Publications

April 2013
Case

Sterling Household Products Company

By: William E. Fruhan and Craig Stephenson

Sterling Household Products manufactures and markets a broad line of consumer goods from laundry soap and cosmetics to cleaning, disinfecting, and sanitizing products. The company has many highly regarded brand names and consistently reports impressive sales and... View Details

30 May 2013
Blog Post

Product Launch Day

At Sonation we’ve been working all summer toward product launch day, and the day has finally come! Last week I went to Michigan with my cofounder Paul to demo the app at Interlochen, one of the premier summer arts camps in the US. Of all... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technology

2010
Working Paper

Performance Tradeoffs in Team Knowledge Sourcing

By: Bradley R. Staats, Melissa Valentine and Amy C. Edmondson

This research examines how teams organize knowledge sourcing (obtaining access to others' knowledge or expertise) and investigates the performance trade-offs involved in two approaches to knowledge sourcing in teams. One approach a team can take is to specialize, such... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Quality; Groups and Teams; Information Technology Industry; India

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May 2014
Case

Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC

By: V.G. Narayanan and Vidhya Muthuram

IDFC was set up in 1997 to direct private finance to infrastructure projects in India. Over the years, it expanded its capabilities to become a 'complete solutions provider' offering financing solutions including debt and equity, investment banking, brokerage and asset... View Details

23 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

notice a new name.” Like Apple, most consumer-centric companies deal with the dilemma of how to brand the next- generation of an existing product. Product upgrades make up the majority of corporate research and development activity.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2009
Working Paper

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

By: Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling

This paper discusses five common divisional performance measurement methods—cost centers, revenue centers, profit centers, investment centers, and expense centers—providing a theory that explains when each of these methods is likely to be the most efficient. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business Headquarters; Decisions; Cost; Investment; Investment Return; Profit; Revenue; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Managerial Roles; Performance Efficiency; Strategy

SSRN

October 1993 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Accounting for Productivity Growth

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Introduces students to the arithmetic of the accounting for national productivity growth. It defines labor productivity, capital productivity, and total factor productivity, describes the relationships among them, and discusses the phenomena that cause them to change... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Macroeconomics; Analytics and Data Science; Government and Politics; Mathematical Methods; United States; Singapore

2009
Working Paper

Private Equity and Industry Performance

By: Josh Lerner

The growth of the private equity industry has spurred concerns about its potential impact on the economy more generally. This analysis looks across nations and industries to assess the impact of private equity on industry performance. Industries where PE funds have... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment; Common Law; Industry Growth; Performance Productivity; Europe; United Kingdom; United States

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

Six Myths of Product Development

Many companies approach product development as if it were manufacturing, trying to control costs and improve quality by applying zero-defect, efficiency-focused techniques. While this tactic can boost the performance of factories, it generally backfires with... View Details

April 2017
Article

Private Equity and Industry Performance

By: Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen and Per Stromberg

The growth of the private equity industry has spurred concerns about its potential impact on the economy more generally. This analysis looks across nations and industries to assess the impact of private equity on industry performance. Industries where PE funds have... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Markets; Entrepreneurship; Performance; Economy

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April 2020
Article

CEO Behavior and Firm Performance

By: Oriana Bandiera, Stephen Hansen, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

We measure the behavior of 1,114 CEOs in six countries parsing granular CEO diary data through an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. The algorithm uncovers two distinct behavioral types: "leaders" and "managers." Leaders focus on multi-function, high-level... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Management; Behavior; Organizations; Performance; Analysis

June 2024
Article

Going Digital: Implications for Firm Value and Performance

By: Wilbur Chen and Suraj Srinivasan

We examine firm value and performance implications of the growing trend of non-technology companies engaging in digital transformation. We measure digital activities in firms based on the disclosure of digital words in the business description section of 10-Ks. Digital... View Details

Keywords: Digital Technologies; Valuation; Return Predictability; Financial Statement Analysis; Performance; Value; Information Technology

2021
Working Paper

Technology Differentiation and Firm Performance

By: Sam Arts, Bruno Cassiman and Jianan Hou

Prior work has extensively studied how investing in R&D and building a technology portfolio relate to superior firm performance. However, the value of a firm’s technology portfolio should also be driven by the degree to which it is more unique and technologically... View Details

Keywords: Technology Portfolio; Differentiation; Competitiveness; Organizations; Technology; Performance; United States

SSRN

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24 Feb 2020
News

Companies must include environmental and social performance measures

09 Apr 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

The Dark Side of Performance Bonuses

boss deserves a big salary, but only when the number is fully explained. Research Papers Driven by Social Comparisons: How Feedback about Coworkers’ Effort Influences Individual Productivity At a Japanese bank, researchers examine the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

July 2024
Article

AI, ROI, and Sales Productivity

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now a loose term for many different things and at the peak of its hype curve. So managers hitch-their-pitch to the term in arguing for resources. But like any technology, its business value depends upon actionable use cases embraced by... View Details

Keywords: ROI; AI and Machine Learning; Sales; Investment Return

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September 1976 (Revised July 1995)
Case

Texas Instruments: Time Products Division

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Outlines the components of Texas Instruments' low-cost digital watch. Focus is on getting the assembly line running smoothly and efficiently in order to meet production cost and delivery requirements. View Details

Keywords: Cost; Production; Service Delivery; Performance Efficiency; Electronics Industry; Technology Industry

2016
Book

Innovation Equity: Assessing and Managing the Monetary Value of New Products and Services

By: Elie Ofek, Eitan Muller and Barak Libai

This book bridges the gap between what academics know, and what innovation stakeholders—from managers, to investors, to analysts, to consumers—need to know about how new products and services are expected to perform in the marketplace. The book develops a compelling... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Technology Diffusion; New Products; Customer Lifetime Value; Monetization Strategy; Social Influence; Innovation Adoption; Forecasting Demand; Commercialization; Marketing Strategy; Practice; Customer Value and Value Chain; Research; Innovation and Management; Technology Adoption; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Development

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