Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,032)
- Faculty Publications (218)
- Article
Selling After the Crisis
Like perishable goods in grocery stores, sales models have a sell-by date. As product standards evolve and new entrants emerge, buyers have more choices and demand more in terms of quality and performance across vendors. Firms that fail to adjust to changing customer... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Muhammad Ali: Changing The World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the rise of Cassius Clay, who later called himself Muhammad Ali, from the poor streets of Louisville, Kentucky to international fame. The case describes how Ali won a gold medal in the Olympics, three heavyweight boxing titles, and became a role... View Details
- February 2021
- Case
Digital Manufacturing at Amgen
By: Shane Greenstein, Kyle R. Myers and Sarah Mehta
This case discusses efforts made by biotechnology (biotech) company Amgen to introduce digital technologies into its manufacturing processes. Doing so is complicated by the fact that the process for manufacturing biologics—or therapeutics made from living cells—is... View Details
Keywords: Digital Technologies; Change; Change Management; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decisions; Information; Analytics and Data Science; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Jobs and Positions; Knowledge; Leadership; Organizational Culture; Science; Strategy; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; California; Puerto Rico; Rhode Island
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Juno (A): Leveraging Student Power
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Kathleen L. McGinn and Amy Klopfenstein
In March 2020, Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal were in the midst of preparing the annual auction for their student loan assistance startup, Juno. Both current MBA students at Harvard Business School, the duo founded Juno in 2018 to leverage student bargaining power... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Cost vs Benefits; Education; Higher Education; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Negotiation; Agreements and Arrangements; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Deal; Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Types; Financial Services Industry; Education Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston
- January 2021 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Malini Sen
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a multinational IT services company headquartered in Mumbai, is a subsidiary of one of India’s most reputed conglomerates, the Tata Group. In 2020, TCS was valued at $144.7 billion, the highest for any company in the IT sector,... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Fair Algorithms for Infinite and Contextual Bandits
By: Matthew Joseph, Michael J Kearns, Jamie Morgenstern, Seth Neel and Aaron Leon Roth
We study fairness in linear bandit problems. Starting from the notion of meritocratic fairness introduced in Joseph et al. [2016], we carry out a more refined analysis of a more general problem, achieving better performance guarantees with fewer modelling assumptions... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Prioritarianism and Optimal Taxation
By: Matti Tuomala and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Prioritarianism has been at the center of the formal approach to optimal tax theory since its modern starting point in Mirrlees (1971), but most theorists’ use of it is motivated by tractability rather than explicit normative reasoning. We characterize analytically and... View Details
Keywords: Prioritarianism; Optimal Taxation; Utilitarianism; Redistribution; Inverse-optimum; Taxation; Theory
- August 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Just Arrived: Integrating Refugees in Sweden
By: Brian Trelstad, Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej
Just Arrived is an online platform that matches newly-arrived immigrants in Sweden with employment opportunities. As one of several for-profit and non-profit start-ups in Europe that is looking to address the refugee crisis, the case enables a comparative analysis of... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Carole Carlson
This case describes a difficult choice faced by Victor Wang, Managing Director of Singapore-based Eurasian Brewing Company (EBC), concerning the competing product launch plans of Le Jie, Vice President of EBC's China and East Asian operations, and Vivian Chin, EBC's... View Details
- February 2020
- Article
Being 'Good' or 'Good Enough': Prosocial Risk and the Structure of Moral Self-regard
By: Julian Zlatev, Daniella M. Kupor, Kristin Laurin and Dale T. Miller
The motivation to feel moral powerfully guides people’s prosocial behavior. We propose that people’s efforts to preserve their moral self-regard conform to a moral threshold model. This model predicts that people are primarily concerned with whether their... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Impact Investing: A Theory of Financing Social Enterprises
By: Benjamin N. Roth
I present a model of financing social enterprises to delineate the role of impact investors relative to “pure” philanthropists. I characterize the optimal scale and structure of a social enterprise when financed by grants, and when financed by investments. Impact... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Mutual Funds: Skill and Performance
By: Jonathan B. Berk, Jules van Binsbergen and Max Miller
The authors summarize the recent literature on mutual fund manager skill and performance. They discuss the latest contributions in the field and reinterpret them through the lens of the rational expectations framework (efficient market hypothesis). They further discuss... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Recovering Investor Expectations from Demand for Index Funds
By: Mark Egan, Alexander J. MacKay and Hanbin Yang
We use a revealed-preference approach to estimate investor expectations of stock market returns. Using data on demand for index funds that follow the S&P 500, we develop and estimate a model of investor choice to flexibly recover the time-varying distribution of... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
The U.S. employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Agility Africa
By: Juan Alcacer, Caroline M. Elkins and Esel Çekin
This case illustrates the challenge and opportunities that firms face when developing and executing new business models in high-risk, low-infrastructure, low-trust countries. It features a global logistics group, Agility, that aimed to become the leader in supplying... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Dulcie Madden (A)—Growth or Exit?
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Christopher Payton and Shweta Bagai
This is part of a three-case series that follows Dulcie Madden's journey as a founder over five years. Case (A) is about managing growth and cash flow; Case (B) is about the exit decision and conditions on a sale; Case (C) shows Madden dealing with adversity and the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Family; Family Conflicts; Founders' Agreements; Growth And Development; Hardware; VC; Scaling; Start-up; Female Ceo; Risk Assessment; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Equity; Cash Flow; Success; Failure; Acquisition; Business Model; Information Technology; Valuation; Family and Family Relationships; Information Infrastructure; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Supplement
Dulcie Madden (B)—A Difficult Choice
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
This is part of a three-case series that follows Dulcie Madden's journey as a founder over five years. Case (A) is about managing growth and cash flow; Case (B) is about the exit decision and conditions on a sale; Case (C) shows Madden dealing with adversity and the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Family; Family Conflicts; Founders' Agreements; Growth And Development; Hardware; VC; Scaling; Start-up; Female Ceo; Risk Assessment; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Cash Flow; Equity; Success; Failure; Acquisition; Business Model; Information Technology; Valuation; Family and Family Relationships; Information Infrastructure
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Supplement
Dulcie Madden (C)—A Final Chance?
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
This is part of a three-case series that follows Dulcie Madden's journey as a founder over five years. Case (A) is about managing growth and cash flow; Case (B) is about the exit decision and conditions on a sale; Case (C) shows Madden dealing with adversity and the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Cash Flow; Success; Failure; Acquisition; Business Model; Technology
- September 2019
- Article
Optimizing Reserves in School Choice: A Dynamic Programming Approach
By: Franklyn Wang, Ravi Jagadeesan and Scott Duke Kominers
We introduce a new model of school choice with reserves in which a social planner is constrained by a limited supply of reserve seats and tries to find an optimal matching according to a social welfare function. We construct the optimal distribution of reserves via a... View Details
- 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