Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(9,074)
- Faculty Publications (1,859)
- 2025
- Working Paper
Lessons from an App Update at Replika AI: Identity Discontinuity in Human-AI Relationships
By: Julian De Freitas, Noah Castelo, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp and Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp
As consumers increasingly interact with AI applications specialized for social relationships, what
is the nature and depth of these relationships among actual users, and can company actions
influence these dynamics? We find that active users of the US-based AI... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Foreign Influence in U.S. Politics
By: Marco Grotteria, Max Miller and S. Lakshmi Naaraayanan
This paper investigates the informational role of lobbyists in the context of foreign lobbying in the United States. Using Department of Justice data on contacts between foreign governments and US legislators, we show that exogenous shocks to these connections... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Racial Inequality in Organizations: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective
By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William A. Kahn and Robin J. Ely
This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. organizations and to inform an approach for disrupting it. We treat White men as the dominant group and Black people as the archetypal subordinate group... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
Should a Family Business Accept a Returning Daughter’s Radical Proposal?
By: John D. Macomber
A family-owned and controlled conglomerate in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, has to decide what titles and authority to give to a daughter who is being courted to leave a promising career in Europe to come back and join the business. The choices of role range from an... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Strategic Decision Making at Platform Transitions: The Case of Nokia (2010-2011).
By: Timo O. Vuori and Michael Tushman
We studied Nokia’s decision to adopt the Windows platform in 2011 to induce new theory on the emotional dynamics of incumbent firms’ strategic decision making at platform transitions. We find that platform companies’ entry into an established industry activates a... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
The Art of Leading Teammates
By: Tom Brady and Nitin Nohria
When our society talks about leaders, we focus on formal roles, such as the CEO. This view undervalues the role of informal leaders—team members who influence outcomes by the tone they set, how they conduct themselves, and how they interact with their peers. Their job... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
When Batteries Meet Hydrogen: Dual-Storage Investments for Load-Shifting Purposes
By: Christian Kaps and Simone Marinesi
Power systems account for nearly 40% of global emissions. As the world tries to reduce emissions by increasing renewable penetration, storage technologies are playing an increasingly important role in matching variable renewable supply with demand. Batteries have... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
InfraCredit and the Project Inception Facility
By: John Macomber, Namrata Arora and Maagatha Kalavadakken
Around the world, large infrastructure projects are frequently stymied by the high cost and high uncertainty of the project inception phase: the research and engineering and planning prior to financial close and start of construction. Could there be a new kind of... View Details
Keywords: Infrastructure; Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Cost; Cash Flow; Capital; Assets; Financial Markets; Financial Strategy; Insurance; Energy; Product Development; Risk and Uncertainty; Business Strategy; Credit; Financial Services Industry; Energy Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Nigeria
- September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Burn the Gondolas? Venice, the Ghetto, and the Seasons of Capitalism
By: Sophus A. Reinert, Charlotte Robertson and Robert Fredona
This case uses the history of Venice—from the driving of the first pylons in the lagoon to the abdication of the city’s last doge, across the ages of Marco Polo and Vivaldi—to explore the invention and global diffusion of capitalism, as well as the cyclical rise and... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Nvidia, Inc. in 2024 and the Future of AI
By: David B. Yoffie and Sarah von Bargen
Nvidia was one of the most successful companies in the world, reaching $3.4 trillion in valuation on June 18th, 2024. While Microsoft and Apple quickly recaptured the value crown, some analysts forecasted that Nvidia was so strongly positioned that it might become the... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Markups and Cost Pass-through Along the Supply Chain
By: Santiago Alvarez-Blaser, Alberto Cavallo, Alexander MacKay and Paolo Mengano
We study markups and pricing strategies along the supply chain. Our unique dataset combines detailed price and cost information from a large global manufacturer with matched retail prices collected online for the period July 2018 through June 2023. We show that total... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
How AI Can Power Brand Management
By: Julian De Freitas and Elie Ofek
Marketers have begun experimenting with AI to improve their brand-management efforts. But unlike other marketing tasks, brand management involves more than just repeatedly executing one specialized function. Long considered the exclusive domain of creative talent, it... View Details
- September 2024
- Article
Investing in the Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts of a Liquidity Shock
By: Patrick Agte, Arielle Bernhardt, Erica M. Field, Rohini Pande and Natalia Rigol
How do poor entrepreneurs trade off investments in business enterprises versus children's human capital, and how do these choices influence intergenerational socio-economic mobility? To examine this, we exploit experimental variation in household income resulting from... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Patent Hunters
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Katie Moon and Paula Suh
Analyzing millions of patents granted by the USPTO between 1976 and 2020, we find a pattern where specific patents only rise to prominence after considerable time has passed. Amongst these late-blooming influential patents, we show that there are key players (patent... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Operational Impact of Customer Location in On-Demand Services
By: Natalie Epstein, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
The rapid growth of on-demand delivery services, particularly in the food and grocery sectors, has driven the expansion of hyperlocal fulfillment centers (FCs). This paper uses data from an on-demand grocery delivery platform in Latin America to assess how customer... View Details
- August 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Novo Nordisk Foundation
By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau
In 2024, Novo Nordisk A/S was one of the most profitable firms in the world, thanks largely to just two GLP-1-based drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Unusually, this incredibly profitable firm was controlled not by individual private shareholders, but by a non-profit... View Details
Keywords: Pharmaceutical Companies; Diabetes; Obesity; Foundation; Non-profit Management; Profit; Corporate Governance; Business or Company Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Expansion; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Nonprofit Organizations; Pharmaceutical Industry; Denmark; Europe
- August 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Influencer-Led Brand Building: Hairitage and the McKnights
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano
Longtime hairstyle influencer Mindy McKnight had been building her “Cute Girls Hairstyles” audience across numerous online platforms for nearly two decades. Brand incubator Maesa took an innovative approach to producing successful brands: identifying white space in the... View Details
- August 2024 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Commonwealth Fusion Systems: Born at Scale
This case study chronicles the journey of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) on its ambitious mission to commercialize fusion energy and become the world’s leading provider of fusion power plants. Emerging from a “special arrangement” with MIT's Plasma Science and... View Details
- 2024
- Article
Crucibles, Multiple Sensitive Periods, and Career Progression
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sunasir Dutta, Hise O. Gibson and Eric Lin
We study the effects of crucible experiences along multiple sensitive periods on career progression. While prior literature has hinted that individuals can be imprinted during multiple sensitive periods, not just during the early career, there has been scant attention... View Details