Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,204)
- Faculty Publications (286)
- July 28, 2020
- Article
Economic Vulnerability of Households with Essential Workers
By: Grace McCormack, Christopher Avery, Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer and Amitabh Chandra
The label of “essential worker” reflects society’s needs but does not mean that society has compensated those workers for additional risks incurred on the job during the current pandemic. When an essential worker contracts severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus... View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Kathy Fish at Procter & Gamble: Navigating Industry Disruption by Disrupting from Within
When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble’s Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world’s leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady... View Details
Keywords: Female Protagonist; Organizational Change; Organizational Behavior; Culture Change; Digital; Innovation; Lean Startup; Experimentation; Metrics; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruption; Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation
- July–August 2020
- Article
Sarcasm, Self-Deprecation, and Inside Jokes: A User's Guide to Humor at Work
By: Brad Bitterly and Alison Wood Brooks
Humor is widely considered essential in personal relationships, but in leaders, it’s seen as an ancillary behavior. Though some leaders use humor instinctively, many more could wield it purposefully.
Humor helps build interpersonal trust and high-quality work... View Details
- May 18, 2020
- Article
Create a Culture of Generosity and Communication in Your Family Business
By: Christina R. Wing and Rohit K. Gera
The phrase “family business” is made up of two very different words: “family,” which calls to mind warm, fuzzy feelings around love, joy, and support, and “business,” which is measured in money, profits, impact, and assets. We put the two words together, and often, use... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Food Security and Human Mobility During the COVID-19 Lockdown
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari and Tarun Khanna
During the COVID-19 crisis, millions of migrants around the world face food insecurity. This could force migrants to travel during the pandemic, exposing them to health risks and accelerating the spread of the virus. Anecdotal evidence demonstrates the importance of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19; Migrants; Food Security; Mobility; Health Pandemics; Food; Distribution; Policy; Global Range
- May 2020
- Article
Tackling Climate Change Requires Organizational Purpose
By: Rebecca Henderson and George Serafeim
Unchecked climate change presents a profound threat to economic growth and political stability but despite widespread public concern about the issue, global emissions of greenhouse gases have not declined. Indeed current “business as usual” predictions imply that... View Details
- April 2020
- Article
Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015
By: Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano and Federico Tamagni
Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational “fitness” within a competitive environment, firm growth is also a central concern to... View Details
Keywords: Firm Growth; Organizations; Growth and Development; Theory; Analysis; Production; Data and Data Sets
- Article
Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty
By: Ariella S. Kristal, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely
Honest reporting is essential for society to function well. However, people frequently lie when asked to provide information, such as misrepresenting their income to save money on taxes. A landmark finding published in PNAS (Shu, Mazar, Gino, Ariely, and Bazerman,... View Details
- March–April 2020
- Article
Pricing Policies that Protect your Brand
By: Ayelet Israeli and Eugene F. Zelek Jr.
When customers seek out online deals, it seems like a win for everybody: Brands, retailers, dealers, and distributors sell more goods, and buyers get a bargain. What's not to like? Here's the problem: Lured by rock-bottom online prices, customers often end up dealing... View Details
- February 2020
- Teaching Note
Essential Explorations at MUJI
By: Tomomichi Amano and Das Narayandas
Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had expanded significantly by 2019 to more... View Details
- 2020
- Book
Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments
By: Stefan Thomke
Don’t fly blind. See how the power of experiments works for you. When it comes to improving customer experiences, trying out new business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. They discover that intuition,... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
- Teaching Note
Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods
By: Jill Avery
Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods (CPG), offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3.00 price point that promised... View Details
- 2020
- Book
Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World
By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of work. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers
We provide the first large-sample evidence on the behavior and impact of nonpracticing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual-property space. We find that, on average, NPEs appear to behave as opportunistic “patent trolls.” NPEs sue cash-rich firms and target cash in... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 16 Capturing Value by Controlling Bottlenecks in Open Platform Systems
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the means by which firms capture value in open platform systems. I begin by arguing that the surplus value created by complementarities within a technical system will be split among the owners of the unique and essential... View Details
- November 2019
- Article
Full Substitutability
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Alexandru Nichifor, Michael Ostrovsky and Alexander Westkamp
Various forms of substitutability are essential for establishing the existence of equilibria and other useful properties in diverse settings such as matching, auctions, and exchange economies with indivisible goods. We extend earlier models’ definitions of... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Background Note
Note on Funding Deep Tech Startups
By: Karim Lakhani, Peter Barrett and Noubar Afeyan
This Background Note provides essential information on funding deep technologies—those technologies that were inherently capital intensive, time consuming, risky, and potentially disruptive. Both dilutive and non-dilutive sources of investment are highlighted, along... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Energy; Venture Capital; Corporate Finance; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Health Testing and Trials; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Intellectual Property; Product Design; Product Development; Information Technology; Research and Development; Risk and Uncertainty; Technology Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States; North America; Europe; Asia
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 10 Variations on the Theme of Flow Production
The purpose of this chapter is to explore how technologies and organizations engaged in flow production evolve over time. To allow for an apples-to-apples comparison, I examine organizations using essentially the same physical technologies, making similar products, and... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Essential Explorations at MUJI
By: Tomomichi Amano, Das Narayandas, Naoko Jinjo and Akiko Kanno
Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had expanded significantly by 2019 to more... View Details
- March 2019
- Case
Investing in the Future: Corning Inc. and the Alternative School for Math and Science
By: Derek van Bever and Miho Kubagawa
In early 2017, Kim Frock (MBA 1987), founder and administrative head of school for the Alternative School for Math and Science (ASMS) in Corning, New York, is beginning to think through the issue of leadership succession at the school. Founded in close partnership with... View Details