Publications

August 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Background Note

Brand Portfolio Strategy and Brand Architecture

By: Jill Avery

While companies choose to brand their products and services in many different ways, there are some central tenets that help define an optimal brand portfolio and associated brand architecture. Brand portfolio strategy involves the design, deployment, and management of... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Portfolio; Brand Extension; Brand Portfolio Strategy; Brand Architecture; Consumer Behavior; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy

August 2018 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Tailor Brands: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Branding

By: Jill Avery

Using proprietary artificial intelligence technology, startup Tailor Brands set out to democratize branding by allowing small businesses to create their brand identities by automatically generating logos in just minutes at minimal cost with no branding or design skills... View Details

Article

From TV to Web: Content Strategies for Ads That Drive Online Sales

By: Thales S. Teixeira

Consumers have become avid media multitaskers, moving seamlessly between their TVs and digital devices. Shorter TV commercials have reduced both the quantity and quality of consumer attention during prime-time viewing hours. In this new media environment, can TV... View Details

Keywords: TV Advertising; Multitasking; Infotainment; Television; Prime Time; Advertising; Online Advertising; Advertising Industry

06 Oct 2016
News

The Munich Oktoberfest: From Local Tradition to Global Capitalism

10 Jun 2013
Research & Ideas

How Numbers Talk to People

Thomas H. Davenport and Jinho Kim offer an introduction to the best methods for consuming data. In this excerpt, Davenport and Kim discuss multiple ways to tell a story with... View Details

16 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Nonprofit Networking: The New Way to Grow

in affiliates and associates that were started locally and were independent organizations. She wanted to build a culture around quality and accountability, and get more services out to the population that... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

10 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

Keywords: by Aurélie Lemmens & Sunil Gupta; Retail

31 Jan 2014
News

Research Shows Which TV Ads Are Likely to Make Multitaskers Buy

Article

People Make It So Hard to Ditch Plastic Straws

By: Scott Duke Kominers

Rarely has a minor consumer product received more vilification than the plastic straw. As a symbol of human wastefulness and our careless disregard for the environment, straws are the near-perfect villain. You use a plastic straw once and toss it, but it stays with us... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Consumer Behavior

21 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

What Health Care Managers Need to Know--and How to Teach Them

Global health care is entering its most challenging era, with increasing demand for services from consumers newly arrived in the middle class, under-served people, and rapidly aging populations, all the while dealing with the need View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry; Health; Education

The New Rules for Bringing Innovations to Market, Harvard Business Review, March 2004

It's tough to get consumers to adopt innovations--and it's getting tougher all the time. That's because more and more markets are taking on the characteristics of networks. The interconnections among today's companies are so plentiful that often a... View Details

March 2010 (Revised September 2010)
Case

TeamLease: Putting India to Work (Il) Legally

By: Tarun Khanna and Anjali Raina

This case focuses on the growth dilemmas facing Manish Sabharwal, co-founder, TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd. TeamLease is a human resource outsourcing and temp staffing company located in India, which has grown rapidly from 2002 to 2009. Set in the context of the highly... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employment; Human Capital; Lawfulness; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Power and Influence; Employment Industry; India

18 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Use Free Shipping as a Competitive Weapon

media creator for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Related Reading: Should Retailers Match Their Own Prices Online and in Stores? Behavioral Economists Can Make You a Healthier Consumer and Smarter View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail

2021
Working Paper

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Negotiation; Corporate Disclosure; Compensation and Benefits; Gender

20 Jul 2022
News

Wired to be Inspired

in? What's our long term vision for why we are here? Just like ancient mariners used compasses to kind of direct themselves, purpose was an orienting scheme. The second was: Purpose became like an operating... View Details

Keywords: Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

13 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

identification documentation, let alone a credit score. Loan officers often end up relying on qualitative information and intuition, all the while knowing that these loans may be vital to the nation's economy. "Small businesses in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking

24 Jul 2019
Lessons from the Classroom

Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?

central role in a variety of corporate settings ranging from strategy and marketing to finance and human resources. Behavioral economics provides frameworks for knowing where and how View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

December 2012 (Revised November 2014)
Case

Lit Motors

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden

In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim, had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Prototyping; Electric Vehicle; Urban Vehicle; Customer Tests; Gyroscope; Entrepreneurs; Development Stage Enterprises; Creativity; Disruptive Technologies; Consumer Surveys; Market Segmentation; Manufacturing Costs; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; United States; California

2019
Working Paper

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability, or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

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