Publications

July 2010 (Revised March 2016)
Case

MacroMarkets LLC

By: Robin Greenwood and Luis M. Viceira

MacroMarkets co-founder and CEO Samuel Masucci III is meeting with a strategic partner for his firm. Co-founded with Yale University Professor Robert Shiller, MacroMarkets' main innovation is the "MacroShare," which allows investors to take long or short, levered or... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Financial Instruments; Financial Markets; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Innovation and Invention; Risk Management; Product Positioning; Demand and Consumers; Financial Services Industry

10 Feb 2015
News

Why Metrics Get Worse With Scale

10 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Meet the Health & Wellness Club

that the market will continue to grow in leaps and bounds in the coming years. We hope to serve as a conduit for business school students and partners looking to create positive change in the industry in the... View Details

Keywords: Health-Related Services; Health Care; Consumer Products / Retail

July 1995 (Revised September 1997)
Case

Baseball Strike, The

Describes structural conditions in the American baseball industry in 1995. Although this case covers conditions leading to the 1994-95 strike, it is designed primarily for analysis of the structural tensions that arise between suppliers, buyers, and rivals as industry... View Details

Keywords: Industry Structures; Sports; Labor and Management Relations; Sports Industry; United States

November 2023
Case

From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group (Abridged)

By: Willy Shih and Nancy Dai

Like other small shops based in Chongqing, China, Zongshen Industrial Group started by assembling motorcycles from "standard" parts. The quality of its early products was good enough for rural Chinese buyers, though wealthier consumers usually purchased premium... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Supply Chain; Product Positioning; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; China

04 Feb 2018
Working Paper Summaries

The Long-Run Dynamics of Electricity Demand: Evidence from Municipal Aggregation

Keywords: by Alexander MacKay, Tatyana Deryugina, and Julian Reif; Utilities

February 1995 (Revised November 1996)
Case

MasterCard and World Championship Soccer

By: John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop

The MasterCard vice president for global promotions and other MasterCard executives are appraising the results of MasterCard's worldwide sponsorship of the 1994 World Cup soccer championship. They must decide whether to commit to sponsor the 1998 championship to be... View Details

Keywords: Credit Cards; Marketing Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Advertising Campaigns; Globalization; Sports; Financial Services Industry; Sports Industry; France; United States

December 2018
Article

Reserve Design: Unintended Consequences and the Demise of Boston's Walk Zones

By: Umut Dur, Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak and Tayfun Sönmez

Admissions policies often use reserves to grant certain applicants higher priority for some (but not all) available seats. Boston’s school choice system, for example, reserved half of each school’s seats for local neighborhood applicants while leaving the other half... View Details

Keywords: Neighborhoods; Equal Access; School Choice; Affirmative Action; Desegregation; Marketplace Matching; Fairness; Local Range; Education; Policy

Find at Harvard

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November 2015
Case

Rubicon Global

By: William A. Sahlman and Hunter Ashmore

The case describes Rubicon Global, a startup that aimed to disrupt the waste management industry. The company started with a bold idea: create a cloud-based, full-service waste management company providing low-cost, highly efficient, and environmentally friendly... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Rubicon; Rubicon Global; Waste Management; Startups; Disruptive Technology; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Entrepreneurship; Wastes and Waste Processing; Business Startups; Corporate Finance; Service Industry

23 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

Globalization: Little Impact on the Continent

borders? Money is crossing borders... ideas are crossing borders," she said. Unfortunately, she added, there is little evidence that Africa, given its population and size, is benefiting proportionately from the phenomenon. The... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette

06 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Climbing Down from the Ivory Tower

police to protect the citizens. Olstrom dubbed the phenomenon "co-production." Since then, it has become common for organizations to treat consumers as production partners. Many high-tech firms hire existing customers to beta-test early... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education; Health

2020
Working Paper

Consumers Punish Firms That Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19

By: Bhavya Mohan, Serena Hagerty and Michael Norton

Two experiments, including one incentive compatible study, examine the impact of cutting pay for executives versus employees in response to COVID-19 on consumer behavior. Study 1 explores the effect of announcing cuts or no cuts to CEO and employee pay, and shows that... View Details

Keywords: Employee Furloughs; CEO Pay Cuts; Pay Ratios; Purchase Intention; Health Pandemics; Employees; Wages; Executive Compensation; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

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January 1997
Background Note

Buy Low, Sell High: Creating and Extracting Customer Value by Enhancing Organizational Performance

By: Benson P. Shapiro

Provides an integrated framework for creating customer value and managing the firm profitably. Focuses on the use of product/service line management and effective customer service to achieve customer satisfaction and high profitability. View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Framework; Performance Efficiency; Sales; Business Strategy; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Product Marketing; Business or Company Management

29 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Uber Is Worth Saving and How To Do It

trying to go around all of the rules is not a particularly good idea.” The resignation last week of Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick is the latest black eye for the company, which has stepped on many toes during its rise from... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Transportation

06 Feb 2006
What Do You Think?

Should CEOs of Public Companies Offer Earnings Guidance?

amounts of internal energy go to 'making the quarter return' rather than serving the customer and building the future. Why did quarter returns develop in the first place?" Bill Hubbell added, "The market has many mechanisms to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

2023
Working Paper

Design-Based Confidence Sequences: A General Approach to Risk Mitigation in Online Experimentation

By: Dae Woong Ham, Michael Lindon, Martin Tingley and Iavor Bojinov

Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers’ decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Research and Development; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior