Publications

November–December 2024
Article

Retire Without Regrets

By: Teresa M. Amabile, Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas T. "Tim" Hall and Kathy E. Kram

This article explores the significant transition of retirement and offers insights into creating a satisfying postcareer life. It highlights the contrasting experiences of Irene and Lawrence, two retirees who navigated this change differently. Irene embraced retirement... View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Satisfaction; Transition; Identity

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22 Dec 2014
Video

TechMedia Club: A Conversation Among Co-Presidents

September 2021
Case

Tonya Thayer

By: David Fubini

Tonya Thayer, Senior Partner and leader of the Consumer Package Goods practice at Sinclair Consulting, must evaluate Alan Henderson, a Principal (junior) Partner and a key member within CPG, as the six-month update on his progress and development nears. While prior... View Details

Keywords: Advice Giving; Performance Review; Performance Evaluation; Personal Development and Career

November 2009 (Revised January 2010)
Case

Communispace

By: Anat Keinan

Communispace is the market leader in creating and managing private, brand-focused online communities for major corporate clients. These communities have provided its clients with insights into how consumers view their brands, with quick feedback on potential marketing... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Network Effects; Social and Collaborative Networks; Online Technology; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

May 2013
Supplement

Transport Corporation of India (D): Business Development across Divisions

By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi

Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Business Divisions; Sales; Transportation Industry; India

28 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Sophisticated Investors May Be Harming Fintech Lending Platforms

fraction of the applicants. Borrowers and platform employees have no personal interactions; no physical meetings, phone interviews, or web chats. The platform pre-screens loans based on the borrower’s... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Banking; Financial Services

April 2022
Article

Does Context Outweigh Individual Characteristics in Driving Voting Behavior? Evidence from Relocations within the U.S.

By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

We measure the overall influence of contextual versus individual factors (e.g., voting rules and media as opposed to race and education) on voter behavior, and explore underlying mechanisms. Using a U.S.-wide voter-level panel, 2008–18, we examine voters who relocate... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Behavior; Geographic Location; Personal Characteristics; Situation or Environment; United States

August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
Supplement

Predicting Purchasing Behavior at PriceMart (B)

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

Supplements the (A) case. In this case, Wehunt and Morse are concerned about the logistic regression model overfitting to the training data, so they explore two methods for reducing the sensitivity of the model to the data by regularizing the coefficients of the... View Details

Keywords: Data Science; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Customers; Household; Forecasting and Prediction

July 2012
Case

Revenue Solutions, LLC

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Ari Wasserman and Nick Esayian were both dissatisfied with their future prospects in their current careers. Wasserman, who managed an infomercial business for a direct response consumer marketing company, wanted more flexibility and ownership. Esayian was the CEO of... View Details

Keywords: Work-Life Balance; Partners and Partnerships; Small Business; Israel; United States

August 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Three Vignettes of Early Careers in the Life Sciences

By: Satish Tadikonda, Jacqueline Grant and William Marks

The case showcases three vignettes of career choice scenarios facing new graduates. How one navigates and handles these situations can have a significant impact on careers overall, with each vignette representing a situation likely to be experienced by most students in... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Decision Choices and Conditions; Job Offer

2009
Case

What People Want (and How to Predict It)

By: Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris

Historically, neither the creators nor the distributors of cultural products such as books or movies have used analytics -- data, statistics, predictive modeling -- to determine the likely success of their offerings. Instead, companies relied on the brilliance of... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Creativity; Customer Satisfaction; Forecasting and Prediction; Markets; Business Model; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

June 2016
Article

When Doctors Go to Business School: Career Choices of Physician-MBAs

By: Damir Ljuboja, Brian W. Powers, Benjamin Robbins, Robert S. Huckman, Krishna Yeshwant and Sachin Jain

There has been substantial growth in the number of physicians pursuing Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees over the past decade, but there is continuing debate over the utility of these programs and the career outcomes of their graduates. The authors... View Details

Keywords: Medical Education; MD; MBA; Physicians; Executive Education; Training; Personal Development and Career; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

October 2004
Background Note

A Note on Drawing Implications from Themes

Discusses the process of generating implications from life themes, a necessary step for completing the Self-Assessment and Career Development final paper. View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career

Article

Valuing Time Over Money Predicts Happiness After a Major Life Transition: A Preregistered Longitudinal Study of Graduating Students

By: A.V. Whillans, Lucia Macchia and Elizabeth Dunn

How does prioritizing time or money shape major life decisions and subsequent well-being? In a preregistered longitudinal study of approximately 1000 graduating university students, respondents who valued time over money chose more intrinsically rewarding activities... View Details

Keywords: Time Use; Trade-offs; Career Decisions; Time Management; Money; Happiness; Values and Beliefs; Personal Development and Career

March 2021 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Mary Kay Ash: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case describes the rise of Mary Kay, the founder of the worldwide cosmetics company. As a young single mother, Mary Kay had to overcome many obstacles to start her business and guide it to success. Today, there are more than 3.5 million Mary Kay beauty consultants... View Details

Keywords: Business Start-ups; Entrepreneurship; Values and Beliefs; Business Startups; Work-Life Balance; Success; Religion; Family Business; Personal Development and Career; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

October 2009
Article

Making Time Off Predictable—and Required

By: Leslie Perlow and Jessica L. Porter

People in professional services believe a 24/7 work ethic is essential for getting ahead—and so they work 60-plus hours a week and stay tethered to their BlackBerrys. This perpetuates a vicious cycle: Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness. When people... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Expectations; Performance Productivity; Work-Life Balance; Service Industry

May 2024
Supplement

gWorks (B)

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

In January of 2019, Joe Heieck, CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size as gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was acquired by... View Details

November 2003 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Union Corrugating Company (B)

By: Paul W. Marshall and Julia Stevens

Lauri Union, president of Union Corrugating Co., has successfully transformed her family's corrugated steel roofing and siding manufacturer into a successful enterprise. Reviews how Union turned the struggling company around and also considers the management structure... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Competition; Work-Life Balance; Success; Change Management; Management Systems; Construction Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Boston; North Carolina

2020
Working Paper

Targeting for Long-Term Outcomes

By: Jeremy Yang, Dean Eckles, Paramveer Dhillon and Sinan Aral

Decision makers often want to target interventions so as to maximize an outcome that is observed only in the long term. This typically requires delaying decisions until the outcome is observed or relying on simple short-term proxies for the long-term outcome. Here we... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Marketing; Optimization; Churn Management; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Policy; Learning; Outcome or Result