Publications

25 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 25

Sloan Management Review (forthcoming) Abstract Many people today in the information technology world and in corporate boardrooms are talking about "big data." Many believe that, for companies that get it right, big data will be... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

28 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Eyes Shut: The Consequences of Not Noticing

Harvard Business School. "Marla, my spouse, would see all kinds of things going on that I would simply miss. Why? Perhaps this was due to my tendency to focusing, and in my case, narrowly." In his forthcoming book The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman; Retail

December 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Ebony Magazine

By: Steven Rogers and Derrick Jackson

For nearly 75 years, the Johnson Publishing Company has been the most successful African American magazine publisher. Its flagship Ebony magazine was an iconic coffee table fixture for decades in black households of all classes, making founder John H. Johnson... View Details

August 5, 2025
Article

Data-driven Equation Discovery Reveals Nonlinear Reinforcement Learning in Humans

By: Kyle J. LaFollette, Janni Yuval, Roey Schurr, David Melnikoff and Amit Goldenberg

Computational models of reinforcement learning (RL) have significantly contributed to our understanding of human behavior and decision-making. Traditional RL models, however, often adopt a linear approach to updating reward expectations, potentially oversimplifying the... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Behavior; Learning; Motivation and Incentives; Mathematical Methods

July 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

AdMob (A)

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Samuel Cohen and Nithya Vaduganathan

AdMob's CEO is deciding between international expansion and increasing the number of publishers to strengthen the company's advantage in the mobile advertising industry. AdMob displayed advertising on global devices, powered 6,000 websites and 1,000 applications, and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Advertising Industry

10 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Celebrating 'The Men and Women of the Corporation' 40 Years Later

Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s Men and Women of the Corporation, published 41 years ago this year, has inspired and informed a generation of scholars studying gender, status, and power. The book is full of insights... View Details

Keywords: by Robin J. Ely

March 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Demand Media

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Google search had helped Demand Media grow to be a $1.9 billion online publisher. Then, social media and smartphone apps began to change the way people navigated the Internet. How should Demand Media respond? The business ran on a radically new model in which a stable... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Publishing; Consumer Behavior; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Publishing Industry

07 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Electronic Health Records Were Supposed to Cut Medical Costs. They Haven't.

annoyed, and it distracts them from dealing with the patient.” The study, published in the February 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at five types of visits: primary care visits, ER visits resulting in a... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Health

21 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 21, 2018

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54887 forthcoming Production and Operations Management The Operational Value of Social Media Information By: Cui, Ruomeng, Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno, and Dennis J. Zhang... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2003
Casebook

Professional Services: Text and Cases

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Ashish Nanda

DeLong and Nanda's Professional Services: Text and Cases is the first casebook to be published on the management of professional service firms (law firms, architecture, financial services, consulting). It includes a comprehensive selection of case studies that... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Management; Cases

Find at Harvard

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Huang examines the micro-foundations of entrepreneurship: the individual-level decision-making processes that influence entrepreneurs’ ability to acquire resources that they need, yet lack, especially financial capital. Deploying a variety of methods from... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

I am an ethnographer and field researcher studying how people experience and interpret their work and cultural contexts, as well as how this shapes inequality and organizational outcomes like normative control. I specialize in utilizing in-depth, inductive field... View Details

Keywords: Qualitative Research; Ethnography; Corporate Culture; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Theory; Working Conditions; Consulting Industry

01 Nov 2016
First Look

First Look - November 1, 2016

outside directors, board tenure and size, and public information available to outside directors. Moreover, boards allocate directors in ways to alleviate information segregation through multi-committee... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2008
Working Paper

Agency and Institutions: A Review of Institutional Entrepreneurship

By: Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca and Eva Boxenbaum

This paper analyzes the literature that has been published on institutional entrepreneurship since Paul DiMaggio introduced the notion in 1988. Based on a systematic selection and analysis of articles, the paper outlines an emerging consensus on the definition and... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Body of Literature; Research

Read Now

13 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 13

(category demand expansion or market share stealing). To help brand managers make informed marketing mix decisions, it is essential that marketing mix models appropriately measure the different effects of marketing instruments. Discrete... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2020
Working Paper

Digitization and the Demand for Physical Works: Evidence from the Google Books Project

By: Abhishek Nagaraj and Imke Reimers

The digital era promised to deliver a centralized repository of all pre-existing knowledge through mass digitization. However, concerns about cannibalizing demand for physical works have led publishers and authors to block the realization of this vision. We investigate... View Details

Keywords: Digitization; Copyright; Books

SSRN

February 2022 (Revised September 2022)
Case

InstaDeep: AI Innovation Born in Africa (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Esel Çekin

Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.].... View Details

Keywords: AI; Artificial Intelligence; Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business Subsidiaries; Brands and Branding; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Africa

18 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

Enterprising Women—a History

of peak industrial or business upheavals, notably the mid-nineteenth century explosion within the textile industry and growing industrialization; the development of the national railroad system and the telegraph from 1880-1920; and the more recent View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard

2007
Working Paper

Irving Fisher, Economic Forecasting, and the Myth of the Business Cycle

By: Walter A. Friedman

A premier economist of the twentieth century and a founder of neoclassical thought, Irving Fisher was also an active participant in the field of economic forecasting. Fisher made theoretical contributions to the understanding of economic fluctuations, popularized the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economics; Business Cycles; Business History; Newspapers; Personal Development and Career