Publications

11 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 11, 2008

conditions under which a dominant design may be achieved, the underlying architecture of the era of incremental change and the dynamics associated with discontinuities. Testing a Purportedly More Learnable Auction Mechanism... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

cognitive ability in five areas: general science, arithmetic reasoning, math knowledge, mechanical comprehension, and assembling objects. They were asked to guess their total number of correct answers, as well as how their performance... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

September 2020
Case

Minerva 2004: Discovery

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

After nearly five years in operation, Doctor Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Corporation (Minerva), was reflecting on the company’s next steps. In a few short years, she and her small team had managed to develop a nanoparticle process for... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Biotechnology Industry

Educators

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2016
Working Paper

Saving More in Groups: Field Experimental Evidence from Chile

By: Felipe Kast, Stephan Meier and Dina Pomeranz

We test the impact of a peer group savings program on precautionary savings through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microcredit clients. The first experiment finds that the Peer Group Treatment, which combines public goal setting, monitoring in the group,... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Decision Making; Interest Rates; Planning; Performance Effectiveness; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Social Enterprise; Global Range; Chile

2024
Working Paper

Pitfalls of Demographic Forecasts of U.S. Elections

By: Richard Calvo, Vincent Pons and Jesse M. Shapiro

Many observers have forecast large partisan shifts in the US electorate based on demographic trends. Such forecasts are appealing because demographic trends are often predictable even over long horizons. We backtest demographic forecasts using data on US elections... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Voting; Political Elections; Trends; Forecasting and Prediction; Demographics

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05 Oct 2018
Blog Post

The Reflective Leader

Les Williams (MBA 2005) is the Partner and Chief Revenue Officer for Risk Cooperative. Les completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia in Mechanical Engineering. As an MBA student, Les was co-president of the Student... View Details

Article

Organizational Ambidexterity in Action: How Managers Explore and Exploit

By: Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman

Dynamic capabilities have been proposed as a useful way to understand how organizations are able to adapt to changes in technology and markets. Organizational ambidexterity, the ability of senior managers to seize opportunities through the orchestration and integration... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Management Practices and Processes; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Opportunities

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October 2016
Article

Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance and Resource Allocation in Science

By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Eva Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani and Christoph Riedl

Selecting among alternative innovative projects is a core management task in all innovating organizations. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of frontier scientific research projects. We argue that the "intellectual distance" between the knowledge embodied in... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge; Innovation; Novelty; Evaluation; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Innovation and Management; Science-Based Business; Experience and Expertise

SSRN

06 Aug 2018
Blog Post

Parks Management is People Management

not yet becoming clear. This guided my decision to intern with the National Park Service (NPS). My objective was to test the portability of MBA principles to practical and timely resources challenges. The great news is that, half way... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

08 Jan 2007
What Do You Think?

Neuro Economics: Science or Science Fiction?

made on the right side or the left side of the brain. But this will never lead to deciding by a mechanical means, nor in predicting a decision outcome." There was even concern expressed about the... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

Article

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black: Distancing Response to Ethical Dissonance

By: R. Barkan, S. Ayal, F. Gino and D. Ariely

Six studies demonstrate the "pot calling the kettle black" phenomenon whereby people are guilty of the very fault they identify in others. Recalling an undeniable ethical failure, people experience ethical dissonance between their moral values and their behavioral... View Details

Keywords: Ethical Dissonance; Cognitive Dissonance; Moral Judgment; Impression Management; Unethical Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Moral Sensibility; Cognition and Thinking; Research; Behavior; Judgments

Research Summary

Overview

Phil's work aims to identify the drivers of performance for healthcare organizations and providers, and the mechanisms by which this performance can change over time. In complex healthcare settings, the optimal choice of treatment can be highly ambiguous. As a... View Details

Keywords: Primary Care; Medical Decision-making; Learning By Doing; Healthcare Organizations; Healthcare Operations; Health Economics

October 15, 2021
Article

Virtuous Victims

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki

How do people perceive the moral character of victims? We find, across a range of transgressions, that people frequently see victims of wrongdoing as more moral than non-victims who have behaved identically. Across 15 experiments (total n = 9,355), we document this... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Restorative Justice; Punishment; Compensation; Person Perception; Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Perception

20 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, February 20, 2018

priors/worldviews, or relevant features of a problem not being top of mind. Most research studying such losses does not empirically distinguish between these mechanisms. Instead, we show that most highly cited papers in this area presume one View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

17 Apr 2025
HBS Seminar

Maria De-Arteaga, McCombs School of Business, UT Austin

Rakesh Khurana

Rakesh Khurana is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School. He is also Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard College, and the Danoff Dean of Harvard College.

Professor... View Details

Keywords: executive search

September 2004
Article

Trust in Agency

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

Existing models of the principal-agent relationship assume the agent works only under extrinsic incentives. However, many observed agency contracts take the form of a fixed payment. For such contracts to succeed, the principal must trust the agent to work in the... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Agency Theory; Relationships; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Contracts; Business Model; Emotions; Forecasting and Prediction; Ethics; Standards; Risk and Uncertainty

Research Summary

Overview

By: Ayelet Israeli

Professor Israeli utilizes econometric methods and field experiments to study data driven decision making in marketing context. Her research focuses on data-driven marketing, with an emphasis on how businesses can leverage their own data, customer data, and market data... View Details

Keywords: Channel Management; Pricing; Pricing Policies; Online Marketing; E-commerce; Analytics; Econometrics; Field Experiments; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; Value Of Data

August 2018
Article

The Effect of Graphic Warnings on Sugary-Drink Purchasing

By: Grant Donnelly, Laura Y. Zatz, Daniel Svirsky and Leslie John

Governments have proposed text warning labels to decrease consumption of sugary drinks – a contributor to chronic diseases like diabetes. However, they may be less effective than more evocative, graphic warning labels. We field-tested the effectiveness of graphic... View Details

Keywords: Policy Making; Preferences; Food; Health; Policy; Information; Labels; Consumer Behavior; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness