Publications

2021
Working Paper

Housing Consumption and the Cost of Remote Work

By: Christopher Stanton and Pratyush Tiwari

This paper estimates housing choice differences between households with and without remote workers. Prior to the pandemic, the expenditure share on housing was more than seven percent higher for remote households compared to similar non-remote households in the same... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Geographic Mobility; Housing; Cost; Geographic Location; Income

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September 2013
Case

United Rentals (A)

By: Jay W. Lorsch, Kathleen Durante and Emily McTague

In December 1997 United Rentals (URI) went public on the NYSE. Ten years later, during the peak of the economic meltdown, the company's performance was in decline. United Rentals had experienced its share of problems in the prior years and was still struggling to... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Board Dynamics; Accounting Fraud; Governance; Board Committees; Merger; Corporate Governance; Construction Industry; United States

12 Dec 2019
Research & Ideas

How to Turn Down the Boil on Group Conflict

it was Democrats who were proposing the change to make the commission fairer, even though a Democrat was currently in the governor’s office and stood to lose advantage through the change. In that case, Democrats and Republicans alike... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

2022
Working Paper

Racial Diversity in Private Capital Fundraising

By: Johan Cassel, Josh Lerner and Emmanuel Yimfor

Black- and Hispanic-owned funds control a very modest share of assets in the private capital industry. We find that the sensitivity of follow-on fundraising to fund performance is greater for minority-owned groups, particularly for underperforming groups. We... View Details

Keywords: Buyouts; Capital Formation; Minorities; Venture Capital; Minority-owned Businesses; Race; Diversity; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry

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February 2005 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Phase Zero: Introducing New Services at IDEO (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Laura Feldman

Focuses on whether world-renowned product design firm IDEO's new customer service fits with the firm's strategic position and organization capabilities. Over the course of IDEO's 13-year history, an increasing share of revenues are a result of "Phase 0"... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Service Operations; Product Design; Infrastructure; Customer Focus and Relationships; Innovation and Invention; Service Industry; Boston; United States

11 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Sexual Harassment: What Employers Should Do Now

shared #MeToo stories of abuse after Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual assault in October 2017. “With the Weinstein story, a dam broke,” says Colleen Ammerman, director of Harvard Business School’s Gender... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

January 2017
Case

T. Rowe Price and the Dell Inc. MBO (A)

By: Lena G. Goldberg

T. Rowe Price’s mutual funds, separate accounts, institutional investors, and retirement accounts were, in the aggregate, Dell Inc.’s third largest shareholder in 2013 when Dell announced a management-led buyout, or MBO, structured as a merger. In considering whether... View Details

Keywords: Fiduciary Duties; Management Buy-out; Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Financial Services Industry; Computer Industry; Delaware

August 2024
Case

Circle: Reinventing the Future of Money

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

In early 2024, Circle Internet Financial's leadership team gathered to discuss the company's strategic path as it prepared for an IPO. Founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire, Circle had emerged as a pioneer in digital finance through its USD Coin (USDC), a regulated... View Details

Keywords: Currency; Governance Compliance; Initial Public Offering; Competition; Financial Services Industry

20 Sep 2016
First Look

September 20, 2016

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51619 forthcoming American Economic Journal: Applied Economics Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment By: Edelman, Benjamin G., Michael Luca, and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2023
Case

Twitter: The Freedom to Speak Freely and Be Heard

By: Randolph B. Cohen, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Mel Martin

In April 2022, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that he would be interested in purchasing the social media site Twitter for $44 billion. With more than 100 million twitter followers, Musk had historically leveraged the site to engage with the customers of his... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Acquisition; Social Media; Power and Influence; Technology Industry; Communications Industry; Public Relations Industry; United States

September–October 2017
Article

Managing Our Hub Economy: Strategy, Ethics, and Network Competition in the Age of Digital Superpowers

By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

A small number of digital superpowers—Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others—have become “hub firms” because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Strategic Planning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

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October 2001 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Herman Miller(B): Creating Innovation Streams

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Stacy McManus

In 1997, Mike Volkema faced the difficulty of attempting to revitalize a once dynamic organization. Volkema wondered how he could incorporate advances made within subsidiaries, such as Miller SQA's business model innovation, into the company as a whole while also... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Product Design; Product Development; Product; Supply Chain Management; Business Model; Service Delivery; Customer Value and Value Chain; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry

15 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 15, 2018

revenue. The shift from public to private priorities in space is especially significant because a widely shared goal among commercial space's leaders is the achievement of a large-scale, mainly... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (A)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research institution within NASA, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has played a large role in many space and planetary explorations, particularly to the planet Mars. As a project-based... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Aerospace Industry; United States

29 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Firsthand Experience and the Subsequent Role of Reflected Knowledge in Cultivating Trust in Global Collaboration

Keywords: by Mark Mortensen & Tsedal Neeley

December 2016 (Revised April 2017)
Case

BASF: Co-Creating Innovation (A)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Dessain

In 2016, BASF's chief executive officer and chief technology officer reflected on the co-creation innovation program started almost 18 months ago as part of BASF's 150th anniversary celebration. Five hundred project ideas had been created, of which 100 had already... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Knowledge Sharing; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Chemicals; Environmental Sustainability; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Consumer Products Industry; Europe

October 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Eastern Bank: Innovating Through Eastern Labs

By: Karen Mills, Dennis Campbell and Aaron Mukerjee

Eastern Bank is a 200-year-old New England mutual bank with a community focus. Eastern specializes in small business lending, having made strategic investments to become the top SBA lender in New England in the midst of the Great Recession, when other banks were... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Management

March 2025
Case

YouTube: Bidding for NFL Sunday Ticket

By: Anita Elberse and Crystal Yao

In December 2022, Erin Teague, a senior director and the global head of sports, movies and shows at YouTube, technology giant Alphabet Inc.’s video- sharing platform, received the news that Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Alphabet and its subsidiary... View Details

Keywords: General Management; Entertainment; Media; Sports; Marketing; Management; Business Strategy; Bids and Bidding; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry