Odds - Publications - Faculty & Research

24 Feb 2021
Lessons from the Classroom

What History's Biggest Wars Teach Us About Leading in Peace

the question of what conditions are necessary to improve the odds of success, and whether and when it is worth investing in changing conditions, rather than waiting for the right conditions to emerge.” Cuban Missile Crisis (October 16-29,... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

16 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Understanding the ‘Want’ vs. ’Should’ Decision

project, conducted by the same team of Katy, Todd, and Max, analyzed the implications of want-should conflict in the context of online DVD rentals. The second project, conducted by Todd and Max, tackled the prescriptive policy question: How can we increase the View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Retail; Entertainment & Recreation

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, write. To improve the odds for entrepreneurs and leaders, they offer eight strategies. “They’re equally challenging,” McDonald says. “You have to figure out which are the most salient to you, but the... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

Portrait Project

Carlton Burrell

epidemic. It was a sanctuary for my grandparents escaping the segregated South during the Great Migration. It’s the birthplace and matchmaker of my parents. It is where blue-collar residents find their independence as they look to survive in a country where the View Details

30 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Six Steps for Making Your Threat Credible

sees you do it. Foolish? So it would seem, but your threat is now entirely credible. You can't change course even if you wanted to. It's up to your opponent to decide whether to lose the game or die. The odds are in your favor. While the... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

Web

Philanthropy - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

approaches to value creation can be deployed within the context of an overarching strategy. Although many foundations talk about "strategic" giving, much current practice is at odds with strategy. Among the common problems, foundations... View Details

25 Oct 2010
HBS Case

Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market

States is an unusually competitive and cluttered market. It is tough to succeed without a clear and sustainable point of differentiation. While successful grocery retailers are expanding internationally, the odds are long. Both... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

22 Oct 2019
Research & Ideas

Use Artificial Intelligence to Set Sales Targets That Motivate

we need to improve our profit,” he says. For example, a US industrial service company was losing 20 percent of its customers every year. Through research, its leaders realized that when customers stayed with the company for six months, their View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

cutthroat competition or totally collusive bonding. Either extreme will harm the firm's performance. These swings can occur because each of the four drives was created by evolution to improve the odds of gene survival. When any one drive... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

04 Nov 2009
What Do You Think?

What is the Role of Government Vis-à-Vis Capitalism?

economic model . The problem with this model is that we are greedy human beings." Paul Browne commented, "Capitalism as an economic ideology that confers control of productive institutions to the owners of capital is often at View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

15 Feb 2024
News

Startup Shepherds

themselves. “Our purpose is to improve the odds for any startup,” explains Sherman. The pair came to entrepreneurship via different paths. Sherman spent his first years after graduation from HBS working in media corporations, yet he had... View Details

Keywords: April White

04 Jan 2022
What Do You Think?

Firing McDonald’s Easterbrook: What Could the Board Have Done Differently?

to keep the money they received—and they often win. Situations in which a board changes its decision from firing “without cause” to “with cause” are relatively rare. The odds of winning such a case are uncertain. And it would guarantee... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2024
Book

When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse, from Ancient Athens to the Present Day

By: Archon Fung, David Moss and Odd Arne Westad

Democracy is often described in two opposite ways, as either wonderfully resilient or dangerously fragile. Curiously, both characterizations can be correct, depending on the context. When Democracy Breaks aims to deepen our understanding of what separates democratic... View Details

Keywords: Government and Politics; History; Culture; Failure

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22 Dec 2020
Blog Post

The Forward Fellowship Convinced Me That I Belong at HBS

attend Vanderbilt, and I worked odd jobs on top of that to support myself and my family. I had never taken on debt and did not know how it worked, so I had a lot of fear of the unknown. However, as I learned more about the HBS Financial... View Details

16 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

When the Internet Runs Out of IP Addresses

just numbers, and that it's odd to have to pay for a number. With prices stuck very close to zero, and demand steady and growing, economic incentives invite exhaustion. Q: What happens if nothing is done and we run out of addresses? Does... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Telecommunications

31 Jul 2023
News

Striving for Imperfection

friend Dan Lovallo, Tim Koller and others, some of whom worked with McKinsey on something called the risk-aversion tax, sometimes abbreviated as RATs. And what they showed is, even when presented with the odds of a particular investment... View Details

Keywords: Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

Research Summary

Dissertation: Is the Ideal Worker Still Real? Sources and Consequences of Men's Professional Identities

My dissertation examines the implications of men's changing lives for their work identities and for gender inequality in organizations. Current theories of workplace gender inequality hinge upon the widely-shared cultural image of an "ideal worker,"... View Details

Portrait Project

Sara Mattei Gentili

belong to was myself. It felt liberating. I embraced the things that made me stand out and those became my strengths. So now I graduate with a new mission: being unapologetically myself and showing all weird and odd little girls hiding in... View Details

Person Page

Press / Media

By: Karim R. Lakhani

Can America Invent Its Way Back?

BusinessWeek, by Michael Mandel, 12 Sept. 2008

Today, researchers are focusing on ways to make those... View Details

21 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Do TV Debates Sway Voters?

effective way to mobilize nonvoters and persuade those who are undecided.” Getting the ground game right Candidates who accept the limited benefits of TV and shift resources to in-person outreach—whether by the candidate, a proxy, or a volunteer—might improve their... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Publications