Publications

March 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

St. Louis: Inner-City Economic Development

By: Michael E. Porter, Anne S. Habiby and Joanne Lasala

Describes the history and challenges of the economically distressed inner city areas of St. Louis, a major U.S. metropolitan area. Profiles regional and inner city economics and describes a new effort by community leaders to develop and implement a strategy to... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Leading Change; Urban Development; Problems and Challenges; Public Administration Industry; Saint Louis

2010
Working Paper

Creating Leaders: An Ontological Model

By: Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen and Kari L. Granger

The sole objective of our ontological approach to creating leaders is to leave students actually being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression. By "natural self-expression" we mean a way of being and acting in any leadership... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Goals and Objectives; Science; Attitudes; Perspective

April 1985 (Revised September 1993)
Background Note

Hattori-Seiko and the World Watch Industry in 1980

By: Michael E. Porter and Edward J. Hoff

Focuses on the industry's development and evolution in three principal watch producing countries: Switzerland, the United States, and Japan. Based in part on two earlier cases by F.T. Knickerbocker and H.E.R. Uyterhoeven. View Details

Keywords: Industry Growth; Consumer Products Industry; Japan; Switzerland; United States

10 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 10, 2009

average in the period 1953-2005, it was particularly high in the early 1980s and negative in the early 2000s. This paper specifies and estimates a model in which the nominal term structure of interest rates is driven by five state... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

18 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 18

Second, pay disparity between managers located in different states decreases relative to that of co-located managers. Third, division productivity falls in dispersed firms, with the effect driven by managers at the low end of the wage... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

07 Feb 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: February 7

from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database, we analyze the locations of new establishments of biopharmaceutical firms in the U.S. in 1993–2005. We consider all activities in the value chain and allow location choices to vary View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Equity Bank: Challenging a Giant

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Michael Chitavi and Spencer C. N. Hagist

Equity Bank and CEO Dr. James Mwangi must find a way to advance from their hard-fought ascension to second largest bank in Kenya by toppling financial giant Safaricom. Doing so means developing a new strategy and tackling technological frontiers no institution in the... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Finance; Strategy; Information Technology; Banks and Banking; Kenya

October 2021
Article

Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry

By: Hong Luo, Jeffrey T. Macher and Michael Wahlen

We study a novel, low-cost approach to aggregating judgment from a large number of industry experts on ideas that they encounter in their normal course of business. Our context is the movie industry, in which customer appeal is difficult to predict and investment costs... View Details

Keywords: Judgment Aggregation; Quality Uncertainty; Creative Industry; Project Evaluation And Selection; Creativity; Film Entertainment; Judgments; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

August 2010 (Revised March 2012)
Case

The UCLA Medical Center: Kidney Transplantation

By: Michael E. Porter, Jennifer F Baron, Jacob Mathew Chacko and Robin Jian Tang

In 2010, organ transplantation remained among the few sets of medical conditions in the U.S. for which bundled payments were a dominant reimbursement model, and for which patient health outcomes were universally measured and reported. In 1986, UCLA Medical Center was... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Measurement and Metrics; Outcome or Result; Competitive Strategy; Integration; Health Industry; California

June 2006 (Revised December 2006)
Case

Housatonic Partners - ArchivesOne, Inc.

By: Michael J. Roberts and Nabil N. El-Hage

Describes Housatonic Partners' investment in ArchivesOne, a records management company. The original investment was made in 1998, and subsequent investments are made by Housatonic. In 2005, as the life of the investment fund is coming to an end, Housatonic must work... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Exit; Private Equity; Investment; United States

August 2024
Article

Not a One-Trick Pony: Price Impact of Rating Agency Information

By: Michael Machokoto and Anywhere Sikochi

Prior literature on the informational role of credit rating agencies has largely focused on announcements by the rating agencies regarding rating actions. We take a tangent in this paper and examine the relevance of rating agencies' other information disclosures beyond... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Investment Return; Financial Reporting

23 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 23, 2019

process of learning from experience. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55991 forthcoming Organization & Environment Assessing the Impact of CEO Activism By: Chatterji, Aaron K., and Michael W. Toffel... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

July 2019
Article

'Forward Flow': A New Measure to Quantify Free Thought and Predict Creativity

By: Kurt Gray, Stephen Anderson, Eric Evan Chen, John Michael Kelly, Michael S. Christian, John Patrick, Laura Huang, Yoed N. Kenett and Kevin Lewis

When the human mind is free to roam, its subjective experience is characterized by a continuously evolving stream of thought. Although there is a technique that captures people’s streams of free thought—free association—its utility for scientific research is undermined... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Creativity; Forecasting and Prediction

July 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Background Note

District Heating: An Overview

By: Willy Shih and Michael W. Toffel

This note provides an overview of district heating: systems in which central plants generate heat that is conveyed by steam or water through a set of insulated pipes to send heat to residential and/or commercial buildings. It describes key elements of the system (heat... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Energy Efficiency; Energy Storage; Energy Transmission; Construction; Energy; Buildings and Facilities; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Climate Change; Operations; Energy Industry; Denmark; Europe; United States

Teaching Interest

Leading Change and Organizational Renewal

By: Michael L. Tushman

Market-leading organizations habitually innovate, adjust quickly to new business conditions, and seize emerging opportunities before competitors do. They perform efficiently today while continuing to explore new sources of value for tomorrow. Such companies don't just... View Details

April 2018
Article

The Power of Voice in Stimulating Morality: Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance

By: Cait Lamberton, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Michael I. Norton

Decisions about paying taxes represent one of the most common moral quandaries faced by citizens. In the present research, we argue that taxpayer compliance can be raised by increasing “voice”: allowing taxpayers to express non-binding preferences about the way their... View Details

Keywords: Morality; Public Policy; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Taxation; Policy; Attitudes; Governance Compliance

October 2012
Article

The Gifts We Keep on Giving: Documenting and Destigmatizing the Regifting Taboo

By: Gabrielle S. Adams, Francis J. Flynn and Michael I. Norton

Five studies investigate whether the practice of "regifting"-a social taboo-is as offensive to givers as regifters assume. Participants who imagined regifting thought that the original givers would be more offended than givers reported feeling, to such an extent that... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Attitudes; Behavior; Research

15 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 15, 2008

cross-sectional and pooled data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for quinquenial censuses conducted between 1982 and 2002 support the key predictions of the model. We find that advertising agency establishments are more likely to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 1994
Case

Leadership Problems at Salomon (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Michael Santoro

Deryck Maughan, a vice chairman and co-head of investment banking at Salomon Brothers, learns that his superiors have been less than candid about their knowledge of bidding improprieties by the firm's government trading desk. He must decide what, if anything, he should... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Decision Choices and Conditions; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Crime and Corruption; Rank and Position; Financial Services Industry