2006
Op-Ed

The Compensation Game

rise of executive pay over time as a product of efficient markets and argued that the increase merely reflects the growing marginal productivity of chief executives. Unfortunately, this standard defense reflects a broad misconception of... View Details

Keywords: by Lucian Bebchuk & Rakesh Khurana

01 Dec 2022
News

The Potential of Business to Improve Lives

When Robin Ely, the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the faculty chair of HBS’s Race, Gender, and Equity Initiative, was studying questions of gender and race in organizations in the 1980s, research into building an inclusive economy was “a... View Details

Keywords: April White

14 Jul 2023
Blog Post

What You Can Do to Create an Anti-Racist Organization

unkind to another. As Manso-Brown explains, “Racism is around us all the time without us doing anything. It is a system created for economic, political, and social reasons that privileges white folks and marginalizes people of color.”... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

21 Dec 2021
Blog Post

Case Study: Power Nappy

Second, some customers simply won’t buy certain products without physical inspection, which requires physical presence. Third, the cost of acquiring customers online is increasingly high. There’s also a cost to retail, of course, such as View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Manufacturing

01 Jun 2018
News

The Evolution of Modern Pricing Models

the same assortment. However, certain cheaper items required some extra clicks and scrolls to discover. TT: In the end, we were able to increase Zalora’s gross margins by up to 31 percent in some experimental conditions—and it did not... View Details

Publications