Publications

04 Jun 2020
Blog Post

What MBAs can do in Defense of Black Lives

grassroots activists influence business leaders, public officials, and other decisionmakers. Educate yourself about anti-Black racism to supplement your business school education. Read essays from “The 1619 Project” in the New York Times to understand the legacy of... View Details

Howard H. Stevenson

Howard H. Stevenson is Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation Professor emeritus, former Senior Associate Dean, Director of Publishing, and Chair of the Harvard Business Publishing Company board. The Sarofim-Rock Chair was established in 1982 to provide a continuing base for... View Details

Keywords: broadcasting; communications; computer; construction; financial services; forest products; health care; high technology; industrial goods; insurance industry; investment banking industry; manufacturing; paper; professional services; real estate; service industry; software; venture capital industry

23 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Keep Employees Productive: Support Caregivers

In December 2023, Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah made headlines with a blunt company-wide email: “Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success.” The missive... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2017
Working Paper

Empowering Bureaucracy: Achieving Non-Hierarchical Control and Employee Autonomy Through Dynamic Formal Roles

By: Michael Lee

Hierarchy and formal structure are conventionally viewed as two tightly coupled dimensions of organization design. As organizations move from more hierarchical to less hierarchical authority structures, they also tend to reduce formal structure. However, organic... View Details

Keywords: Organization Design; Autonomy; Decentralization; Self-Managed Organizations; Formalization; Roles; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Management Systems

August 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences

By: Jill Avery and Rayan Nahas

Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details

28 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

The Clock Is Ticking: 3 Ways to Manage Your Time Better

and limited resources better: our time. Here’s what they said. Leslie Perlow: Consider where you work, not just when The pandemic has brought on many changes with respect to how people can use and manage their time, some of which are... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

September 1991
Case

Rethinking the Corporate Workplace: Case Managers at Mutual Benefit Life

By: Robert G. Eccles Jr.

In early 1991, a spirit of innovation and organizational change was in the air at Mutual Benefit Life, with the success of the new "case manager" program its most concrete manifestation. Using powerful computer workstations, case managers could see insurance... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Technological Innovation; Change Management; Information Technology; Insurance; Human Resources; Insurance Industry

2025
Working Paper

Enhancing Treatment Effect Prediction on Privacy-Protected Data: An Honest Post-Processing Approach

By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza

As firms increasingly rely on customer data for personalization, concerns over privacy and regulatory compliance have grown. Local Differential Privacy (LDP) offers strong individual-level protection by injecting noise into data before collection. While... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Intervention; Conditional Average Treatment Effect Estimation; Differential Privacy; Honest Estimation; Post-processing; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior; Marketing

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September 2019
Case

Shell: A Company of Opportunity?

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Emer Moloney

The Opportunity Hub was a cloud-based platform that enabled managers to market projects they were working on and associated resourcing needs as “Opportunity Owners” and employees, or “Opportunity Seekers,” to browse these statements of need and engage when they had... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Change Management; Competency and Skills; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Energy; Energy Sources; Non-Renewable Energy; Renewable Energy; Human Resources; Employees; Retention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Jobs and Positions; Job Design and Levels; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Labor; Human Capital; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Evaluation; Performance Productivity; Strategic Planning; Projects; Motivation and Incentives; Business Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks; Technology Platform; Chemical Industry; Energy Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Netherlands

January 2008 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Cognizant Technology Solutions

By: Robert G. Eccles, David Lane and Prabakar 'PK' Kothandaraman

In the highly competitive information technology outsourcing industry, Cognizant Technology Solutions has developed a strategy to differentiate itself by emphasizing building very close client relationships through its "Two-in-a-box" (TIB) model. This model is based on... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Knowledge Sharing; Resource Allocation; Competitive Advantage; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

November 2019
Case

The Genesis Lab at Novartis

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Ranjay Gulati, Patrick J. Healy and Kerry Herman

Novartis' Genesis Labs program, launched in 2016 as part of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), hosted pitch competitions where teams of NIBR scientists proposed ideas to explore that aimed to revolutionize drug discovery. The goal was to break down... View Details

Keywords: Drug Discovery; Health Care and Treatment; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Programs; Management

April 2023
Technical Note

Venture Capital Firms: What Drives Success?

By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

With the rapid growth of venture capital (“VC”) in recent decades, we might wonder: who succeeds at VC and why? This is a complicated question, as many factors come into play. VC partnerships are comprised of individual investors with varying backgrounds, experiences,... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment; Success

January 2023
Case

Proday: Calling the Right Play

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that... View Details

Keywords: Social Media; Entrepreneurship; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Product Launch; Social Marketing; Failure; Sports; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Technology Industry; United States

October 2005
Case

Kinko's

Over the decades, Kinko's had forged a deep emotional bond with consumers by easing their anxiety and helping them solve pressing document processing problems. By 2003, however, consumer research revealed that a confusing retail experience had eroded some of this good... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Customer Satisfaction; Service Industry

May 1994 (Revised January 1995)
Case

Warner Cable (A) and (B) (Condensed)

The new general manager of Warner Cable's Medford, Massachusetts complex faces a number of turnaround challenges in 1985, including service deficiencies, customer complaints, high turnover, and low employee morale. By 1988 he has turned the situation around, but some... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Style; Change Management; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; Massachusetts

February 2021
Background Note

Jobs to Be Done: A Toolbox

By: Derek C. M. van Bever, Bob Moesta, Iuliana Mogosanu, Shaye Roseman and Katie Zandbergen

The Jobs to Be Done methodology is both a theory and a practical approach for understanding customer behavior and why people make the choices they make. Many practitioners, whether they work for startups or incumbent businesses, find Jobs to Be Done useful because it... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Choices and Conditions; Knowledge Acquisition; Attitudes; Perception; Theory; Behavior; Customer Relationship Management