Publications

October 1998 (Revised April 2000)
Background Note

Complexity and Error in Medicine

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer

Reviews the issues underlying the rate of error in medical practice and discusses the range of potential management interventions to decrease the risk of error. View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management Practices and Processes; Risk and Uncertainty; Complexity

July 2018
Article

Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs: A Review of Recent Literature

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Tina Xu

We review the extensive literature since 2000 on the personality traits of entrepreneurs. We first consider baseline personality traits like the Big-5 model, self-efficacy and innovativeness, locus of control, and the need for achievement. We then consider risk... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Venturing; Personality Traits; Characteristics; Big-5; Risk Attitudes; Goals; Skills; Entrepreneurship; Personal Characteristics; Goals and Objectives; Competency and Skills; Success; Demographics; Research

Forthcoming
Article

Bank Risk-Taking and the Real Economy: Evidence from the Housing Boom and Its Aftermath

By: Antonio Falato, Giovanni Favara and David Scharfstein

We present evidence that pressure to maximize short-term stock prices and earnings leads banks to increase risk. We start by showing that banks increase risk when they transition from private to public ownership through a public listing or an acquisition. The increase... View Details

Keywords: Ownership Type; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Markets; Banks and Banking; Transition; Price

June 2014 (Revised March 2016)
Teaching Note

Starbucks Coffee Company: Transformation and Renewal

By: Nancy F. Koehn

September 2024
Case

InfraCredit and the Project Inception Facility

By: John Macomber, Namrata Arora and Maagatha Kalavadakken

Around the world, large infrastructure projects are frequently stymied by the high cost and high uncertainty of the project inception phase: the research and engineering and planning prior to financial close and start of construction. Could there be a new kind of... View Details

16 Jan 2025
Blog Post

Alumni Career Journey: Sophie Levin (MS/MBA 2022) - How Risk Can Be the Key to a Sustainable Future

describe startups tackling some of the most pressing and complex challenges of our time. Many of these companies face technical hurdles or market risks that require significant time View Details

April 1992 (Revised March 1993)
Case

Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1992, The

Brigham and Women's Hospital is a highly successful teaching hospital in 1992. However, the hospital sector is undergoing a major transition and the hospital faces uncertainty about changing demographic trends, new types of competitors, and technological and scientific... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Education Industry; Health Industry; Massachusetts

April 1993 (Revised October 1995)
Case

ALZA and Bio-Electro Systems (A): Technological and Financial Innovation

By: Josh Lerner and Peter Tufano

To develop the next generation of risky products, ALZA, a mature and profitable biotechnology firm specializing in drug delivery systems, must raise $40 million. Organizational constraints and competitive concerns demand that the work be done inside the firm. However,... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Business Subsidiaries; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Finance; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

When innovation and entry are high in an industry, is this good or bad news for incumbents? We show that recently the answer has been bad news. Industries with elevated venture capital activity and returns, and with a larger presence of newly listed firms, show a... View Details

February 2006
Article

Wealth and Executive Compensation

Using new data on the wealth of Swedish CEOs, I show that higher wealth CEOs receive stronger incentives. Since high wealth (excluding own-firm holdings) implies low absolute risk aversion, this is consistent with a risk aversion explanation. To examine whether wealth... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Executive Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Risk Management; Competency and Skills; Wages; Sweden

June 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Betting on Green Steel

By: George Serafeim and Sofoklis Melissovas

'Betting on Green Steel' traces the innovative journey embarked upon by a group of MBA students who have set out to conceive a novel steelmaker that pioneers the production of green steel. The ensemble is confronted with a series of critical choices that will shape the... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Sustainability Management; Technology; Industrialization; Climate Risk; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Technology Adoption; Climate Change; Innovation and Invention; Business Strategy; Family Business; Steel Industry; Middle East; India

2021
White Paper

Go Out and Innovate! Perspectives on Educating Health Care Leadership in the Time of Innovation

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Anthony Stanowski, Edward Schumacher, Eugene Schneller, Kaveh Safavi, Quint Studer, Andrew Jay, Tom Robinson and Kevin Mahoney

The CAHME Innovation Council unanimously believes that education is essential. In evaluating the competency domain of management and leadership, and learning from programs that prioritize innovation, we ask how do we develop competencies in future leaders to succeed in... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Health Industry

April 2015
Article

Anxious and Egocentric: How Specific Emotions Influence Perspective Taking

By: Andrew R. Todd, Matthias Forstmann, Pascal Burgmer, Alison Wood Brooks and Adam D. Galinsky

People frequently feel anxious. Although prior research has extensively studied how feeling anxious shapes intrapsychic aspects of cognition, much less is known about how anxiety affects interpersonal aspects of cognition. Here, we examine the influence of incidental... View Details

Keywords: Anxiety; Egocentrism; Emotion; Perspective Taking; Risk and Uncertainty; Perspective; Emotions

Article

Accuracy First: Selecting a Differential Privacy Level for Accuracy-Constrained ERM

By: Katrina Ligett, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth, Bo Waggoner and Steven Wu

Traditional approaches to differential privacy assume a fixed privacy requirement ϵ for a computation, and attempt to maximize the accuracy of the computation subject to the privacy constraint. As differential privacy is increasingly deployed in practical settings, it... View Details

Keywords: Differential Privacy; Empirical Risk Minimization; Accuracy First

2014
Working Paper

Private Equity's Diversification Illusion: Economic Comovement and Fair Value Reporting

By: Kyle Travis Welch

This study examines how accounting has informed private equity diversification claims and demand for private equity investments. Despite research showing private equity lacks portfolio diversification benefits, those marketing private equity assets continue to... View Details

SSRN

Article

Organizational Beliefs and Managerial Vision

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

Can managers have an impact on their firm that goes beyond their direct actions and decisions? This article shows that a manager with strong beliefs about the right course of action will attract, through sorting in the labor market, employees with similar beliefs. This... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Goals and Objectives; Decisions; Labor; Markets; Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Recruitment; Risk and Uncertainty; Values and Beliefs

Forthcoming
Article

The Stock Market and Bank Risk-Taking

By: David S. Scharfstein and Antonio Falato

We argue that stock market pressure to generate earnings encourages banks to increase risk. We measure risk using confidential supervisory ratings as well as financial information released in regulatory filings. We document that there is an increase in the risk-taking... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market; Financial Markets; Business Earnings; Banks and Banking; Risk and Uncertainty