Publications

April 2018
Article

Effective Sales Training: What Are the Foundational Elements?

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Across industries, turnover in sales positions averages about 25–30% annually. This means that, at many firms, the equivalent of the entire sales force must be replaced and trained every four years or so. No other function has an ongoing talent management task of that... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Training

Spring 2016
Article

Performance Responses to Competition Across Skill-Levels in Rank Order Tournaments: Field Evidence and Implications for Tournament Design

By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael E. Menietti

Tournaments are widely used in the economy to organize production and innovation. We study individual contestant-level data from 2,796 contestants in 774 software algorithm design contests with random assignment. Precisely conforming to theory predictions, the... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Innovation Strategy

2009
Article

Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Why do some teams fail to use their members' knowledge effectively, even after having correctly identified each other's expertise? This paper identifies performance pressure as a critical barrier to effective knowledge utilization in teams. I theorize that performance... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Expectations; Groups and Teams

Maren Hoff is an Assistant Professor in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School.

Professor Hoff studies how cultural change shapes consumer behavior and marketplace trends. Her research examines how and why tastes, styles, and products change in... View Details

September 2009
Article

A Detailed Analysis of the Reduction Mammaplasty Learning Curve: A Statistical Process Model for Approaching Surgical Performance Improvement

By: Matthew Carty MD, Rodney Chan, Robert S. Huckman, Daniel C. Snow and Dennis Orgill

Background: The increased focus on quality and efficiency improvement within academic surgery has met with variable success among plastic surgeons. Traditional surgical performance metrics, such as morbidity and mortality, are insufficient to improve the... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Outcome or Result; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

24 May 2023
Blog Post

Get to Know Class Day Speaker Adán Acevedo

graduation ceremonies. It is planned and conducted by a committee of second-year MBA students. When asked about what Commencement means to him, Acevedo is uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “I cannot put into words the emotions... View Details

Research Summary

Housing Markets with Contingencies

We model a real-estate market with three types of agents: regular buyers and sellers, and homeowners, who are agents who want to sell their current home only if they can buy another one. On the one hand, our model is a counterpart of the Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez... View Details

Winter 2023
Article

Moral Firms?

By: Rebecca Henderson

Building a new political economy requires transforming our markets, our institutions, and our policy and regulatory regimes. In this essay, I argue that it also requires transforming the purpose of the firm: from a singular focus on maximizing financial returns to the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Mission and Purpose; Economy

Register to Read

April 2015 (Revised October 2019)
Case

The Great Divergence: Europe and Modern Economic Growth

By: Sophus A. Reinert

The continent of Europe seemed in the spring of 2015 to be in a weaker position relative to other world regions than it had in centuries. Though comparatively small, it had long played a disproportionate role in world history, to the extent that the modern world system... View Details

Keywords: The Great Divergence; Modern Economic Growth; Empire; Disruption; Economic Growth; Values and Beliefs; History; Globalization; Europe

Educators

Purchase

Winter 2016
Article

Improving Store Liquidation

By: Nathan Craig and Ananth Raman

This paper introduces methods for increasing the efficiency of retail store liquidation, which we define as the time-constrained divestment of retail outlets through an in-store sale of inventory. The retail industry depends extensively on liquidation, not only as a... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Operations; Investment; Retail Industry

23 Aug 2021
News

How to Gameplan Your Office Days: An Overachiever’s Guide to Hybrid Work

03 Apr 2018
News

Practice Makes Perfect: Why Chinese Manufacturers Have A Production Advantage

18 Aug 2017
News

Managing Climate Change: Lessons from the U.S. Navy

23 Feb 2017
News

If Democrats Want to Challenge Trump, They Need a New Strategy

Research Summary

Evolution of the Global Beauty Industry

By: Geoffrey G. Jones

This research examines the global beauty industry, which includes cosmetics, deodorants, fragrances, hair care, oral hygiene and skin care. Today global sales of cosmetics and toiletries are in excess of U.S. $380 billion. This research examines the growth of this... View Details

October 3, 2023
Article

10 Pitfalls That Destroy Organizational Trust

By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss

In their new book, Move Fast and Fix Things, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss outline five strategies to help leaders tackle their hardest problems and quickly make change. Their second strategy is to build — or rebuild — trust with your stakeholders. This means... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business or Company Management

Register to Read

Purchase

2009
Working Paper

Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines

By: Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan and Wesley Yin

Female "empowerment" has increasingly become a policy goal, both as an end to itself and as a means to achieving other development goals. Microfinance in particular has often been argued, but not without controversy, to be a tool for empowering women. Here, using a... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Microfinance; Personal Finance; Decision Making; Microeconomics; Gender; Power and Influence; Philippines

February 2008 (Revised March 2011)
Case

Sandhar Technologies Group, Ltd.

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon

Jayant Davar, CEO and founder of Sandhar Technologies Group, a privately held auto components maker in India, is trying to decide how best to grow the company. He recently took a $22 million investment from Actis Capital, a major emerging markets private equity firm,... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Advantage; Entrepreneurship; Mergers and Acquisitions; Emerging Markets; Growth and Development Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; India