Publications

October 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Centagenetix (A): Building a Business Model for Genetic Longevity

Describes a start-up company seeking to exploit population genetic data from long-lived, healthy people. The company must address legal, financial, ethical, and personal issues among its team to launch the company. View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Genetics; Business Startups; Biotechnology Industry

19 Sep 2018
News

Uninformed Consent

May 2013
Teaching Note

Launching Krispy Natural: Cracking the Product Management Code (Brief Case)

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Heather Beckham

This case study concerns a review and interpretation of test market results for a new packaged good product. The purpose of the case is to provide students with practice and guidelines in the analysis of quantitative test market data while illustrating the roles of... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Product Marketing

July 2009 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Alacra, Inc.

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Aldo Sesia

In 2009, the CEO of Alacra, a venture-backed information services firm that provides customized data primarily to financial services firms, must decide how to respond to the global economic crisis. View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Entrepreneurship; Crisis Management; Information Industry

2022
Working Paper

Stories, Statistics and Memory

By: Thomas Graeber, Christopher Roth and Florian Zimmermann

For most decisions, we rely on information encountered over the course of days, months or years. We consume this information in various forms, including abstract summaries of multiple data points – statistics – and contextualized anecdotes about individual instances... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Types; Media; Cognition and Thinking

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2014
Working Paper

Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com

By: Benjamin Edelman and Michael Luca

Online marketplaces often contain information not only about products, but also about the people selling the products. In an effort to facilitate trust, many platforms encourage sellers to provide personal profiles and even to post pictures of themselves. However,... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Internet and the Web; Race; Trust; Renting or Rental; Accommodations Industry; Real Estate Industry

SSRN

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Article

Conversational Receptiveness: Expressing Engagement with Opposing Views

By: M. Yeomans, J. Minson, H. Collins, H. Chen and F. Gino

We examine “conversational receptiveness”—the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then... View Details

Keywords: Receptiveness; Natural Language Processing; Disagreement; Interpersonal Communication; Relationships; Conflict Management

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June 2020
Case

gWorks

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

In January of 2019, Joe Heieck (HBS '14), CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size of gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Finance

January 2004
Case

America Latina Logistica

Describes the turnaround of America Latina Logistica, a $200 million revenue, formerly state-owned, railway in Brazil that has been restored to profitability by its CEO, a recent MBA graduate. After successfully transforming the company's operations, finances, and... View Details

Keywords: Rail Transportation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Rail Industry; Brazil

Find at Harvard

10 Dec 2015
News

Can Google Street View Images Predict Household Income?

File

Replication Files

19 Apr 2018
Video

Alpha Vantage Final Pitch New Venture Competition 2018 Business Track

Video

Adrian Gore

Adrian Gore, founder and Group Chief Executive of Discovery Limited, describes data sharing practices which allowed the company to help governments worldwide prepare against the emergence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant. View Details

Research Summary

Team-based strategic work among senior executives

My research centers on a study of organizational design for senior-executive work on strategy. I examine the role of small groups that are tasked with resolving strategic issues, and I consider the effects of such team-based organizing models on strategic... View Details

December 2015
Case

An Intern's Dilemma (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Matthew Preble

An HBS student is asked to misrepresent himself during the course of his summer internship by his employer in order to obtain data from industry competitors. View Details

Keywords: Conflict; Leadership; Conflict Management; Competition; Ethics; Knowledge Acquisition; Organizational Culture; Employees; Power and Influence

18 Feb 2016
News

Apple’s risky bet on protecting a terrorist’s iPhone

April 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

CredEx Fintech: Business Model Transformation During the Digital Era

By: Laura Huang, Raphael Amit and Xu Han

Founded in 2010, CredEx has been a fast and constant innovator in the microfinance industry in China. Tang Xia, CEO and co-founder of CredEx, has led the company through a number of profound business model innovations in response to external environment changes, which... View Details

Keywords: Digitization; Fintech; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Transformation; Microfinance; Organizational Change and Adaptation