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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,353)
- People (22)
- News (637)
- Research (1,019)
- Events (32)
- Multimedia (17)
- Faculty Publications (520)
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games
By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Julian Runge
One of the most crucial aspects and significant levers that gaming companies possess in designing
digital games is setting the level of difficulty, which essentially regulates the user’s ability to
progress within the game. This aspect is particularly significant in... View Details
Keywords: Freemium; Retention/churn; Field Experiment; Field Experiments; Gaming; Gaming Industry; Mobile App; Mobile App Industry; Monetization; Monetization Strategy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Customers; Retention; Product Design; Strategy
Ascarza, Eva, Oded Netzer, and Julian Runge. "Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-062, November 2020. (Revised December 2023.)
- Research Summary
The Unexpected Effects of Workplace Transparency
Workplace transparency provides a foundation for learning and control, and therefore for satisfaction and productivity. Yet my research shows that an obsession with transparency-enhancing tools and structures can backfire, producing the unintended consequences of... View Details
- February 2013
- Article
Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field
By: Katie Baca-Motes, Amber Brown, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth A. Keenan and Leif D. Nelson
Influencing behavior change is an ongoing challenge in psychology, economics, and consumer behavior research. Building on previous work on commitment, self-signaling, and the principle of consistency, a large, intensive field experiment (N = 2,416) examined the effect... View Details
Baca-Motes, Katie, Amber Brown, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth A. Keenan, and Leif D. Nelson. "Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field." Journal of Consumer Research 39, no. 5 (February 2013): 1070–1084.
- June 2021
- Article
Engineering Serendipity: When Does Knowledge Sharing Lead to Knowledge Production?
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate how knowledge similarity between two individuals is systematically related to the likelihood that a serendipitous encounter results in knowledge production. We conduct a natural field experiment at a medical research symposium, where we exogenously... View Details
Keywords: Cognitive Similarity; Innovation; Knowledge Production; Natural Field Experiment; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Relationships
Lane, Jacqueline N., Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, Eva C. Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Engineering Serendipity: When Does Knowledge Sharing Lead to Knowledge Production?" Strategic Management Journal 42, no. 6 (June 2021).
- September 2015 (Revised March 2025)
- Technical Note
FIELD Global Capstone: Developing Customer Empathy
By: Jill Avery
The Design Thinking process begins with empathizing with potential customers. Empathizing, being aware of, interpreting, and understanding the thoughts of others, as well as being able to vicariously experience them oneself, requires the careful and deliberate study of... View Details
Keywords: Market Research; Design Thinking; Customer Behavior; Ethnography; Interviews; Surveys; A/B Testing; Experimentation; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers
Avery, Jill. "FIELD Global Capstone: Developing Customer Empathy." Harvard Business School Technical Note 316-082, September 2015. (Revised March 2025.)
- August 2021
- Article
Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya
By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri
Voter mobilization campaigns face trade-offs in young democracies. In a large-scale experiment implemented in 2013 with the Kenyan Electoral Commission (IEBC), text messages intended to mobilize voters boosted participation but also decreased trust in electoral... View Details
Keywords: Political Participation; Electoral Institutions; Field Experiment; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Trust
Marx, Benjamin, Vincent Pons, and Tavneet Suri. "Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya." Economic Journal 131, no. 638 (August 2021): 2585–2612.
- 2017
- Working Paper
Seeking to Belong: How the Words of Internal and External Beneficiaries Influence Performance
By: Paul Green, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats
In this paper, we examine how connecting to beneficiaries of one’s work increases performance and argue that beneficiaries internal to an organization (i.e., one’s own colleagues) can serve as an important source of motivation, even in jobs that—on the surface—may seem... View Details
Keywords: Prosocial Motivation; Belongingness; Motivation; Job Design; Field Experiment; Motivation and Incentives; Strategy; Job Design and Levels
Green, Paul, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats. "Seeking to Belong: How the Words of Internal and External Beneficiaries Influence Performance." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 17-073, February 2017.
- 26 May 2015
- Research & Ideas
Corporate Field Researchers Share Tricks of the Trade
The term "academic research" can conjure images of scientists conducting experiments in a basement laboratory, or of tweed-clad professors poring through old theories to develop new ones. But let's not forget about View Details
Keywords: by Carmen Nobel
- May 2017
- Article
Behavioral Processes in Long-Lag Interventions
By: Dale T. Miller, Jennifer E. Dannals and Julian Zlatev
We argue that psychologists who conduct experiments with long lags between the manipulation and the outcome measure should pay more attention to behavioral processes that intervene between the manipulation and the outcome measure. Neglect of such processes, we contend,... View Details
Keywords: Field Experiments; Interventions; Behavioral Mediation; Theories Of Change; Longitudinal Studies; Behavior; Research; Change; Theory
Miller, Dale T., Jennifer E. Dannals, and Julian Zlatev. "Behavioral Processes in Long-Lag Interventions." Perspectives on Psychological Science 12, no. 3 (May 2017): 454–467.
- September 2016
- Article
When 3+1>4: Gift Structure and Reciprocity in the Field
By: Duncan S. Gilchrist, Michael Luca and Deepak Malhotra
Do higher wages elicit reciprocity and lead to increased productivity? In a field experiment with 266 employees, we find that paying higher wages, per se, does not have a discernible effect on productivity (in a context with no future employment opportunities).... View Details
Gilchrist, Duncan S., Michael Luca, and Deepak Malhotra. "When 3+1>4: Gift Structure and Reciprocity in the Field." Management Science 62, no. 9 (September 2016): 2639–2650.
- 25 Jun 2014
- Lessons from the Classroom
FIELD Trip: Conquering the Gap Between Knowing and Doing
years, MacCormack has led FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development), a hands-on experiential learning program that has arguably revolutionized education at HBS more than any development... View Details
- June 2023
- Article
The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information
By: Zoë Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
The limited diffusion of salary information has implications for labor markets, such as wage discrimination policies and collective bargaining. Access to salary information is believed to be limited and unequal, but there is little direct evidence on the sources of... View Details
Keywords: Search Costs; Privacy; Norms; Compensation; Financial Industry; Field Experiment; Knowledge Dissemination; Equality and Inequality; Gender; Compensation and Benefits; Societal Protocols
Cullen, Zoë, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information." Art. 104890. Journal of Public Economics 222 (June 2023).
- 2018
- Article
Prior Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance
By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning
We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that... View Details
Keywords: Field Experiment; Peer Effects; Office Space; Knowledge Spillovers; Accelerators; Entrepreneurship; Knowledge Sharing; Performance; Technology Industry; India
Hasan, Sharique, and Rembrand Koning. "Prior Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance." Strategic Management Journal 40, no. 9 (September 2019): 1394–1416.
- Article
Productivity Orientation and the Consumption of Collectable Experiences
By: Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz
This research examines why consumers desire unusual and novel consumption experiences and voluntarily choose leisure activities, vacations, and celebrations that are predicted to be less pleasurable. For example, consumers sometimes choose to stay at freezing ice... View Details
Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Innovation and Invention; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Performance Productivity
Keinan, Anat, and Ran Kivetz. "Productivity Orientation and the Consumption of Collectable Experiences." Journal of Consumer Research 37, no. 6 (April 2011). (Winner, 2011 Ferber Award. Finalist, 2014 Best Article Award for a paper published in JCR in 2011.)
- Spring 2016
- Article
Has Social Science Taken Over Electoral Campaigns and Should We Regret It?
By: Vincent Pons
Pons, Vincent. "Has Social Science Taken Over Electoral Campaigns and Should We Regret It?" French Politics, Culture and Society 34, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 34–47.
- November 2014
- Case
Napalm: From Soldiers Field to Trang Bang
By: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins
Napalm is one of the most destructive weapons ever to be invented. Yet, at its original inception it was nothing more than a technical challenge, and it was never intended to be used in indiscriminate antipersonnel warfare. The pathway of its development by a Harvard... View Details
Keywords: Moral Sensibility; War; Chemicals; Research and Development; Chemical Industry; Viet Nam; Cambridge; United States
Nicholas, Tom, and Jonas Peter Akins. "Napalm: From Soldiers Field to Trang Bang." Harvard Business School Case 815-060, November 2014.
- February 2015
- Article
'Open' Disclosure of Innovations, Incentives and Follow-on Reuse: Theory on Processes of Cumulative Innovation and a Field Experiment in Computational Biology
By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Most of society's innovation systems―academic science, the patent system, open source, etc.―are "open" in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of... View Details
Keywords: Open Innovation; Cumulative Innovation; Incentives; Search; Disclosure And Access; Knowledge Sharing; Motivation and Incentives; Collaborative Innovation and Invention
Boudreau, Kevin J., and Karim R. Lakhani. "'Open' Disclosure of Innovations, Incentives and Follow-on Reuse: Theory on Processes of Cumulative Innovation and a Field Experiment in Computational Biology." Research Policy 44, no. 1 (February 2015): 4–19.
- 16 Oct 2008
- Working Paper Summaries
Making the Gambler’s Fallacy Disappear: The Role of Experience
Keywords: by Gregory M. Barron & Stephen Leider
- May–June 2019
- Article
U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks
By: Monic Sun, Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu
We explore how people balance their needs to belong and to be different from their friends by studying their choices of a virtual-house wall color on a leading Chinese social-networking site. The setting enables us to randomize both the popular color and the adoption... View Details
Keywords: Conformity; Normative Social Influence; Social Networks; Field Experiment; Social and Collaborative Networks; Behavior; Attitudes; Social Media
Sun, Monic, Michael Zhang, and Feng Zhu. "U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks." Marketing Science 38, no. 3 (May–June 2019): 461–480.