Learning By Doing - Publications - Faculty & Research

28 Nov 2018
HBS Case

On Target: Rethinking the Retail Website

quickly. “If you just keep experimenting, people [in the company] will say, when do the sales come in? You don’t have that much time to keep trying,” Datar says. “The only solution is to learn fast, take... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail

03 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Succeed With Your New Boss

good defense, not making mistakes that damage the business. Help in finding ways to take the business to a new level. Living By The Golden Rule Do unto others as you would have them View Details

Keywords: by Michael Watkins

11 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Building a Better Board

has been a tremendous shift to the better over the past 15 years” By the time he retired in 2002, the board-serving landscape had changed considerably. These days, serving on a few boards can comprise almost a full-time job. While... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

26 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

Lipstick Tips: How Influencers Are Making Over Beauty Marketing

then you’ll read an interview where she says she always uses a $1,000 Guerlain cream. A celebrity putting their name on something isn’t really enough to draw me in by itself.” POLL Do you consider influencer... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Consumer Products; Beauty & Cosmetics

24 Jul 2018
Op-Ed

4 Ways Managers Can Exercise Their 'Agency' to Change the World

must strive to help find solutions. It’s the managers who have learned to exercise their “agency” at every level of a company who will be in the best position to do their job and achieve great things for... View Details

Keywords: by George Serafeim

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Information Dispersion and Auction Prices

Keywords: by Pai-Ling Yin; Technology; Web Services

18 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

What Is an "Essential" Purchase for a Low-Income Family?

Do lower-income families need and deserve access to fewer things than everyone else? As a society, we seem to think so, revealing a "grim double standard," finds a study published this month, Inequality in Socially Permissible... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

28 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

Billions of Entrepreneurs in China and India

villages, small towns, and major cities, often with a sizable amount of investment or involvement by local government authorities. It is hard to find any reasonably sized Chinese company in which government authorities View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

05 Jun 2013
Op-Ed

Corporate Leaders Need to Step Up on Climate Change

Green initiatives are ubiquitous these days, implemented with zeal at companies like Dupont, IBM, Walmart, and Walt Disney. The programs being rolled out—lighting retrofits, zero-waste factories, and carpool incentives—save money and provide a green glow. Most large... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler

02 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Companies Choreograph Earnings Calls to Hide Bad News

executives a question. That's the procedure that HBS Associate Professor Lauren H. Cohen followed to find out more about the odd dealings he'd observed at a company that was the subject of one of his case studies. But he wasn't given the opportunity to ask a question,... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services

21 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

The Geography of Corporate Giving

about needs and generate peer pressure for giving. And different locales do seem to have developed different conceptions of what is appropriate activity in this realm. In Silicon Valley, it is well known that corporate social action is... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

02 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Good Deeds Invite Bad Publicity

Do companies with reputations for acting in socially responsible ways receive public goodwill when unpleasant news hits? The question of how much (or even if) corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies benefit companies beyond the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy

05 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles and Working Papers 2008

an overview of the literature on both areas, and identifies opportunities for creating more effective and useful research. By Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman. 2. Peer Effects and Entrepreneurship How do... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Value Maximization and Stakeholder Theory

we measure better versus worse? Even more simply, How do we keep score? "At the economy wide or social level," he continues, "the issue is the following: If we could dictate the criterion or objective function to be... View Details

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen

21 Mar 2019
HBS Case

The Ferrari Way

competitors, including Porsche and Lamborghini, responded by adding cutting-edge technologies, increasing production, and venturing into untraditional models, such as (gasp!) sport utility vehicles. Ferrari so far has remained true to its... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

management," says Cespedes, a senior lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management unit at Harvard Business School. "But far fewer confront a basic fact: Companies typically spend much more money and hire many more people, annually, in their sales function than... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

21 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

The $15 Billion Question: Have Loot Boxes Turned Video Gaming into Gambling?

worries do not apply for the vast majority of the players, they add. The results suggest that companies generate revenue by exploiting behavioral biases of whales, leading them to overspend on loot boxes.... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Video Game; Media & Broadcasting

10 Feb 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Land Institutions and Chinese Political Economy: Institutional Complementarities and Macroeconomic Management

Keywords: by Meg Rithmire; Public Administration; Real Estate; Financial Services

05 Nov 2014
What Do You Think?

Are We Entering an Era of Neuromanagement?

Summing Up: Where Do We Draw the Line on the Use of Technology in Hiring Practices? The idea of using brain scans in hiring, while it generated limited enthusiasm among respondents to this month's column, nevertheless was rejected View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

18 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

It’s Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works

these findings with managers she says there's a relief among many to learn that all that communicating does work—that they aren't spinning their wheels during the workday. "People are like, 'Oh, my gosh, there is a name to what I do.... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

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