Publications

Research Summary

Negotiation Ethics and Moral Decisionmaking

By: Michael A. Wheeler

Whenever people and organizations negotiate, they implicitly decide what -- if anything -- they owe their counterparts in regard to candor, distributional fairness, and the possible use of pressure. The deals that they reach may also have impacts on stakeholders who... View Details

January 2023
Teaching Note

Duolingo: Teaching Languages to the Masses

By: Youngme Moon

Teaching Note for HBS Case 323-016. At the time the case is written, Duolingo is the most popular language learning service in the world. The company has more than 40 million monthly active users, and the company’s total annual revenue has reached $250 million a year.... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Acquisition; Retention; Innovation and Invention

August 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Latam Airlines and COVID-19: Seeking Bankruptcy Protection in the United States

By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Larrain, Carlos Vilches and Sarah Jeong

On May 26, 2020, Latam Airlines became the largest airline in the world to be driven to bankruptcy by COVID-19. With a complex debt structure and international investor composition, the company decided to file for bankruptcy protection in the United States, which... View Details

Keywords: Airlines; Pandemic; Coronavirus Pandemic; Health Pandemics; Air Transportation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Capital Markets; Strategy; Latin America; Chile; United States

April 2012 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Mekanism: Engineering Viral Marketing

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Alison Caverly

Mekanism introduces students to a digital media production company specializing in creating viral marketing campaigns for advertising agencies and clients (e.g., Microsoft, AXE, eBay, Toyota, etc.) Mekanism has grown tremendously from 2007 to 2010 in part due to the... View Details

Keywords: Viral Marketing; Viral Advertising; Core Competencies; Growth Strategy; Online Media; Videos; Advertising Media; Internet and the Web; Expansion; Media; Marketing; Advertising; Advertising Industry; North and Central America

2023
Article

Verifiable Feature Attributions: A Bridge between Post Hoc Explainability and Inherent Interpretability

By: Usha Bhalla, Suraj Srinivas and Himabindu Lakkaraju

With the increased deployment of machine learning models in various real-world applications, researchers and practitioners alike have emphasized the need for explanations of model behaviour. To this end, two broad strategies have been outlined in prior literature to... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Mathematical Methods

Research Summary

Corporate Governance and International Competitiveness

By: W. Carl Kester

W. Carl Kester's research involves comparisons of national or broad regional systems of corporate governance (e.g., German, Japanese, Anglo-American), and the influence these systems exert on corporate investment and international competitiveness. Kester has found... View Details

February 2024
Case

Vespucci Partners: The New World of Venture Capital in Hungary

By: Paul A. Gompers, Tonia Labruyere and Emilie Billaud

Julia Sohajda was the young, female founding partner of the Hungarian VC firm Vespucci Partners, which focused on investing at seed stage into Hungarian deep tech startups and prepare them for a launch in the U.S market. Vespucci's first fund had largely been comprised... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry; Hungary; United States

May 2023
Article

A Public Health Approach to Negative News Media: The 3-to-1 Solution

By: Tyler VanderWeele and Arthur C. Brooks

There is clear evidence that the prevalence of negative media reporting has increased substantially over the past years. There is evidence also that this negative reporting adversely affects social interactions, as well as health and well-being outcomes. Given the wide... View Details

Keywords: News; Social Networks; Contagion; Population Health; Media; Health; Welfare; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Journalism and News Industry

Find at Harvard

January 2017 (Revised April 2017)
Supplement

Bridj and the Business of Urban Mobility (B): A New Model in Kansas City

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

In late 2016, Bridj was expanding its digital platform to help address urban mobility problems faced by cities across the country and the world. Its founder and CEO, Matt George, weighed up several possible strategies for growth as he aimed to responsibly build the... View Details

August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (A)

By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in November 2019 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are contemplating what the best fulfillment format and... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Grocery; Business Model; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Turkey

10 Dec 2015
Blog Post

Working with Professors at HBS

college to intern at Broadcast Music Inc. for four summers and through EBF I got to know and learn from network and studio executives about all facets of the industry. When I arrived at HBS I was determined to enhance my knowledge of... View Details

2025
Working Paper

Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Format Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early-Stage Ideas

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Simon Friis, Tianxi Cai, Michael Menietti, Griffin Weber and Eva C. Guinan

The evaluation of innovative early-stage projects is essential for allocating limited resources. We investigate how the evaluation format affects the identification of feasibility issues through a field experiment at a leading research university. Experts were... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Evaluation; Evaluation Criteria; Feasibility Assessment; Attention Allocation; Cognitive Mechanisms; Field Experiment; Research; Performance Evaluation; Innovation and Invention; Prejudice and Bias

2008
Working Paper

Wellsprings of Creation: How Perturbation Sustains Exploration in Mature Organizations

By: David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats, Michael L. Tushman and David M. Upton

Organizations struggle to balance simultaneous imperatives to exploit and explore, yet theorists differ as to whether exploitation undermines or enhances exploration. The debate reflects a gap: the missing mechanism by which organizations break free of old routines and... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Innovation and Management; Business Processes; Opportunities; Creativity

January 2025
Teaching Note

Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel and Stacy Straaberg

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 124-007. The Germany-based startup Vytal operated the largest digital-native reusable packaging-as-a-service network globally, having raised nearly €15 million, established a large network of restaurant partners, and prevented the use of... View Details

Article

Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?

By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and George Serafeim

We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct, and they had left the organization... View Details

Keywords: Financial Misconduct; Stigma; Finance; Crime and Corruption; Executive Compensation; Employees; Compensation and Benefits

April 2012
Case

Bayonne Packaging, Inc.

By: Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison

A printer and paper converter produces customized packaging used by industrial customers to deliver promotional materials, software, luxury beverages, and gift food and candy. The company specializes in creating innovative packaging solutions for its customers and... View Details

Keywords: Production Controls; Manufacturing; Capacity Analysis; Quality Control; Performance Management; Process Analysis; Quality; Production; Performance Productivity; Performance Capacity; Business Processes; Manufacturing Industry

November 2022
Background Note

The Future of E-Commerce: Lessons from the Livestream Wars in China

By: Ayelet Israeli, Jeremy Yang and Billy Chan

This note explores the emerging multi-billion dollar commerce trend of livestream commerce. Livestream commerce is the sale of goods or services directly to consumers via live shows on digital platforms (such as social media or e-commerce platforms). It is a form of... View Details

2012
Working Paper

Learning by Supplying

By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Supply Chain; Competitive Advantage; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competency and Skills; Relationships; Telecommunications Industry