Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(7,396)
- Faculty Publications (3,388)
- October 2024
- Case
Reed Group and Succession in a Family Business: An Impossible Job to Fill?
By: Lauren H. Cohen and Tonia Labruyere
James Reed had taken over Reed Group, the recruitment and career services company his father had founded and built, in 1994. He was now reflecting on succession planning and other challenges that lay ahead: with no obvious choice among his family members, he needed to... View Details
- October 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
AI and Brand Management: Promises and Perils
By: Julian De Freitas and Elie Ofek
As AI gains traction across industries, companies anticipate that AI will revolutionize both backend processes and customer-facing interactions—with brands eager to leverage AI for tailored marketing materials and automated consumer engagements. Yet, despite a dramatic... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Lessons from an App Update at Replika AI: Identity Discontinuity in Human-AI Relationships
By: Julian De Freitas, Noah Castelo, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp and Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp
As consumers increasingly interact with AI applications specialized for social relationships, what
is the nature and depth of these relationships among actual users, and can company actions
influence these dynamics? We find that active users of the US-based AI... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
Boards Need a New Approach to Technology
By: Tarun Khanna, Mary C. Beckerle and Nabil Y. Sakkab
The boards of too many publicly traded companies are downright timid when considering matters involving science and technology. More often than not, they focus on security and digitization—a defensive posture that fails to consider the bigger opportunities emerging... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI
By: Nicholas G. Otis, Solène Delecourt, Katelynn Cranney and Rembrand Koning
Generative AI has the potential to transform productivity and reduce inequality, but only if adopted broadly. In this paper, we show that recently identified gender gaps in generative AI use are nearly universal. Synthesizing data from 18 studies covering more than... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Strategic Decision Making at Platform Transitions: The Case of Nokia (2010-2011).
By: Timo O. Vuori and Michael Tushman
We studied Nokia’s decision to adopt the Windows platform in 2011 to induce new theory on the emotional dynamics of incumbent firms’ strategic decision making at platform transitions. We find that platform companies’ entry into an established industry activates a... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
The Crowdless Future? Generative AI and Creative Problem-Solving
The rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) open up attractive opportunities for creative problem-solving through human-guided AI partnerships. To explore this potential, we initiated a crowdsourcing challenge focused on sustainable, circular economy... View Details
- September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
- Supplement
Wemade: (Re)Establishing Trust in Blockchain Games (B)
By: Jung Koo Kang, Charles C.Y. Wang, David Allen and Kwangmoon So
This supplement reviews Wemade's efforts to rebuild confidence in its business after its WEMIX coin was delisted from the major South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges on December 8, 2022. It outlines Wemade's strategy of transparency, which included partnerships with... View Details
- September 2024
- Background Note
Copyright and Fair Use
By: David B. Yoffie
The U.S. Copyright Office defines a copyright as “a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression.” Two core principles of copyright are originality and fixation. A work is... View Details
- September 2024
- Exercise
Finding Your 'Jagged Frontier': A Generative AI Exercise
By: Mitchell Weiss
In 2023 a set of scholars set out to study the effect of artificial intelligence (AI) on the quality and productivity of knowledge workers—in this specific instance, management consultants. They wanted to know across a range of tasks in a workflow, which, if any, would... View Details
- September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Epic: The Future of Health Information Technology
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Brian L. Walker
How should the founder and leadership team of a health IT company with more than 45 years of market leadership prepare for the future, while navigating founder transitions and industry changes? Founded by Judy Faulkner in the late 1970s, Epic pioneered electronic... View Details
Keywords: Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Private Ownership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Information Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry
- September 23, 2024
- Article
AI Wants to Make You Less Lonely. Does It Work?
- September 2024
- Case
Google Quantum AI
By: David B. Yoffie, Michael A. Cusumano and Matt Higgins
Quantum computing may be the most important nascent computing technology of the 21st century. It has the potential to impact industries ranging from drug discovery to cybersecurity. Google's Quantum AI is one of the leaders in quantum research. This case explores the... View Details
- September 2024
- Exercise
Assessing the Value of Unifying and De-Duplicating Customer Data
By: Elie Ofek and Hema Yoganarasimhan
This exercise provides an opportunity for students to gain hands on experience with assessing the value of unifying various customer databases that a firm may have (e.g., across the different brands it markets) and of properly identifying customers to avoid duplication... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Eat App: Building and Monetizing an End-to-End Dining Experience Solution
By: Elie Ofek and Ahmed Dahawy
Founded in 2015 in Bahrain, Eat App was an up-and-coming player in the global restaurant management software business. In early 2024, having shifted to a product-led growth strategy, the company’s co-founders faced a host of decisions that could greatly impact their... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Empirical Guidance: Data Processing and Analysis with Applications in Stata, R, and Python
By: Melissa Ouellet and Michael W. Toffel
This paper describes a range of best practices to compile and analyze datasets, and includes some examples in Stata, R, and Python. It is meant to serve as a reference for those getting started in econometrics, and especially those seeking to conduct data analyses in... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Navigating Digital Transformation at Carrefour
By: Sunil Gupta and Emilie Billaud
In 2023, Elodie Perthuisot, Carrefour’s Executive Director for e-commerce and digital transformation, met with CEO Alexandre Bompard to discuss strategies for the company’s digital initiatives. Carrefour, a global retail giant with over 14,300 stores across 40... View Details
Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Talent and Talent Management; Decisions; Digital Strategy; Technology Adoption; Leading Change; Goals and Objectives; Resource Allocation; Digital Marketing; E-commerce; Operations; Logistics; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Strategic Planning; Alliances; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Advantage; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe
- September 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Exercise
Building an AI First Snack Company: A Hands-on Generative AI Exercise
By: Iavor I. Bojinov
Although the term 'Generative AI' (GenAI) is widely recognized, its practical application in daily workflows has yet to be understood. This exercise introduces students to GenAI tools, demonstrating how they can be seamlessly integrated into professional work practices... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
How AI Can Power Brand Management
By: Julian De Freitas and Elie Ofek
Marketers have begun experimenting with AI to improve their brand-management efforts. But unlike other marketing tasks, brand management involves more than just repeatedly executing one specialized function. Long considered the exclusive domain of creative talent, it... View Details
- 2024
- Article
Learning Under Random Distributional Shifts
By: Kirk Bansak, Elisabeth Paulson and Dominik Rothenhäusler
Algorithmic assignment of refugees and asylum seekers to locations within host
countries has gained attention in recent years, with implementations in the U.S.
and Switzerland. These approaches use data on past arrivals to generate machine
learning models that can... View Details