Publications

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2025
Book

Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves

By: Alison Wood Brooks

We all struggle with difficult conversations, but we're often not very good at easy ones either. Though we do it all the time, conversation is one of the most complex, demanding, and delicate of all human tasks, rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication

Find at Harvard

In a heating transformation study presented to Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo,... View Details

01 Jul 2015
News

From Waze for crowds to Uber for street food

October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin

In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details

Keywords: Water; Pricing; Nonprofit Organizations; Projects; Price; Decision Making; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Equity; Green Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Africa; Dubai

13 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

6 Ways to Support COVID-Weary Employees

and are highly work-engaged. All of this suggests a multi-pronged solution to contagious presenteeism: Remove financial incentives for it by providing paid sick leave, audit work designs for features that... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

March 2023 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Roche: Innovation and Access to Healthcare

By: George Serafeim, Susanna Gallani and Benjamin Maletta

In May 2022, Roche Group, one of the largest healthcare companies in the world, hosted its first investor event focused exclusively on its efforts to impact access to healthcare. While Roche had recently set an ambitious goal to double the number of patients that had... View Details

Scott Duke Kominers is a Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit; as well as a Faculty Affiliate of the View Details

13 Dec 2015
News

The Truest Measure of America's Progress

15 Feb 2017
Op-Ed

What Africa Can Teach the United States About Funding Infrastructure Projects

President Trump’s infrastructure plan and a counterproposal by Senate Democrats are rising toward the top of the national agenda. All agree that there is a pressing need to fix the collapsing bridges, potholed roads, crashing trains, and... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction

30 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Health Care Under a Research Microscope

formidable research and teaching talents on bringing business-focused solutions and perspectives to address these problems. Some examples: In Zambia, Nava Ashraf and several colleagues conducted field studies to determine if charging for... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health; Biotechnology

August 2013 (Revised November 2015)
Case

Prudential Financial - General Motors Pension Risk Transfer: Back to the Future?

By: Luis M. Viceira and Emily A. Chien

In November 2012, Prudential Financial and General Motors closed on a $25.1B pension risk transfer (PRT) transaction, the largest of its kind to date by an order of magnitude both in the U.S. market and globally. In exchange for an in-kind transfer of $25.1B in... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Asset Management; Insurance; Retirement; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry

April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Petrobras in Ecuador (A)

By: Aldo Musacchio, Lena G. Goldberg and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

On October 18, 2007, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa announced his intention to migrate Petrobras' existing participation contracts to exploit oil reserves in Ecuador's Blocks 18 and 31 to servicing agreements under which Petrobras would be paid a production fee and... View Details

Keywords: Metals and Minerals; Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Governance; Government Administration; Taxation; Contracts; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Public Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Brazil; Ecuador

Blog

Discover Upcoming HBS Executive Education Programs

As a business leader, you are often confronted with a wide range of opportunities and challenges. You're expected to bring new ideas to the table, find solutions to existing and arising obstacles, and stay in the forefront of innovative... View Details

13 Nov 2020
Blog Post

Take a Seat in the Case Method Classroom

lively debates, and how this teaching style leads to emotional intelligence and lifelong application. The case method presents big challenges confronting organizations – including the constraints and incomplete information found in all... View Details

2021
Book

Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

Business leaders have tremendous power to influence our society, how it operates, whether it is fair, and the extent to which it impacts the environment. And yet, we do not recognize or call out the responsibility that comes with that power. This book is meant to... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Power and Influence; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Leadership

16 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

When the Internet Runs Out of IP Addresses

problem? A: IPv6 offers important benefits. In particular, if all networks ran IPv6, there would be plenty of addresses for everyone, and we'd have no further address shortage. But it's difficult to get from here to there. Right now,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Telecommunications

July 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Game Time Decision for AppDirect

By: Andrei Hagiu, Laura Arjona and Emily Zhang

AppDirect is a start-up that offers small businesses software-as-a-service solutions through a business app marketplace and portal. Daniel Saks, co-founder and co-CEO, is faced with the key question of deciding distribution strategy: should AppDirect find channel... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Distribution; Applications and Software; Innovation Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; United States

Forthcoming
Article

Slowly Varying Regression Under Sparsity

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Michael Lingzhi Li and Omar Skali Lami

We consider the problem of parameter estimation in slowly varying regression models with sparsity constraints. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer optimization problem and demonstrate that it can be reformulated exactly as a binary convex optimization problem... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

2009
Working Paper

Consistency and Monotonicity in One-Sided Assignment Problems

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus and Alexandru Nichifor

One-sided assignment problems combine important features of two well-known matching models. First, as in roommate problems, any two agents can be matched and second, as in two-sided assignment problems, the payoffs of a matching can be divided between the agents. We... View Details

Keywords: Markets