Publications

July 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Background Note

Hiring Successful Professionals: One Process--Multiple Goals

By: Heidi K. Gardner

The best hiring practices help professional firms attract successful employees, equip newcomers with critical support networks, increase the firm's diversity, and enhance its reputation. This Note delineates how leading firms manage these multiple objectives throughout... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Goals and Objectives; Selection and Staffing; Talent and Talent Management; Management Practices and Processes; Forecasting and Prediction; Employees; Diversity Characteristics; Service Industry

Teaching Interest

Private Equity and Venture Capital (Executive Education)

By: Josh Lerner

As equity markets appear to strengthen, interest rates remain low, and asset values look attractive, private equity firms are uniquely positioned to pursue new opportunities. This View Details

2015
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Issa Baluch and the African Agribusiness Knowledge and Innovation Leadership Initiative (AKILI)

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Renee Vuillaume

A veteran of the freight forwarding industry, Issa Baluch wanted to transform the education space in Africa by introducing hands-on practical teaching in agriculture and agribusiness. In the summer of 2015 his vision of a practical learning institute for African... View Details

Research Summary

(formerly Leonard-Barton) Creating and Exploiting Knowledge-Based Assets

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

For the past decade, Dorothy Leonard's research has focused on how companies develop and exploit strategically advantageous knowledge assets. In her 1995 book Wellsprings of Knowledge (HBS Press), she identified and described in depth, activities that create and... View Details

28 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

Forget Cash. Here Are Better Ways to Motivate Employees

motivators that will entice greater effort and loyalty out of workers. Turns out, using cash as a carrot isn’t always the best answer, according to new research by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ashley V. Whillans. More than... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

July 2024
Technical Note

Intellectual Property in Tough Tech Ventures

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson, Russ Wilcox and Mel Martin

This note explains the crucial role of intellectual property rights (IPR), particularly patents, in the success of tough tech ventures (TTVs). It outlines the patent system's mechanics, emphasizing utility patents and their requirements for novelty, non-obviousness,... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property

19 Sep 2017
Working Paper Summaries

An Invitation to Market Design

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Keywords: by Scott Duke Kominers, Alexander Teytelboym, and Vincent P. Crawford

November 2018 (Revised December 2020)
Technical Note

Initial Coin Offerings in 2018

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Ramana Nanda, Robert F. White and Nathaniel Schwalb

In 2018, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were an emerging fundraising method for blockchain-based projects. As the ecosystem grew, there were many open questions on regulation, pricing, and even which projects were a good fit for blockchain. However, there was already... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Initial Coin Offerings; ICO; Decentralization; Networks; Protocols; Entrepreneurship; Project Finance

Article

Putting the 'Relationship' Back into CRM

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

Many managers think that the way to capture value through relationship marketing is to focus on the 'good' customers and get rid of the 'bad' ones. But there is a lot more to best practice relationship management than maximizing revenues on individual customers and... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; CRM; Customer Relationship Management; Brand Building; Brand Management; Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry

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07 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

4+2 = Sustained Business Success

work with. Promote cooperation and the exchange of information across the whole company. Put your best people closest to the action. Establish systems for the seamless sharing of knowledge. Secondary Management View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce & Bruce Roberson

October 1993 (Revised September 1996)
Case

BANC ONE - 1993

By: Hugo Uyterhoeven and Myra M. Hart

From a small local bank, Banc One has grown to one of the largest and most profitable banks in the United States under the leadership of its CEO, John B. McCoy. It has an impressive track record of improving the performance of its acquisitions while retaining the... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Acquisition; Organizational Culture; Policy; Adaptation; Business Growth and Maturation; Strategy; Performance Improvement; Industry Structures; Banking Industry; United States

23 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

Gourville and Ofek teamed up with London Business School professor Marco Bertini (HBS DBA '06) to suss out the best practices for branding next-generation products. "For managers, this is not a trivial... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Research Summary

Creating Trust in International Joint Ventures in Asia: An Empirical Comparative Study

In the wake of the currently ongoing financial crisis in Asia, we anticipate a rapid increase of international joint ventures between Asian and Western firms. However, so far, the sources of success in international joint ventures have not been well understood. Why do... View Details

August 2014
Technical Note

Conjoint Analysis: A Do it Yourself Guide

By: Elie Ofek and Olivier Toubia

Conjoint Analysis has become one of the most commonly used quantitative market research methods. It has been successfully employed across a wide variety of industries to quantify consumer preferences for products and services. This technical note is intended to provide... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Conjoint Analysis; Consumer Preferences; Segmentation; Product Development; Demand Measurement; Demand and Consumers; Analysis; Markets

Research Summary

Learning Organizations

David A. Garvin is studying how companies pursue improvement and change through efforts to stimulate organizational learning. He has found the following activities to be common in learning organizations: intelligence gathering; experimentation; learning from... View Details

2006
Book

Service Productivity Management: Improving Service Performance Using Data Envelopment Analysis

By: H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Here is an in-depth guide to the most powerful available benchmarking technique for improving service organization performance—Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The book outlines DEA as a benchmarking technique, identifies high cost service units, isolates specific... View Details

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis; Economics; Operations; Mathematical Methods

May 2011
Article

The Hollow Science

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The financial meltdown made clear that the executives of many major financial institutions were operating with inadequate or distorted information about the values and risks of their firms' assets. It's fair to say that business scholars bear some... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Crisis; Financial Management; Information; Knowledge Acquisition; Risk Management; Practice

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