Publications

2019
White Paper

Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy

By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing

Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed... View Details

Keywords: Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Background; Economic Systems; Economy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Statements

February 2015 (Revised June 2016)
Case

AltSchool: School Reimagined

By: John J-H Kim, Kyla Wilkes and Christine S. An

Max Ventilla and his team launches in 2013 AltSchool, a new network of tech-savvy independent K-8 "micro-schools." AltSchool is born out of Ventilla's frustration with the education options available for his young daughter. During his search, Ventilla comes to the... View Details

Keywords: Education Technology; School Models; Product Development; Entrepreneurship; Talent Development And Retention; Social Impact Investment; Information Technology; Business Model; Education; Business Startups; Customization and Personalization; Growth and Development Strategy; Education Industry; United States

Educators

December 2012
Article

Grand Innovation Prizes: A Theoretical, Normative, and Empirical Evaluation

By: Alan MacCormack, Fiona Murray, Scott Stern and Georgina Campbell

This paper provides a systematic examination of the use of a Grand Innovation Prize (GIP) in action—the Progressive Automotive Insurance X PRIZE—a $10 million prize for a highly efficient vehicle. Following a mechanism design approach we define three key dimensions for... View Details

Keywords: Design; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Performance; Auto Industry

Find at Harvard

08 May 2006
Research & Ideas

The Cost of Cutting in Line

the person to cut in but most wouldn't accept the money in return. (Students and women were more likely to pocket the cash.) Oberholzer-Gee took this to mean that people will allow cuts if they perceive the queue jumper has a real need to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

14 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 14, 2015

Abstract—Google Flu Trends article of November 2008 heralded a new age for big data where it is possible to leverage the vast amount of data to speak for itself, without theory or expert knowledge of the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Contagion of Cooperation in Static and Fluid Social Networks

By: Jillian J. Jordan, David G. Rand, Samuel Arbesman, James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis

Cooperation is essential for successful human societies. Thus, understanding how cooperative and selfish behaviors spread from person to person is a topic of theoretical and practical importance. Previous laboratory experiments provide clear evidence of social... View Details

Keywords: Social Contagion; Social Networks; Cooperation; Behavior; Social Media

January 23, 2023
Article

Digital Public Health Interventions at Scale: The Impact of Social Media Advertising on Beliefs and Outcomes Related to COVID Vaccines

By: Susan Athey, Kristen Grabarz, Michael Luca and Nils Wernerfelt

Public health organizations increasingly use social media advertising campaigns in pursuit of public health goals. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of about $40 million of social media advertisements that were run and experimentally tested on Facebook and... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Public Health; Vaccines; Social Media; Advertising; Power and Influence; Health Care and Treatment

01 Dec 2015
First Look

December 1, 2015

the concrete promises of applying neuroscience to consumer psychology. Building from this, we focus on using brain data to predict consumer behavior, a topic that has recently generated a lot of excitement from academics and practitioners... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How Politics Drives Business Decisions in a Polarized Nation

How politics cuts across business Written with Margarita Tsoutsoura, an associate professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis, the analysis draws from data such as executive surveys, voter registration lists, campaign... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

March 1980 (Revised February 1984)
Case

Kramer Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

The 12-year career of Mr. Bob Marsh is traced, from recruitment to termination. Data on Kramer's sales management, performance evaluation, compensation, and sales training systems are given. View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Pharmaceutical Industry

Educators

March 2008 (Revised June 2009)
Compilation

"Doer's Profile" Bill Gates (William H.) (1955 - )

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Shirley M. Spence

Profile of Bill Gates designed to facilitate a discussion of the nature of enduring success. Includes both biographical data and excerpts from autobiographical records. View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Personal Development and Career; Success; Computer Industry; Information Technology Industry

2022
Working Paper

Can a Website Bring Unemployment Down? Experimental Evidence from France

By: Aïcha Ben Dhia, Bruno Crépon, Esther Mbih, Louise Paul-Delvaux, Bertille Picard and Vincent Pons

We evaluate the impact of an online platform giving job seekers tips to improve their search and recommendations of new occupations and locations to target, based on their personal data and labor market data. Our experiment used an encouragement design and was... View Details

Keywords: Online Platform; Digital Platform; Unemployment; Encouragement Design; Job Search; Jobs and Positions; Internet and the Web; Well-being; Outcome or Result; Digital Platforms; France

Register to Read

Article

Machine Learning Approaches to Facial and Text Analysis: Discovering CEO Oral Communication Styles

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Dan Wang, Natalie A. Carlson and Tarun Khanna

We demonstrate how a novel synthesis of three methods—(1) unsupervised topic modeling of text data to generate new measures of textual variance, (2) sentiment analysis of text data, and (3) supervised ML coding of facial images with a cutting-edge convolutional neural... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Communication Style; Machine Learning; Spoken Communication; Nonverbal Communication; Personal Characteristics; Analysis; Performance

Find at Harvard

August 2007 (Revised April 2008)
Compilation

"Doer's Profile" Nelson Mandela (1918- )

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Shirley Spence

Profile of Nelson Mandela designed to facilitate a discussion of the nature of enduring success. Includes both biographical data and excerpts from autobiographical records. View Details

Keywords: Government and Politics; Leadership; Success; Personal Development and Career

16 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 16, 2018

from analytics when they haven’t declared it themselves. If marketers avoid those tactics, use data judiciously, focus on increasing trust and transparency, and offer people control over their personal data,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

How Grocery Bags Manipulate Your Mind

organic and indulgent items. Photo: iStockPhoto Looking at loyalty card data from a large grocery chain in California, Karmarkar and Bollinger tracked and analyzed 936,232 purchases by 5,987 households across two years. To assess organic... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

2021
Working Paper

Friends and Family Money: P2P Transfers and Financially Fragile Consumers

By: Tetyana Balyuk and Emily Williams

We assess the impact that real time money transfer technology has on consumer outcomes, particularly during periods of financial fragility. We do this by developing a new data set that documents use of Zelle—the most widely used P2P money transfer technology in the... View Details

Keywords: P2P Money Transfers; Real Time Payments; Fintech; Finance; Information Technology; Personal Finance; Financial Condition

SSRN

15 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

Want Your Employees to Plan Better for Retirement? Don't Do This

great success with this model by showing customers how much energy they were using compared to others living in their area. This quickly turned energy saving into a kind of friendly competition and drove great results. Sharing retirement View Details

Keywords: Re: John Beshears; Financial Services

July–August 2025
Article

How the Busiest People Find Joy

By: Leslie A. Perlow, Sari Mentser and Salvatore J Affinito

Joy, along with achievement and meaningfulness, is one of the three keys to a satisfying life. Yet it’s the missing piece for many ambitious individuals, the authors found after examining data on how nearly 2,000 professionals spend their days. Jam-packed schedules are... View Details

Keywords: Well-being