Digital Commons - Publications - Faculty & Research

19 Dec 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 19, 2017

development of organic wine in countries with different winemaking traditions resulted in little common agreement regarding the definition of “organic” wine. After heated debate regarding the use of sulfites, differing organic wine... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

17 Feb 2022
Book

When Employees Feel a Sense of Purpose, Companies Succeed

common set of expectations,” one scholarly article observes, “we are ‘under control’ whenever we are in their presence. If we want to be accepted, we try to live up to their expectations.” In companies with strong cultures, norms of... View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati

13 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

conversation talked about even in Massachusetts, the so-called education Mecca of the world, there are many people who don't have access to broadband, to internet, to the digital tools, to things like Zoom Frazier: Yes. Yeah, absolutely.... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Pharmaceutical

06 Oct 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

18 Tips Managers Can Use to Lead Through COVID's Rising Waters

(virtually) talked with more than 50 “resilient” businesses across a variety of countries and sectors. The results of this exploration show that managers are trying to ensure safety and maintain profitability with tremendous energy and creativity. While specific... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

23 Nov 2021
Research & Ideas

The Vinyl Renaissance: Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf

now for whom music has always been a free commodity. The more that we talk to college students and teenagers about why they buy vinyl, the common thread is that having vinyl in your dorm room or your house says something about you and who... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Music

18 Feb 2019
Book

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

example, homeowners traditionally hire housekeepers, gardeners, and others to help with common household chores. TaskRabbit, the digital equivalent, lets you hire people, but do so over the web. Likewise,... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Beauty & Cosmetics; Insurance; Service; Retail

18 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

'Likes' Lead to Nothing—and Other Hard-Learned Lessons of Social Media Marketing

a direct connection between a social media chat about a product with the actual purchase of that product. “The biggest challenge right now is that all this money is shifting into digital marketing, but there are still a lot of questions... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Advertising; Technology

12 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 12

specification. The Jeopardy! problem is different-it requires a probabilistic approach where there is no closed form solution. Instead, statistical patterns in the data are important, and there is no obvious mapping to the way queries are expressed. Such problems are... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Jan 2021
Op-Ed

How Influencers, Celebrities, and FOMO Can Win Over Vaccine Skeptics

example, key government officials can serve as mega-influencers by promoting their willingness to be immunized through traditional and digital media. Throughout the history of vaccines efforts, presidents, prime ministers, and leading... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim

24 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Vulnerabilities of Open Source Software

accounts were less likely to employ the same level of security measures (such as multifactor authentication) common among organizational accounts. According to the study, “changes to code under the control of these individual developer... View Details

Keywords: by Frank Nagle and Jenny Hoffman; Computer

10 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

How to Get Companies to Make Investments That Benefit Everyone

Nagle says the software industry’s reliance on free and open source software is the clearest example of how this “virtuous cycle” can work. The digital economy runs on FOSS, with 75 percent of corporate code reliant on the shared system.... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

03 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

Cut Payroll Costs with Transparency, Fairness, and Compassion

and layoffs. Questions that CEOs raised with us included: “What are best practices for digital terminations?” and “If the economy worsens and you have to consider reducing payroll, what’s the most effective way?” As we look ahead to what... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott

01 May 2020
What Do You Think?

Does Remote Work Mix with Organizational Culture?

distancing with our colleagues from our work teams.” On the other hand, Melanie Roberts reminds us that, “Charles Handy refers to culture as the soup we all swim about in, and that soup is thin when the ‘here’ is not a location and people are working asynchronously and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

09 Jun 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Monetizing IP: The Executive’s Challenge

resulting from its general counsel's aggressive enforcement policy. In some years, revenue from these sources has exceeded net income from product sales. A variety of dynamic firms have catalyzed the establishment of patent pools, where firms with different agendas... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Web Services

20 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Solving the Riddle of How Companies Grow Over Time

other hand, the age of companies does seem to matter, with older companies in general growing more slowly than newer firms. Next, the team looked at the issue of persistence—that is, how likely companies are to sustain their growth over time. In the past, academics... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

07 Feb 2019
Book

How Big Companies Can Outrun Disruption

obviously the most challenging. Lagace: What are common errors when companies try to create innovative cultures? Pisano: Big companies too often try to emulate startup cultures, and that’s misguided. First of all, not all startups have... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

15 Aug 2024
Op-Ed

Post-CrowdStrike, Six Questions to Test Your Company's Operational Resilience

that business disruptions are not just potential threats, but common occurrences that demand immediate attention from CEOs, C-suite teams, and boards. It's time for leaders to take stock of their companies’ operational resilience—their... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and Anita Lynch

01 Mar 2018
What Do You Think?

Two Decades Later, is the 'New Economy' Finally Here?

The first of these, Machine/Platform/Crowd, explores the current and future impact of digital technology on people (the mind in relation to machine), product (in relation to digital platforms), and core... View Details