Publications

December 2009 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Phreesia: The Patient Intake Company

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Sunaina Yarlagadda and Brian L. Walker

How should the co-founders of an organization that provides patient sign-in and billing services scale their company after five years of successfully targeting small private physician practices? Phreesia had deployed a direct mail and sales force strategy that resulted... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Social Entrepreneurship; Revenue; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

01 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making

What determines whether decisions happen on the bottom, middle, or top rung of the corporate ladder? New research offers a surprising conclusion: The answer often lies in the technology that a company uses. Information-based systems, such... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

November 2012
Case

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. (Abridged)

By: H. Kent Bowen, Robert S. Huckman, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Matthew Preble

Considers whether New Balance, one of the world's five largest manufacturers of athletic footwear, should respond to Adidas' planned acquisition of Reebok—a transaction that would join the second- and third-largest companies in the industry. Highlights the unique... View Details

Keywords: Production; Competitive Strategy; Supply Chain; Brands and Branding; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry; Retail Industry; Asia; United States

September 2014
Case

Radiometer, 2013

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2013, Radiometer continued to lead the world in blood gas analysis equipment and accessories, selling direct and through distributors to hospital central laboratories, point-of-care locations, and non-hospital medical locations. Founded in 1935 and based in Denmark,... View Details

Keywords: Medical Devices; Medical Equipment ＆ Devices; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Strategic Analysis; Strategic Change; Family Business; Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Denmark; United States

14 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 14

may be passing them by. In short, they'd rather do the wrong thing well than do the right thing poorly. They get stuck in this unproductive and unfulfilling pattern and can't break free. Of course, leaders... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Manage the Suppliers That Could Harm Your Brand: Know When to Avoid, Engage, or Drop Them

By: Jodi L Short and Michael W. Toffel

The pandemic has placed a new spotlight on working conditions in factories that supply global companies. To avert problems, firms often impose codes of conduct on their suppliers and perform audits to assess compliance. Do these measures help identify unethical... View Details

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Research Summary

Overview

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang

Start Up Strategy and Management
Bussgang’s research focuses on applying Lean Startup principles to early-stage technology companies as well as the challenges and opportunities when scaling startups. His work led to the creation of the MBA elective... View Details

28 Jan 2014
First Look

First Look: January 28

increased dramatically (seven- to nine-fold) in the last two decades. To counteract this trend, I propose novel approaches to lower its cost or use attention more efficiently by adopting multitasker-tailored ads, View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2018
Article

Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia

By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu

Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,... View Details

Keywords: Online Community; Collective Intelligence; Wisdom Of Crowds; Bias; Wikipedia; Britannica; Knowledge Production; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Dissemination; Prejudice and Bias

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Research Summary

Overview

Start Up Strategy and Management

Bussgang’s research focuses on applying Lean Startup principles to early-stage technology companies as well as the challenges and opportunities when scaling startups. His work led to the creation of the MBA elective course... View Details

2025
Working Paper

The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Charles Ayoubi, Hila Lifshitz, Raffaella Sadun, Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, Yi Han, Jeff Goldman, Hari Nair, Stew Taub and Karim R. Lakhani

We examine how artificial intelligence transforms the core pillars of collaboration— performance, expertise sharing, and social engagement—through a pre-registered field experiment with 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble, a global consumer packaged goods company.... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Teamwork; Human-machine Interaction; Productivity; Skills; Innovation; Field Experiment; AI and Machine Learning; Groups and Teams; Competency and Skills; Performance Productivity; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Product Development

SSRN

May 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Supplement

Michael Ku and Global Clinical Supply at Pfizer Inc.: Bringing Hope to Patients (D)

By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

This fourth installment in the Pfizer Global Clinical Supply (GCS) transformation case series highlights how over a decade of cultural and digital evolution positioned GCS to meet unprecedented global challenges. In 2011, Michael Ku became the Vice President of GCS and... View Details

2022
Book

Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs

By: Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald

Why is leading innovation in nascent business environments so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90% of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80% of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6%... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Organizational Culture; Leadership Style; Decision Making

January 2020
Case

Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language

By: Ashley V. Whillans, Esel Çekin and Alpana Thapar

Jordanian entrepreneur, Nour Al Hassan, founded Tarjama in 2008, tapping into an underserved and high demand need: Arabic translation service. Its lean model comprised of hiring full-time employees, mainly women, who worked from home. It steadily grew over the... View Details

Keywords: Language Translation; Freelancers; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Management; Expansion; Quality; Growth and Development Strategy

May 2025
Case

Windsurf and the AI Code Assistant Market

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Sudhanshu Nath Mishra and Radhika Kak

In April 2025, the founding team of Windsurf, an AI start-up specializing in code generation gathered in Mountain View, California, to assess its remarkable year of growth. The company had scaled from a niche GitHub Copilot alternative to a breakout player with over... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry; United States

24 Oct 2023
HBS Case

From P.T. Barnum to Mary Kay: Lessons From 5 Leaders Who Changed the World

phone, “You can do it, Mary Kay, you can do it.” When she launched her own firm, Beauty by Mary Kay, she leaned on the early lesson her mother taught her about motivation to inspire her salespeople. “Especially View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

November 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Bridgit: Persevere or Pivot?

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

In late 2012, Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake, two young women in their final year of college, founded Bridgit, a technology startup that developed solutions to simplify vital but laborious processes within the construction industry. In the Fall of 2013, after months... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Founder; Co-founders; Women Executives; Pivot; Startup; Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Product Launch; Research and Development; Competition; Construction Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Canada