Publications

March 2002 (Revised December 2002)
Background Note

A Note on Corporate Venturing and New Business Creation

By: David A. Garvin

Presents an introduction and overview of corporate venturing. Describes the need for companies to create new businesses, the stages in the process, predictable problems and challenges, the strengths and weaknesses of alternative approaches such as internal venture... View Details

Keywords: Business Plan; Business Startups; Forecasting and Prediction; Venture Capital; Problems and Challenges

January 2025
Case

North Forty: Managing Liquidity Through Change

By: Luis M. Viceira and Brad Towne

This case explores the interaction between spending and investment decisions at a family office, specifically the family office of Jeff and Tricia Raikes, with special emphasis on the management of spending, portfolio investments, and asset liquidity in the presence of... View Details

Keywords: Family Office; Forecasting and Prediction; Asset Management; Financial Liquidity; Financial Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Spending; Planning

February 2002 (Revised March 2003)
Case

Casuarinas Educational Corporation

By: Michael J. Roberts, Howard H. Stevenson and Matthew C. Leib

Casuarinas has developed a very successful elementary, now secondary, school based on excellence in teaching, service, and multilingual education. Peru lacks similar high-quality post-secondary institutions. This case focuses on the potential entry of Casuarinas into... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Planning; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Education Industry; Peru

19 Jun 2007
First Look

First Look: June 19, 2007

demand which underpin the link between the three characteristics of the inventory system: inventory levels, orders placed and actual demand faced. The perceptions framework is based on forecasting with Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 1986 (Revised February 1991)
Case

Wilson Lumber Co.

By: Thomas R. Piper

The Wilson Lumber Co. is faced with a need for increased bank financing due to its rapid sales growth and low profitability. Students must determine the reasons for the rising bank borrowing, estimate the amount of borrowing needed, and assess the attractiveness of the... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Forecasting and Prediction; Sales; Financial Strategy

December 2021
Article

Entrepreneurial Learning and Strategic Foresight

By: Aticus Peterson and Andy Wu

We study how learning by experience across projects affects an entrepreneur's strategic foresight. In a quantitative study of 314 entrepreneurs across 722 crowdfunded projects supplemented with a program of qualitative interviews, we counterintuitively find that... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Experience; Prediction; Timeline; Complexity; Entrepreneurship; Learning; Experience and Expertise; Forecasting and Prediction

Read Now

June 2012
Article

Consequence-Cause Matching: Looking to the Consequences of Events to Infer Their Causes

By: Robyn A. LeBoeuf and Michael I. Norton

We show that people non-normatively infer event causes from event consequences. For example, people inferred that a product failure (computer crash) had a large cause (widespread computer virus) if it had a large consequence (job loss), but that the identical failure... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Product; Forecasting and Prediction; Motivation and Incentives; Failure

01 Sep 2017
News

Read All About It: Journalism Can Be Profitable

companies. Figuring out how we coexist in a way that’s mutually beneficial is going to be one of the key questions moving forward. When do you forecast the last printed edition of the New York Times rolling off the presses? —Graham... View Details

Keywords: April White; New York Times; newspapers; Google; Wirecutter; social media; Facebook; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

09 Jan 2014
News

Tapping into Opportunity

the world: growing demand and limited supply. According to US research, the world's demand for fresh and pure water is forecast to exceed supply by 50 percent by 2025. Other studies have found that, within a generation, one in three... View Details

Keywords: Constantine von Hoffman; Business and Environment Initiative; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

March 2017 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Flashion: Art vs. Science in Fashion Retailing

By: Kris Ferreira and Karim R. Lakhani

Kate Wilson, retail analytics manager at Flashion, a fashion flash-sale site, is tasked with developing analytics to optimize pricing for first-exposure products on the site. Many in the industry have relied on years of experience and intuition to determine pricing—can... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Pricing; Data; Service Operations; Forecasting and Prediction; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Mathematical Methods; Decision Making; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; United States

December 2010
Article

Altruistic Dynamic Pricing with Customer Regret

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A model is considered where firms internalize the regret costs that consumers experience when they see an unexpected price change. Regret costs are assumed to be increasing in the size of price changes and this can explain why the size of price increases is less... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Price; Change; Inflation and Deflation; Cost Management; Customers; Practice; Announcements; Forecasting and Prediction

24 Aug 2020
Blog Post

My Journey to Joining the first MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Cohort

forecasting expected revenues, to developing an equity investing plan for a major pharmaceutical company and performing due diligence on M&A targets. I also spent four months on secondment within a pharma company's Commercial Oncology... View Details

October 1990 (Revised May 1994)
Case

Confederated Pulp & Paper

By: David E. Bell

A rewritten version of an old case that updates the dates and prices and simplifies the economics. The issue is still one of determining a suitable inventory of wood for the mill to last through the winter. View Details

Keywords: History; Supply Chain Management; Spending; Forecasting and Prediction; Economic Growth; Information Management; Pulp and Paper Industry

2016
Chapter

Return Predictability in the Treasury Market: Real Rates, Inflation, and Liquidity

By: Carolin E. Pflueger and Luis M. Viceira

Keywords: Investment Return; Bonds; Forecasting and Prediction; Inflation and Deflation

Read Now

April 2008
Case

Four Products: Predicting Diffusion (2008)

By: John T. Gourville

An updated "Four Products" case. This 2008 version includes: sliced peanut butter, foldable bicycle tires, high-end wooden puzzles, and artificial dirt for thoroughbred race tracks. These four products form the basis to assess the drivers of new product adoption. In... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Adoption

2005
Working Paper

Investor Sentiment and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We examine how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. Theory predicts that a broad wave of sentiment will disproportionately affect stocks whose valuations are highly subjective and are difficult to arbitrage. We test this prediction by studying... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Behavioral Finance; Stocks; Theory; Forecasting and Prediction