Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,866)
- Faculty Publications (1,036)
- March 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Perch
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Stacy Straaberg and Julia Kelley
In May 2021, Perch CEO Chris Bell needed to decide whether his e-commerce aggregator company, which bought and scaled Amazon Marketplace brands, should acquire up to three acquisition targets. The prospective acquisitions, Web Deals Direct, HomeCo, and Future Brands,... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Business Strategy; Integration; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; California; Asia; Philippines
- March 2022
- Article
Sensitivity Analysis of Agent-based Models: A New Protocol
By: Emanuele Borgonovo, Marco Pangallo, Jan Rivkin, Leonardo Rizzo and Nicolaj Siggelkow
Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly used in the management sciences. Though useful, ABMs are often critiqued: it is hard to discern why they produce the results they do and whether other assumptions would yield similar results. To help researchers address such... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Jaypee Infratech and the Indian Bankruptcy Code
By: Kristin Mugford, William Vrattos and Radhika Kak
In 2016, India passed a new bankruptcy law (IBC) to counter a brewing bank crisis and increased corporate distress. Homebuilder Jaypee Infratech, one of India largest distressed companies (the “dirty dozen”) began restructuring under the IBC in 2017. Two years later,... View Details
Keywords: Restructuring; Decisions; Judgments; Voting; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Public Sector; Asset Pricing; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Credit; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Debt Securities; Bonds; Investment Return; Price; Government Legislation; Laws and Statutes; Bids and Bidding; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; India; Delhi
- February 2022
- Module Note
Behavioral Economics and Choice Architecture
By: John Beshears
This module note for instructors describes a module on the design of choice architecture solutions to organizational problems. View Details
- February 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Ample Hills Creamery
By: Tom Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Tom Quinn
Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive flavors and clever marketing, husband-and-wife founders Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna built a premium, artisanal dessert empire of 16 retail... View Details
- February 2022
- Technical Note
Ethical Analysis: Fairness
By: Nien-hê Hsieh
Concerns about fairness can arise across a wide range of contexts. They include the treatment of others, how much things cost, how much workers are paid, the outcome of a decision, and how we assign benefits and burdens across individuals. What counts as fair in a... View Details
- February 9, 2022
- Article
What's the Optimal Workplace for Your Organization?
By: Maria P. Roche and Andy Wu
More than two years in the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are struggling with how to reimagine their workspaces for their strategic needs. Too often, leaders push the decision down the road when, in fact, taking decisive action now can pay off later. But how do you... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Transformation of Self Employment
By: Innessa Colaiacovo, Margaret Dalton, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
Over the past half-century, while self-employment has consistently accounted for around one in ten of the United States workforce, its composition has changed. Since 1970, industries with high startup capital requirements have declined from 53% of self-employment to... View Details
- January 2022
- Technical Note
Introduction to Capital Structure Analytics
By: Samuel Antill and Ted Berk
This technical note provides an overview of key analytical approaches that are useful in assessing the appropriateness of a firm’s capital structure and funding plan. This note introduces basic quantitative tools and metrics that are commonly used as inputs to this... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms
By: Willy C. Shih and Shu Lin
Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized battery electric vehicle (BEV). He had led... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Decision Making; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Auto Industry; China; Sweden
- 2022
- Conference Presentation
Organizational Competition: A Catalyst for Workplace Diversity and Desires for Uniqueness
By: Samantha N. Smith, Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios and Katherine L. Milkman
Competition is prevalent in organizations. For example, people often compete against their colleagues for status and recognition in the workplace or for opportunities for advancement. Workers also compete against others to get hired into organizations in the first... View Details
- December 2021
- Case
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Assessing Risk in Carlos Ghosn's International Escape
By: Eugene F. Soltes, Grace Liu and Muneeb Ahmed
In 2018, automotive tycoon Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan on financial misreporting charges, followed later by charges of improper payments and misappropriation of funds. Over a year later, still awaiting trial, Ghosn organized his escape from house arrest in Tokyo... View Details
- Article
Megastudies Improve the Impact of Applied Behavioural Science
By: Katherine L. Milkman, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Pepi Pandiloski, Yeji Park, Aneesh Rai, Max Bazerman, John Beshears, Lauri Bonacorsi, Colin Camerer, Edward Chang, Gretchen Chapman, Robert Cialdini, Hengchen Dai, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach, James J. Gross, Samantha Horn, Alexa Hubbard, Steven J. Jones, Dean Karlan, Tim Kautz, Erika Kirgios, Joowon Klusowski, Ariella Kristal, Rahul Ladhania, Jens Ludwig, George Loewenstein, Barbara Mellers, Sendhil Mullainathan, Silvia Saccardo, Jann Spiess, Gaurav Suri, Joachim H. Talloen, Jamie Taxer, Yaacov Trope, Lyle Ungar, Kevin G. Volpp, Ashley V. Whillans, Jonathan Zinman and Angela L. Duckworth
Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens’ decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Katerra (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate... View Details
- Article
A Prescriptive Analytics Framework for Optimal Policy Deployment Using Heterogeneous Treatment Effects
By: Edward McFowland III, Sandeep Gangarapu, Ravi Bapna and Tianshu Sun
We define a prescriptive analytics framework that addresses the needs of a constrained decision-maker facing, ex ante, unknown costs and benefits of multiple policy levers. The framework is general in nature and can be deployed in any utility maximizing context, public... View Details
- Article
Drive Innovation with Better Decision-Making
By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Taran Swan
Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today’s discovery-driven innovation processes involve... View Details
- Article
Financial Shame Spirals: How Shame Intensifies Financial Hardship
By: Joe J. Gladstone, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Adam Eric Greenberg and Adam D. Galinsky
Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110)—including data from customer bank account histories and... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Cognitive Uncertainty in Intertemporal Choice
By: Benjamin Enke and Thomas Graeber
This paper studies the relevance of cognitive uncertainty – subjective uncertainty over one's utility-maximizing action – for understanding and predicting intertemporal choice. The main idea is that when people are cognitively noisy, such as when a decision is complex,... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Engine No. 1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil
By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski
ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Supplement
PittaRosso: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Pricing and Promotion
By: Ayelet Israeli and Fabrizio Fantini
PittaRosso, a traditional Italian shoe retailer, is implementing an AI system to provide pricing and promotion recommendations. The system allows them to implement changes that would affect both the top of funnel and bottom of funnel activities for the company: once... View Details
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Pricing; Pricing Algorithm; Pricing Decisions; Pricing Strategy; Pricing Structure; Promotion; Promotions; Online Marketing; Data-driven Decision-making; Data-driven Management; Retail; Retail Analytics; Price; Advertising Campaigns; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Digital Marketing; Budgets and Budgeting; Marketing Strategy; Marketing; Transformation; Decision Making; Retail Industry; Italy