Publications

SSRN

Article

Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics

By: Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber

There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Personal Characteristics; Attitudes; Behavior

August 2019 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Family Matters: Governance at the Zamil Group

By: Christina R. Wing, Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin

This case focuses on a large Saudi Arabian industrial conglomerate and family business Zamil Group’s corporate and family governance journey. The 12 sons of the founder led and grew the group successfully after taking over from their father in 1961. The secret to their... View Details

Keywords: Middle East; Family Ownership; Family-owned Business; Saudi Arabia; Family Business; Governance; Organizational Structure; Values and Beliefs; Steel Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia; Bahrain

2007
Working Paper

How to Capture Value from Innovation: Shaping Intellectual Property and Industry Architecture

By: Gary P. Pisano and David J. Teece

In making strategic decisions about how to capture value from innovation, managers often look at two critical domains—the intellectual property environment and the architecture of the industry—as beyond their control. Yet, the intellectual property environment and the... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Intellectual Property; Industry Structures; Value

2022
Working Paper

Stories, Statistics and Memory

By: Thomas Graeber, Christopher Roth and Florian Zimmermann

For most decisions, we rely on information encountered over the course of days, months or years. We consume this information in various forms, including abstract summaries of multiple data points – statistics – and contextualized anecdotes about individual instances... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Types; Media; Cognition and Thinking

03 Sep 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Supply Chain Screening Without Certification: The Critical Role of Stakeholder Pressure

Keywords: by Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell & Michael W. Toffel

08 Jun 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Location Choices Under Strategic Interactions

Keywords: by Juan Alcacer

May 2018
Exercise

Data Visualization & Communication Exercise

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

This exercise uses the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster to explore the relationship between data visualization, effective communication, and decision-making. Students review and analyze excerpts from the 13 charts engineers presented to NASA executives the night before... View Details

Keywords: Visualization; Data; Analytics and Data Science; Communication; Performance Effectiveness; Decision Making; Analysis

Every major company is grappling with the meaning and application of sustainability in relation to its geographic location, industry and business model. Similarly, more and more institutional investors are incorporating sustainability into their... View Details

April 1985 (Revised September 1986)
Case

CML Group, Inc.: Going Public (B)

By: William A. Sahlman

Contains a description of some issues confronting management of CML Group as the company progresses toward making an initial public offering. Among the issues and topics addressed in the case are: considerations in choosing an underwriting team, the initial public... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Initial Public Offering; Financial Markets; Financial Strategy; Planning; Cost vs Benefits; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Managing Knowledge and Learning at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and David Kiron

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) faces a serious loss of knowledge--both because of the "faster, better, cheaper" mandate for Mars missions and from the retirement of key personnel. An extensive knowledge management system for NASA/JPL includes formal knowledge-capture... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Knowledge Dissemination; Leadership Development; Internet and the Web; Risk and Uncertainty; Organizational Culture; Retirement; Human Resources; Human Capital

February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space (A)

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella

Jeff Bezos, six years after starting a revolution in retailing with Amazon.com, turned his life-long passion for space into a start-up, Blue Origin. Blue (as it was called) was a part of the New Space industry, a collection of startup aerospace engineering companies... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Partners and Partnerships; Transportation; Business Startups; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations; Aerospace Industry

25 Mar 2022
News

Leading an Exhausted Workforce

2020
Working Paper

Draw Near to Go Far: The Role of Convergence in Capitalizing on Exploration

By: Carolyn Fu

Organizations are often advised to engage heavily in exploration in order to succeed – to cast a wide net for diverse solutions that are superior to what they currently exploit. However, what is the organization to do when the fruits of its exploration are inconsistent... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Learning; Knowledge Acquisition; Decision Choices and Conditions

26 Oct 2009
Lessons from the Classroom

The New Deal: Negotiauctions

negotiations and auctions are the only two ways in which assets get sold in any market economy. There's a deep literature on each of these mechanisms but very little on the interplay between the two—that messy, murky middle ground where... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

Article

Default Neglect in Attempts at Social Influence

By: Julian Zlatev, David P. Daniels, Hajin Kim and Margaret A. Neale

Current theories suggest that people understand how to exploit common biases to influence others. However, these predictions have received little empirical attention. We consider a widely studied bias with special policy relevance: the default effect, which is the... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Default Effect; Nudges; Choice Architecture; Decision Making; Behavior

Find at Harvard

17 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

Man vs. Machine: Which Makes Better Hires?

who has studied how companies make organizational decisions in industries such as health care and education. “They are figuring out how to use the information of managers and combine it with this new technology.” Testing the testers To... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Employment

October 2017
Article

Observability Increases the Demand for Commitment Devices

By: Christine L. Exley and Jeffrey K. Naecker

Previous research often interprets the choice to restrict one’s future opportunity set as evidence for sophisticated time inconsistency. We propose an additional mechanism that may contribute to the demand for commitment technology: the desire to signal to others. We... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Attitudes

Find at Harvard

2015
Working Paper

Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy

By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek

Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for firms. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a "self-matching policy." Self-matching allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and in-store prices... View Details

Keywords: Price Self-matching; Multichannel Retailing; Pricing Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Price; Distribution Channels; Supply and Industry; Retail Industry