Publications

26 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

marketed the idea of better-selling-through-cellophane, releasing several self-funded studies on the efficacy of visual marketing. “DuPont’s research concluded that 85 percent of all food purchase was done by the eye,” View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Retail; Advertising

2025
Working Paper

Narrative AI and the Human-AI Oversight Paradox in Evaluating Early-Stage Innovations

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Léonard Boussioux, Charles Ayoubi, Ying Hao Chen, Camila Lin, Rebecca Spens, Pooja Wagh and Pei-Hsin Wang

Do AI-generated narrative explanations enhance human oversight or diminish it? We investigate this question through a field experiment with 228 evaluators screening 48 early-stage innovations under three conditions: human-only, black-box AI recommendations without... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Models; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Invention; Decision Making

SSRN

16 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

As AI Upends Recruiting, Job Seekers Need a Waze App for Careers

postings and social media and impressions from informal conversations. “Companies invest tens of millions of dollars on user experience for customers, but don't bring any of that discipline to applicant experience.” That puts employers in a quandary. They grapple with... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

March 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Darktrace: Scaling Cybersecurity and AI (A)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Alexis Lefort

In 2023, Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson was contemplating her growth strategy at a leading U.K.-based cybersecurity venture, launched in 2013 by a group of anti-terror cyber specialists, University of Cambridge mathematicians, and artificial intelligence (AI) experts.... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Talent; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Cybersecurity; Leadership; Business Growth and Maturation; Recruitment; Resignation and Termination; AI and Machine Learning; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Europe; United States

22 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Make AI 'Forget' All the Private Data It Shouldn't Have

There’s a virtual elephant in AI’s room: It’s nearly impossible to make the technology forget. And there are an increasing number of scenarios where consumers and programmers may not only want to remove data from a machine learning model—they may be required to do so... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

13 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Don't Turn Your Marketing Function Over to AI Just Yet

customers on the brand? Amano points out that the benefits of personalized marketing are often overshadowed by the creepiness factor. “There definitely are a bunch of benefits that we reap from the fact that firms and governments have... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

September 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Atomwise: Strategic Opportunities in AI for Pharma

By: Satish Tadikonda

Abraham Heifets and his co-founder, Izhar Wallach, had founded Atomwise to develop i) an AI engine to transform drug discovery by creating better medicines faster, and ii) a machine learning-based discovery engine that combined the power of convolutional neural... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Science-Based Business; Technological Innovation; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

January 2025
Case

AI Meets VC: The Data-Driven Revolution at Quantum Light Capital

By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan

Ilya Kondrashov, CEO of Quantum Light Capital, was driven to harness AI for identifying high-potential scale-ups. Collaborating with Nik Storonsky, founder of Revolut, the duo observed that most venture capital (VC) decisions were heavily influenced by emotion, with... View Details

07 May 2020
Research & Ideas

The One Good Thing Caused by COVID-19: Innovation

accommodating an appropriate level of economic activity. Businesses have historically overcome this type of challenge through the introduction of risk-mitigating technologies, which in this pandemic include technologies, business practices, and strategies that improve... View Details

Keywords: by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso

January 2025
Technical Note

AI vs Human: Analyzing Acceptable Error Rates Using the Confusion Matrix

By: Tsedal Neeley and Tim Englehart

This technical note introduces the confusion matrix as a foundational tool in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) for assessing the performance of classification models, focusing on their reliability for decision-making. A confusion matrix... View Details

Keywords: Reliability; Confusion Matrix; AI and Machine Learning; Decision Making; Measurement and Metrics; Performance

2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

SSRN

03 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Why Confronting Racism in AI 'Creates a Better Future for All of Us'

people in the room to guess what prompts he had provided to the AI tool DALL-E2 to create the image. People in the audience were stumped. After about 40 seconds, Turner—a visiting fellow at HBS’s Institute for the Study of Business in... View Details

Keywords: by Barbara DeLollis

December 2023 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Monsters in the Machine? Tackling the Challenge of Responsible AI

By: Paul M. Healy and Debora L. Spar

In November of 2022, the small tech company OpenAI released ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot which quickly captured the public’s imagination—becoming the world’s fastest-growing consumer application within months of its release. Though observers from across... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Technology Adoption; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Technology Industry; United States; European Union; China

November 2024 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Cheerful Music

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Feng Zhu and Nancy Hua Dai

Established by Snow Jiang in 2019 in Shenzhen, China, Cheerful Music was a record label company that had created many hit songs in China. “Yi Xiao Jiang Hu,” its most famous hit song, gained billions of views on social media platforms in China and overseas as the... View Details

Keywords: Generative Ai; Music Entertainment; Global Strategy; Business Model; AI and Machine Learning; Market Entry and Exit; Music Industry; China; United Kingdom; London

11 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

The Paradoxical Quest to Make Food Look 'Natural' With Artificial Dyes

Storie-Johnson “Today, we tend to view color as an ingredient,” says Ai Hisano, the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History at Harvard Business School. Hisano is author of the HBS working paper,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2024
Working Paper

Old Moats for New Models: Openness, Control, and Competition in Generative AI

By: Pierre Azoulay, Joshua L. Krieger and Abhishek Nagaraj

Drawing insights from the field of innovation economics, we discuss the likely competitive environment shaping generative AI advances. Central to our analysis are the concepts of appropriability—whether firms in the industry are able to control the knowledge generated... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning; Open Source Distribution; Policy

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05 Nov 2024
Book

Building the Road to 'Small Business Utopia' with AI and Fintech

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from chapter one of Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, written by Karen G. Mills, senior fellow at Harvard Business School. The second edition was published in 2024 View Details

Keywords: by Karen G. Mills; Financial Services

2025
Article

Unregulated Emotional Risks of AI Wellness Apps

By: Julian De Freitas and Glenn Cohen

We propose that AI-driven wellness apps powered by large language models can foster extreme emotional attachments and dependencies akin to human relationships—posing risks like ambiguous loss and dysfunctional dependence—that challenge current regulatory frameworks and... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Well-being; Emotions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms