Publications

17 Feb 2016
News

Lean Strategy

05 Mar 2020
News

Real Leaders: Ernest Shackleton Leads a Harrowing Expedition

February 2008 (Revised July 2008)
Case

Banco Compartamos: Life after the IPO

By: Michael Chu and Regina Garcia Cuellar

After an international IPO yielding extraordinary returns to original investors, Banco Compartamos, Mexico's leading microfinance institution, contemplates its future strategic and competing priorities: maintaining growth, defending industry, leadership, preserving... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Microfinance; Initial Public Offering; Non-Governmental Organizations; Competition; Value Creation; Banking Industry; Mexico

Article

Lean Strategy

By: David Collis

Strategy and entrepreneurship are often seen as polar opposites. Yet the two desperately need each other: strategy without entrepreneurship is central planning; entrepreneurship without strategy leads to chaos. The two approaches can be reconciled through the Lean... View Details

Keywords: Strategy Implementation; Strategy Alignment; Strategy; Entrepreneurship

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2008
Working Paper

Concentration Levels in the U.S. Advertising and Marketing Services Industry: Myth vs. Reality

By: Alvin J. Silk and Charles King III

This paper analyzes changes in concentration levels in the U.S. Advertising and Marketing Services (A&MS) industry using publicly released data that have been largely ignored in past discussions of the industrial organization of this industry, namely those available... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Mergers and Acquisitions; Revenue; Analytics and Data Science; Surveys; Marketing; Measurement and Metrics; Rank and Position; Competition; Advertising Industry; Service Industry; United States

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August 2018 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Facebook—Can Ethics Scale in the Digital Age?

By: George A. Riedel and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Since its founding in 2004, Facebook has built a phenomenally successful business at global scale to become the fifth most valuable public company in the world. The revelation of Cambridge Analytica events in March 2018, where 78 million users' information was leaked... View Details

Keywords: Facebook; Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Trust; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Social Media

Research Summary

Price as a Stimulus to Think: The Case for Willful Overpricing

Consumers aware of a new benefit will often experience uncertainty about its personal relevance or usage value. This paper shows that the decision to deliberate further to resolve this uncertainty and reach a polarized judgment of personal relevance critically depends... View Details

2022
Working Paper

The Impact of Campaign Finance Rules on Candidate Selection and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from France

By: Nikolaj Broberg, Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

This paper investigates the effects of campaign finance rules on electoral outcomes. In French departmental and municipal elections, candidates competing in districts above 9,000 inhabitants face spending limits and are eligible for public reimbursement if they obtain... View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Finance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Outcome or Result; France

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01 Mar 2018
News

Leadership books for volatile and uncertain times

28 Apr 2016
News

Health Care Dominates HBS Startup Comp

June 2007
Article

Merchant or Two-Sided Platform?

By: Andrei Hagiu

This paper provides a first pass at clarifying the economic tradeoffs between two polar strategies for market intermediation: the "merchant" mode, in which the intermediary buys from sellers and resells to buyers; and the "two-sided platform" mode, under which the... View Details

Keywords: Merchants; Two-sided Platforms; Intermediaries; Two-Sided Markets; Digital Platforms

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10 Apr 2015
News

America’s failing report card for social progress

July 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Trouble at Basecamp: Managing Politics, Polarization, and Conflict in the Workplace (A)

By: Nour Kteily, Deepak Malhotra and David Lane

As founders of the software company Basecamp, Jason Fried and David H. Hansson were used to being the subjects of social media attention. Both maintained active and dedicated Twitter followings for their unique perspectives on management and life. But on April 26,... View Details

2017
Book

Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times

By: Nancy F. Koehn

An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of readers—including those in government, business, education, and the arts—Forged in Crisis spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Personal Characteristics; Crisis Management; Biography

2009
Other Unpublished Work

Choice-based Measures of Conflict in Preferences

By: Katherine Baldiga and Jerry R. Green

We propose a family of measures of difference between ordinal preference relations. The difference between two preferences is the probability that they would disagree about the optimal choice from a random available set. It is in this sense that these measures are... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Conflict of Interests; Welfare

25 Oct 2012
HBS Seminar

Andy McAfee, MIT

July–August 2024
Article

The Middle Path to Innovation

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Duke Rohlen, Ben Creo and Will Kynes

Too many companies are failing to innovate. One reason, say the authors, is the polarized approach companies take to innovation. At one end of the spectrum, corporate R&D efforts tend to focus on product refreshes and incremental line upgrades that generate modest... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry