Publications

March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
Teaching Note

OpenInvest

By: Boris Vallee and Caitlin Reimers Brumme

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolio to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapon manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ... View Details

Keywords: Socially Responsible Investing; Investing For Impact; Robo-advisors; Investment; Values and Beliefs; Customization and Personalization; Technology; Financial Services Industry

2018
Working Paper

Zig-Zagging Your Way to Transformative Impact

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg

Achieving transformative impact has been much discussed by social entrepreneurs, funders, and consultants. These discussions have focused on issues of increasing impact and scale, but often with no clear distinction between the two terms. In order to provide clarity,... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Performance Efficiency; Growth and Development; Outcome or Result; Strategy

Blog

Reinventing the GMP Experience

and how they built relationships with other participants. For additional information on the GMP experience, watch The General Management Program Impact video featuring GMP Faculty Chair Stefan Thomke and... View Details

11 Jan 2000
Research & Ideas

Calling All Managers: How to Build a Better Call Center

company can triumph. That's especially true in the financial services industry, where call centers have moved beyond their most obvious function—as low-cost channels for resolving a myriad of customer concerns—to become powerful means of service delivery with the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Service; Financial Services

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Reinventing the Industrial Giant

In an effort to survive in the new economy, some-industrial giants have tried to chart an evolutionary path that combines their industrial core with new post-industrial businesses. The companies from our study that are most clearly attempting to do so are Ford, View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, Davis Dyer & Frederick Dalzell; Manufacturing

Article

Large-Scale Field Experiment Shows Null Effects of Team Demographic Diversity on Outsiders' Willingness to Support the Team

By: Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Rosanna K. Smith

Demographic diversity in the United States is rising, and increasingly, work is conducted in teams. These co-occurring phenomena suggest that it might be increasingly common for work to be conducted by demographically diverse teams. But to date, in spite of copious... View Details

Keywords: Field Experiment; Groups and Teams; Demographics; Diversity; Attitudes

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Program Requirements - Doctoral

(7 courses) Marketing students are required to take five additional doctoral courses. Quantitative-track students are required to complete the following: Consumer Behavior (HBS 4630) Marketing Models (HBS... View Details

Program

Senior Executive Leadership Program—Middle East

Take advantage of resources for lifelong learning as a member of the global HBS alumni community Who Should Attend Senior executives, senior functional leaders, or general managers leading successful, established companies in the Middle... View Details

2014
Article

The Promise of Prediction Contests

By: Phillip E. Pfeifer, Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Kenneth C. Lichtendahl

This article examines the prediction contest as a vehicle for aggregating the opinions of a crowd of experts. After proposing a general definition distinguishing prediction contests from other mechanisms for harnessing the wisdom of crowds, we focus on... View Details

Keywords: Prediction; Forecasting and Prediction

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18 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

emergence of stage 2 will have fallen into place. The first will be robust platforms that facilitate the creation of user-generated content. The second will be the emergence of a user network, whose analogues in other industries include eBay and YouTube. A user network... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

11 Feb 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Architecture of Complex Systems: Do Core-periphery Structures Dominate?

Keywords: by Alan MacCormack, Carliss Y. Baldwin & John Rusnak; Video Game; Web Services

February 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Taffi: Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia

By: Paul A. Gompers and Fares Khrais

Taffi was a tech-enabled fashion styling startup founded by Shahad Geoffrey in Saudi Arabia in 2020. Within three years of operating, Geoffrey had pivoted the business multiple times. In 2023, Geoffrey was attempting the business’s most ambitious pivot yet, shifting... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Fashion Industry; Technology Industry; Saudi Arabia; Arabian Peninsula

2019
Working Paper

Intelligent Design of Inclusive Growth Strategies

By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat

Improving corporate engagement with society, as advocated in the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement, should not be viewed as a zero-sum proposition where attention to new stakeholders detracts from delivering shareholder value. Corporate programs for sustainable and... View Details

Keywords: Inclusion; Sustainability; Performance Measures; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Strategy; Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations

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August 2017 (Revised August 2018)
Case

The Oakland Athletics: Strategy & Metrics for a Budget

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

This case considers Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane’s data driven and, in baseball circles unconventional, approach to winning games over the duration of the long Major League Baseball season. Beane’s critical approach to crafting strategy within his... View Details

Keywords: Data Analysis; Metrics; Data Science; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Measurement and Metrics; Competitive Strategy; Organizational Culture; Sports Industry

October 2016 (Revised January 2017)
Background Note

The U.S. Health Club Industry, 2005–2016

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

In 2015, the U.S. health-club industry generated revenues of $25.8 billion, up from $14.8 billion in 2004. Members of health clubs accounted for 17% of the population, up from 14%. The number of clubs had grown from 26,830 in 2004 to 36,180. In the process, the list of... View Details