Small Companies - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

A Politician's Investment Portfolio Might Tip Off Corruption Potential

advantage of the company or engage in some type of misconduct. That could to an extent temper how much of a risk taker you want if you care about the misconduct part.” Companies already use data analytics to... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

and help build a better world while we are still striving to deliver high performance for the enterprise. Managing that tension is difficult." HBS invited the executives to the second Higher Ambition CEO Leadership Conference, held January 14-15, to support them in... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

11 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

Shrinking the Racial Wealth Gap, One Mortgage at a Time

minority borrowers,” they write. The findings also imply there may be similar disparities with other types of borrowing, such as small business loans, Sunderam says. However, there’s less data available to dig into that slice of the... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

20 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 20

found in only a small number of tasks and functions. In the majority of situations, spans of accountability were wider than spans of control. This "Entrepreneurial Gap" is posited to be a result of management's desire for... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Nov 1999
Lessons from the Classroom

What’s Next & So What? Leading in the 21st Century

traditional Taylorist view of the company as a centrally driven entity that creates wealth by getting better and better at doing the same thing. But now the problem is quite different. Competition is no longer in global scale-intensive... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Women Leading Business: A New Kind of Conversation

company that is recognized as successful, with substantial revenues and profits. Our corporate participants are presidents of their companies or divisions, or they're executive vice presidents—almost always... View Details

Keywords: Re: Myra M. Hart & Cynthia A. Montgomery

19 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Wrapping Your Alliances In a World Wide Web

costs, and enabled businesses to form mutually beneficial alliances.Once two or more companies agree to do business with each other on activities beyond simple procurement, they again face a challenge in executing many joint processes as... View Details

Keywords: by Andrew McAfee

15 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

We Have Better Ways to Break Habits Than Willpower. Why Don't We Use Them?

that perhaps people see those who use it as superior to those who rely on external aids. In testing this hypothesis, the researchers found: People trust others who use willpower more than commitment strategies. The researchers asked 400 online participants to give a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

27 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

New Research: Surviving Bankruptcy, Useful Economics, and Retirement

Collis and Akiko Kanno “Tokio Marine, Japan's leading insurance company, has spent nearly two decades building a global footprint in different insurance businesses. As the company becomes majority non-domestic it has to make a choice of... View Details

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

outcomes. Instead, in most lines of business—with the exception of a few commodities in which international trade had developed—firms had an incentive to remain small and to employ as little fixed capital as possible. It was in this era... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

03 Dec 2015
Op-Ed

How "New Nuclear" Power Could Save the Planet—If Regulators Would Allow It

Leaders from some 150 nations have convened in Paris this week for the COP21 conference with a singular goal: to fight the global threat of climate change. Each of them have brought to Paris their own national plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that drive... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Lassiter; Energy

11 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Fixing Price Tag Confusion

partition the price in the hope that consumers will be fooled and overlook small fees altogether can only backfire. Previous work, in contrast, focused on the mistakes that people make when processing multiple prices for one transaction.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

15 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Apple Pay’s Technology Adoption Problem

When Apple introduced the iPod, it had a simple but compelling tag line for music fans: "1,000 thousand songs in your pocket." The company sold 300 million of them. On the eve of debuting its digital payment system, Apple Pay,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Technology; Retail

05 Dec 2007
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Marketing

productivity, says Professor Gail J. McGovern. In this Q&A, she discusses what executives can do to repair the split and introduces a new diagnostic tool for measuring marketing performance used in the HBS Executive Education program. Key concepts include: In many... View Details

12 Aug 2002
Op-Ed

Using Big Business to Fight Poverty

when harnessed to development work. In 1992, having come under pressure from the Green Party in Germany, DaimlerBenz (as it was then known) started looking for ways to use more renewable natural fibers in its automobiles. At the same time, the Brazilian government was... View Details

Keywords: by George C. Lodge

04 Mar 2015
What Do You Think?

Can a Laissez-Faire Approach Fix Labor Market Inequality?

to the challenge, Walmart's action raised an interesting question for Rod White. "When is it in an employer's self-interest to voluntarily increase the wages of (its) employees? Of course the classical economics answer is 'never.' Admittedly (Walmart's) will be a... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

28 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 28, 2015

Gurun, and Scott Kominers Abstract—We develop a theoretical model of, and provide the first large-sample evidence on, the behavior and impact of non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual property space. Our model shows that NPE litigation can reduce... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

26 Jan 2016
First Look

January 26, 2016

seems inevitable—a natural part of "creative destruction." But closer examination reveals a disturbing truth: companies large and small are shuttering more quickly than ever. What does it take to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 22, 2008

Business School Case 207-091 Jerzy Peters, Managing Director of Patron Capital Partners, must decide the best investment option on the development of the Odra Polish theater chain and the associated real estate. Capital Field was a View Details