Problem Formulation - Publications - Faculty & Research

13 Jun 2017
Blog Post

What is the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program? A Q&A with Professor Tom Eisenmann

aspire to lead technology ventures. These individuals love to solve hard problems and to build, and they have entrepreneurial drive. Applicants must also have an undergraduate degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field.... View Details

29 Jan 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, January 29, 2019

managers formulate problems, evaluate their difficulty, define “good enough solutions,” and optimize the ways in which they will solve them in advance of attempting to solve them. The paper introduces both a framework for the analysis of... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

31 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

One Quarter of Entrepreneurs in the United States Are Immigrants

It’s hard to say who’s right, however. Outside of a few high-profile examples like Brin, there have been virtually no data to gauge the level at which immigrants create companies and jobs. Kerr has sought to remedy that problem with a new... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

Ghemawat The organizational challenges involved in World War II were a vital stimulus to strategic thinking. The problem of allocating scarce resources across the entire economy in wartime led to many innovations in management science.... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

03 Mar 2010
What Do You Think?

To What Degree Does “Identity” Affect Economic Performance?

organization's culture affects its economic performance. The basic working hypotheses are that: (1) people put forth more effort and produce better results for organizations whose values they identify with, and (2) therefore, it's in the best interests of organizations... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

06 Apr 2023
Blog Post

Circularity in Denmark

our first visit, Sr. Director of Technology Soren Kristiansen walked us through the LEGO Group’s efforts to develop the next generation of blocks. Their team is working in parallel on bio-based and recycled plastics, iterating on View Details

06 May 2002
Research & Ideas

A Toolkit for Customer Innovation

product, BBA and the client could go back and forth for several more iterations. This represents a huge problem because clients often expect BBA to get the flavor right the first time, or within two or three iterations. To make matters... View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke & Eric Von Hippel

01 Dec 1997
News

Banking on HBS

Bank after a distinguished career as a Wall Street investment banker. "I wanted a program that would stimulate their thinking and make them aware of different approaches to problem solving and implementation of alternative courses of... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

Web

Pricing Strategy: Monetizing and Growing the Business - Course Catalog

to organizations in the form of income. The course takes you across the different steps in this sequence, identifying the most common problem areas and searching for practical and effective solutions. A key takeaway is that decisions... View Details

23 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

It’s Back to Business-Basics for Nonprofits

they see as major strategic stumbling blocks. The process of overcoming these problems can help nonprofits develop clear and measurable strategies for success. Lack Of Clarity About Intended Impact What do you want to do, and how will you... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

Profile

Hiroshi Mikitani

where Mikitani graduated in 1993, he began to formulate ideas for his own venture. Studying hundreds of cases of startup success, he was transformed. “It was in an HBS classroom that I first considered starting my own... View Details

30 Nov 2017
News

Happy Meals (Are Here Again)

transactions—the metrics Karavites tracks most closely—are up at all his locations. Formulating a turnaround strategy required Kempczinski and his team—which included Kristy Cunningham—to get to the heart of what exactly had happened to... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; photographed by Saverio Truglia

01 Jun 2010
News

M.I.A. Boards

that focus on the perceived cause of the most recent crash. These efforts have ignored the enduring cultural problems of CEO-board collusive relationships and the lack of shareholder power. The result is the imposition of ineffective,... View Details

Keywords: John Gillespie;David Zweig; Finance

12 Feb 2013
First Look

First Look: Feb. 12

a decision maker may make between two decision alternatives as a parameter of the problem varies. We show how this formulation also relates many widely used concepts in single and multiattribute utility... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 Apr 2012
What Do You Think?

How Will the “Age of Big Data” Affect Management?

waiting for the analysts to gain understanding (presumably of the decisions to be made)." (Sean O'Riordain) Rather than concentrating on the data, focus on "being able to formulate the right questions to ask at precisely the right... View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

11 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Neuroeconomics: Eyes, Brain, Business

why the brain evolved to pay attention to other people.” The problem was that while the film's characters appeared astonishingly human in many ways, their eyes looked lifeless. Viewers were creeped out. Humans are often delighted by... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

20 Nov 2007
First Look

First Look: November 20, 2007

problem for the consortium is how much to raise its previous bid. A reasonable bid must be based upon how much value the private equity consortium can create through improvements in Hertz's global operations on the one hand, and a more... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Oct 2002
News

View from the Top

honest, humble, and setting realistic expectations may be good ingredients. Gadiesh: The public has lost confidence, and the underlying problem does not seem to be the absence of checks and balances, but that not everybody is making them... View Details

06 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 6, 2007

depression, led to a crisis in the industry. Nonetheless, the pioneering group of forecasters shaped the core problems, and invented many of the techniques, that influenced the maturation of the industry in the decades that followed. Warren Persons, the Harvard... View Details