Learning By Thinking - Publications - Faculty & Research

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Algorithms Need Managers, Too

By: Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg and Sendhil Mullainathan

Algorithms are powerful predictive tools, but they can run amok when not applied properly. Consider what often happens with social media sites. Today many use algorithms to decide which ads and links to show users. But when these algorithms focus too narrowly on... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Algorithms; Predictive Analytics; Management; Big Data; Analytics and Data Science

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12 May 2020
Research & Ideas

It’s Time To Relaunch Your Remote Team

offices, kitchen tables, and bedrooms. Parents suddenly needed to juggle homeschooling while learning how to be effective remote workers. Working from home during a global pandemic has introduced new formats, patterns, challenges, and... View Details

Keywords: by Tsedal Neeley

25 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Being a Team Player: Why College Athletes Succeed in Business

C-suite roles than their classmates, says Paul Gompers, the Eugene Holman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, who is one of the study’s co-authors. “It certainly makes sense that that kind of intense commitment means there are things that... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

08 Sep 2011
What Do You Think?

What’s Apple’s Biggest Challenge: Replacing Steve or Wall Street?

training, and a master touch with the iPod world, and ceaseless curiosity . Put them in the same room, watch what happens . Get out of the way." Whatever else is needed, C. J. Cullinane suggests that "Jobs will have to be replaced View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Computer

21 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Missing the Wave in Ship Transport

industry: dry bulk carriers, which primarily carry iron ore, coal, and grains; cargo ships, run by companies like Maersk that rent container space; and fuel tankers. In 2011, Dry bulk ships made up about 40 percent of the shipping... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Transportation

08 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

Creating Value in Your Business Ecosystem

Fundamentally, they aim to improve the overall health of their ecosystems by providing a stable and predictable set of common assets—think of Wal-Mart's procurement system and Microsoft's Windows operating system and tools—that other... View Details

Keywords: by Marco Iansiti & Roy Levien

12 May 2022
Book

Why Digital Is a State of Mind, Not Just a Skill Set

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

25 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse

may learn that someone—our boss, our boss's boss, or a key person—is leaving. He or she won't be here 4 weeks from now. The events that flow from a simple change such as this can be complex. Perhaps this event prompts a reorganization and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

13 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Rescuing Products with Stealth Positioning

companies that use stealth positioning adopt a covert approach. They conceal the true nature of their products by affiliating them with a different category. This is a powerful strategy for marketers when a category is in some way... View Details

Keywords: by Youngme Moon

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

the right people are confident, suggests recent research by Thomas Graeber, assistant professor at Harvard Business School. His work tested the effects of meta-cognition—essentially, whether more skilled people are also more confident... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

09 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Moving From Bean Counter to Game Changer

complicated high-risk operations. In discussing the March earthquake/tsunami disaster in Japan (a "Black Swan" event, as risk managers call any surprise event that has a major impact and is rationalized by hindsight), Mikes sees a crucial... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Banking

24 May 2004
Research & Ideas

Becoming an Ethical Negotiator

by how we relate to one another. They believe that attaching a price to integrity or loyalty is fundamentally to debase it. Q: You write, "Intent and impact are important factors in thinking about... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

20 Mar 2017
Book

Why Companies Are Placing Users at the Core of Their Innovation Strategies

during a symposium celebrating von Hippel’s 70th birthday. Those papers—many of them written by von Hippel’s former students and colleagues—became the bones of the book Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

17 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews

Minority job applicants are “whitening” their resumes by deleting references to their race with the hope of boosting their shot at jobs, and research shows the strategy is paying off. In fact, companies are more than twice as likely to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

21 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Employee Negativity Is Like Wildfire. Manage It Before It Spreads.

Regulating our own emotions in stressful situations is difficult enough, but business leaders face the added challenge of attempting to regulate the collective emotions of the groups they lead to guide them toward success. Now, research View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Making Biotech Work as a Business

for example, was a banner year for bad news, with thirty late-stage clinical failures of biotech drugs, he said. The online magazine Signals, which is published by Recombinant Capital, a consulting firm that works on biotechnology... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Biotechnology; Health; Technology

23 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

very deliberate effort to market the iPad as a sibling to the Mac. Macs keep their names with each successive upgrade, analysts noted, while iPhones sport sequential numbers and letters to indicate improvements. “Consumers don't necessarily read specs to View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

05 May 2003
What Do You Think?

Is This a Golden Era for Marketing Productivity?

percent of new products fail within five years ... To the extent that a few, well-chosen customers might provide valuable insights into what would improve the quality of life, Professor Zaltman's ideas might be just what marketing has been looking for..." A more... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

14 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

The Network Effect: Why Companies Should Care About Employees’ LinkedIn Connections

become more central to the network by one decile group (for example, from the thirtieth percentile to the fortieth percentile) increase their research and development spending by 5 percent and their patent... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

12 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Untold Story of ‘Green’ Entrepreneurs

In the 1920s, on pitch black nights in rural eastern Montana, the farmhouse owned by the parents of brothers Marcellus and Joe Jacobs stood out for one reason: it had light, although located far from power lines and gasoline supplies. It was a beacon in the dark that... View Details