Learning By Thinking - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

The Most Popular Stories and Research Papers of 2017

better success getting job interviews, according to research by Katherine DeCelles and colleagues. Having No Life is the New Aspirational Lifestyle It used to be that we equated power and prestige with a leisurely, luxurious lifestyle.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

09 Nov 2023
HBS Case

What Will It Take to Confront the Invisible Mental Health Crisis in Business?

addressed, examined, turned-over, then re-examined. This setting maximizes the chances of employees on their own seeing how disconnected the misconception truly is. “Understanding all of the aspects of your employees is going to make you a better organization.” Baskin:... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Health

01 May 2020
In Practice

COVID-19’s Hard Lessons Might Prepare Business for Climate Change

The coronavirus pandemic caught the business world by surprise, but the catastrophe might force companies to face a crisis that has been unfolding in plain sight: climate change. We asked faculty members affiliated with the Business and Environment Initiative at... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

22 May 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Componential Theory of Creativity

Keywords: by Teresa M. Amabile

01 Feb 2012
What Do You Think?

Is Support for Small Business Misplaced?

Summing Up Do Concerns About Job Creation By Small Businesses Miss The Point? Judging from responses to this month's column, there appears to be a visceral reaction to any suggestion that small business fails to live up to the many... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

31 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Japan Disaster Shakes Up Supply-Chain Strategies

The full cultural and sociological aftershocks of the earthquake in Japan—the worst disaster to hit the country since World War II—are washing like a tsunami across many industries as manufacturers and their customers scramble to replace suppliers disrupted and even... View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Auto; Technology; Computer; Electronics

August 2022
Article

What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh and Kannan Srinivasan

We study how Airbnb property demand changed after the acquisition of verified images (taken by Airbnb’s photographers) and explore what makes a good image for an Airbnb property. Using deep learning and difference-in-difference analyses on an Airbnb panel dataset... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Property Demand; Computer Vision; Deep Learning; Image Feature Extraction; Content Engineering; Property; Marketing; Demand and Consumers

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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

09 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place

what works in one location may not work somewhere else.” "The decision to expand is sometimes driven by the wrong reasons," says Associate Professor Juan Alcácer, who teaches in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School.... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

08 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

A Bold Proposal for Investment Reform

Finally, we recommend that the external auditor problems can only be solved through a major change in the relation between auditors and the companies they audit. This may be achieved by making the audit committee responsible for hiring... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen; Financial Services

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

27 Jul 2019
Op-Ed

Does Facebook's Business Model Threaten Our Elections?

2014 midterms. Now 16 months away from the next election, efforts have been joined to prevent voter tampering from happening again. But I don’t think significant progress has been accomplished—a view bolstered in recent testimony before... View Details

Keywords: by George Riedel

16 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Advancing Black Talent: From the Flight Ramp to 'Family-Sustaining' Careers at Delta

Delta employees—which was considered a bold action by a high-profile CEO, Hill says. That summer he went on a “listening and learning tour,” holding in-house sessions with Delta’s Black workers and meetings... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Air Transportation

April 2025
Article

Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar and Xupin Zhang

Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Image Feature Extraction; Machine Learning; Facial Expressions; Prejudice and Bias; Nonverbal Communication; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Perception

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26 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

A Better Way to Negotiate: Backward

negotiations be secret or open, separate or collective? How can you avoid being harmed by the sequencing tactics of others? Here's some advice: Study Patterns Of Influence And Deference Would-be coalition builders View Details

Keywords: by James K. Sebenius

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

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

research on answering the what, where, and when questions associated with consumer behavior, and not enough on the how and the why questions," says Avery. By looking at the hows and whys of those consumers on the fringes, we can discover... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

05 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance

team conducted a series of three studies based on the dual-process theory of thought, which maintains that people think and learn using two distinct types of processes. Type 1 processes are... View Details