Publications

31 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

From SpinPop to SpinBrush: Entrepreneurial Lessons from John Osher

fact the product of a sharp intellect and dozens of lessons learned over the course of a long career. "He's a street-smart guy, and he has this observational power. He had... View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Consumer Products

04 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

How a Juicy Brand Came Back to Life

prudent temperaments while others flourish in the hands of risk takers. Brands thrive when there's a close fit between process and corporate temperament. This explanation, I believe, will provide the framework for understanding Triarc's... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Food & Beverage

April 2017 (Revised May 2017)
Case

GE Capital After the Crisis

By: John C. Coates, John D. Dionne and David S. Scharfstein

Keith Sherin, CEO of GE Capital, faced a decision on which hinged billions of dollars and the fate of one of America’s most storied companies. On his desk sat two secret analyses: Project Beacon, a proposal to spin off most of GE Capital to GE shareholders, and... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Institutions; Strategy

November 1993 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Erik Peterson (A)

By: John J. Gabarro

Describes the problems facing a recent MBA graduate in his job as general manager of a mobile cellular company owned by a parent corporation. Raises issues of corporate divisional relationships and the difficulties facing an inexperienced manager who seems to be... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Managerial Roles; Organizational Design; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Mobile Technology

Profile

Adriana Garcia Ceja

trajectory. “He spoke to everything I had been working for, what it takes to have an impact,” Adriana says. “I realized I could work with international business to develop economies.” After a variety of work View Details

01 Apr 2015
News

Sustainability Reporting: The Lawyer’s Response

March 2013 (Revised March 2015)
Case

iMatari

By: Joseph L. Badaracco and Matthew Preble

In late 2012, recent Harvard Business School graduate Hannah Lopez is given the opportunity to lead entry into a new market for Plámo, a company that created startup companies in Europe and emerging markets based upon existing successful business models. She had only... View Details

Keywords: Ethical Behavior; Ethical Judgment; Entrepreneurship; Imitation; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Europe; Middle East

31 Jan 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Peer Effects and Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda & Jesper B. Sørensen

Research Summary

Overview

My research is at the intersection of organizational strategy, global sustainability governance, and social change. It explores the diffusion of sustainability standards to non-traditional sectors (e.g. jewelry, cannabis, plastics, pets) and the relationship between... View Details

August 2021
Article

Information Seeding and Knowledge Production in Online Communities: Evidence from OpenStreetMap

By: Abhishek Nagaraj

The wild success of a few online communities (like Wikipedia) has obscured the fact that most attempts at forming such communities fail. This study evaluates information seeding, an early-stage intervention to bootstrap online communities that enables contributors to... View Details

Keywords: Online Communities; Knowledge Production; Crowdsourcing; Innovation; Digitization; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Social and Collaborative Networks; Analytics and Data Science; Knowledge Dissemination

Find at Harvard

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November 2019 (Revised September 2022)
Case

TripAdvisor: An Itinerary for Growth

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Spencer Rascoff and Susie L. Ma

In 2019, TripAdvisor was one of the best-known and most-trafficked online travel sites. For nearly 20 years, its founder and CEO Steve Kaufer had steered TripAdvisor through many phases of growth and profitability, but recently the company’s growth had started to slow.... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Brands and Branding; Operations; Customer Value and Value Chain; Information Technology; Travel Industry; Massachusetts

2008
Working Paper

Allocating Marketing Resources

By: Sunil Gupta and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Marketing is essential for the organic growth of a company. Not surprisingly, firms spend billions of dollars on marketing. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate these resources and demonstrate that these... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Mathematical Methods

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August 2021
Article

Hoping for the Worst? A Paradoxical Preference for Bad News

By: Kate Barasz and Serena Hagerty

Nine studies investigate when and why people may paradoxically prefer bad news—e.g., hoping for an objectively worse injury or a higher-risk diagnosis over explicitly better alternatives. Using a combination of field surveys and randomized experiments, the research... View Details

Keywords: Decision Avoidance; Difficult Decisions; Judgment And Decision Making; Medical Decision-making; Decision Making; Behavior