Publications

December 2022
Case

Mission Produce in 2022

By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Founded by CEO Steve Barnard in 1983, California-based Mission Produce was a leading supplier of Hass avocados with a global sourcing, marketing, and distribution network and $892 million in 2021 sales. Barnard had been influential in the global avocado trade’s... View Details

Keywords: Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; California; Peru; Guatemala; Colombia; Mexico; Chile

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

out how he or she can help (QuikTrip offers a variety of employee support programs). But if there are no real barriers and a worker's performance continues to suffer, the employee is cut loose. Improving on... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

August 2016
Article

Value-Based Breast Cancer Care: A Multidisciplinary Approach for Defining Patient-Centered Outcomes

By: Fayanju M. Oluwadamilola, Tinisha L. Mayo, Tracy E. Spinks, Seohyun Lee, Carlos H. Barcenas, Benjamin D. Smith, Sharon H. Giordano, Rosa F. Hwang, Richard A. Ehlers, Jesse C. Selber, Ronald Walters, Debu Tripathy, Kelly K. Hunt, Thomas A. Buchholz, Thomas W. Feeley and Henry M. Kuerer

Purpose. Value in healthcare—i.e., patient-centered outcomes achieved per healthcare dollar spent—can define quality and unify performance improvement goals with health outcomes of importance to patients across the entire cycle of care. We describe the process... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Improvement; Health Industry

Spring 2012
Article

The Need for Sector-Specific Materiality and Sustainability Reporting Standards

By: Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim

Even though the supply of sustainability information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Reporting; Standard Setting; Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Accounting; Standards; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Disclosure; Competitive Advantage; Capital Markets; Accounting Industry; United States

Research Summary

Current Research Projects

1. Freedom and Openness in Scientific Research

This is a joint project with Philippe Aghion, Scott Stern, and Fiona Murray. It analyzes the effects of shifts in the availability of genetically modified mice for follow-on research. ... View Details

January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Rumo: Infrastructure for a Healthier Economy

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Mariana Cal, Ruth Costas and Natalie Kindred

Brazilian logistics company Rumo operated 13,500 km in railway networks, port terminals, and inland transshipment terminals, connecting major Brazilian ports to the agriculture hubs of Mato Grosso and São Paulo state. Controlled by Cosan, Brazil's leading sugar and... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Customer Relationship Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Logistics; Rail Transportation; Value Creation; Rail Industry; Transportation Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Latin America; Brazil

May 2015
Article

What Are We Meeting For? The Consequences of Private Meetings with Investors

By: David H. Solomon and Eugene F. Soltes

Regulation Fair Disclosure was passed in 2000 in response to the concern that certain investors were gaining selective access to privileged firm information. In spite of the passage of this regulation, some investors continue to meet privately with executives. Using a... View Details

Keywords: Conferences; Decision Making; Investment

2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

SSRN

November 10, 2020
Article

Value-Based Health Care in Four Different Health Care Systems

By: Mjåset Christer, Umar Ikram, Navraj S. Nagra and Thomas W. Feeley

Health care systems across the world have increasingly embraced a value-based health care (VBHC) agenda. They do so for different reasons, using different foundations, and variations on the tools and tactics to effect their strategic goals. The role of governments,... View Details

Keywords: Value-based Health Care; Comparative Analysis; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Global Range; Performance Improvement

November 2001
Case

Korea-Tender

By: Das Narayandas and Kate Attea

Korea-Tender is a closed-bidding auction company trying to break even and must select the best opportunity to increase membership and revenue. It can continue its current model with heavy advertising, try to modify its costs, or develop an additional business model... View Details

Keywords: Auctions; Business Model; Advertising; Business Startups; Problems and Challenges; Marketing Strategy; Revenue; Growth and Development Strategy

11 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

Strategy Execution and the Balanced Scorecard

execution system valuable? A: One challenge or pitfall is that few companies align their operational improvement activities to strategic priorities. Many companies today are practicing Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, or other View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

18 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

beginning. We have founded a nonprofit think tank, Innosight Institute, to promote the ideas from our work to the stakeholders in the system so that we can help create meaningful change. We also are employing the think tank to continue... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

Summer, 2018
Article

Innovation, Reallocation and Growth

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Nicholas Bloom and William R. Kerr

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the... View Details

Keywords: Entry; Growth; Industrial Policy; Innovation; R＆D; Reallocation; Selection; Market Entry and Exit; Growth and Development; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development; Performance Productivity

October 1991 (Revised September 1998)
Case

Maxwell Appliance Controls

By: Robert S. Kaplan

A profitable manufacturing division of a large company is looking for new ways to identify sources of productivity improvements. Led by its senior finance officer, an activity-based cost system is developed to identify activities performed for its highly varied product... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Management Teams; Quality; Performance Improvement; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Production; Manufacturing Industry

24 Jun 2015
HBS Case

Upgrading School with a Startup Mentality

prioritizing customer satisfaction, and using technology to gather classroom data to create continuous improvement and personalization. In short, Ventilla is combining the mission of delivering high-quality,... View Details

Keywords: Re: John Jong-Hyun Kim; Education

03 Aug 2016
What Do You Think?

How Can We Hold the “Leadership Industry” Accountable?

Why Does the Leadership Industry Continue to Thrive? The unstated assumption underlying most of responses to this month’s column is that the leadership industry has done little or nothing to improve... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Education

2017
Working Paper

Innovation, Reallocation and Growth

By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Nicholas Bloom and William R. Kerr

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the... View Details

Keywords: Entry; Growth; Industrial Policy; Innovation; R＆D; Reallocation; Selection; Business Ventures; Resource Allocation; Performance Productivity; Policy; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development; United States

May 2021 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

THE YES: Reimagining the Future of E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

THE YES, a multi-brand shopping app launched in May 2020 offered a new type of buying experience for women’s fashion, driven by a sophisticated algorithm that used data science and machine learning to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on... View Details

Keywords: Data; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; AI; AI Algorithms; AI Creativity; Fashion; Retail; Retail Analytics; E-Commerce Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Big Data; Preference Elicitation; Predictive Analytics; App Development; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Advertising; Mobile App; Mobile Marketing; Apparel; Online Advertising; Referral Rewards; Referrals; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Creativity; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; AI and Machine Learning; E-commerce; Digital Platforms; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

July 2009 (Revised December 2009)
Case

Echoing Green

By: Julie Battilana, Thomas J. DeLong and James Weber

This case presents the leadership challenges that Cheryl Dorsey, the president of Echoing Green, faces in early 2009. Echoing Green is a fellowship program that seeks to improve society by identifying and supporting social entrepreneurs who launch organizations to... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Financial Crisis; Social Entrepreneurship; Leadership Style; Organizational Structure; Personal Development and Career; Social Enterprise