Publications

13 May 2013
Blog Post

The Art of Naming a Start-up

We recently chose new names for our music startup and product. Music+1 is now Sonation, Inc. Our app, previously also called Music+1, is now sona:Cadenza. And we’ve just made a new intro video featuring the app logo with footage from the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship

24 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?

most small restaurants in smaller communities wouldn't get reviews to begin with if it weren't for the review sites, and for every eatery that suffers under the weight of a bad review there are presumably others boosted by positive reviews. Luca applauds View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

June 29, 2022
Other Article

Strategic Complexity? Using Experiments to Understand and Overcome Obfuscation

By: Michael Luca, Ginger Zhe Jin and Daniel Martin

Credit card companies must decide what product features to disclose to consumers, such as payment schedules, penalties, and fees--and also whether to present them clearly or bury them in the fine print. Firms face similar choices in settings ranging from privacy... View Details

Keywords: Obfuscation; Credit Cards; Strategic Incentives; Complexity; Agreements and Arrangements; Customers; Consumer Behavior; Financial Services Industry

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June 2024 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light

By: Jill Avery and Celine Chammas

On April 1, 2023, social media content creator and influencer Dylan Mulvaney recorded a promotional post. It featured a video of herself drinking from a can of Bud Light beer, offering a virtual toast to her followers. Alongside the video, she posted a photograph of a... View Details

Keywords: Brand Crises; Brand Management; Influencer Marketing; Boycott; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Social Media; Advertising; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

Research Summary

The Role of Suggested Pricing in Retail

Does a $100 shirt seem more valuable when its price tag shows a 50 discount off an original price of $200? Pricing information in retail settings often has three components: an original price, a percent discount, and the final price. Little empirical evidence exists... View Details

June 2015 (Revised May 2017)
Case

LOYAL3: Own What You Love™

By: Luis M. Viceira and Allison M. Ciechanover

This case features San Francisco–based financial technology startup, LOYAL3. Founded in 2008, the company seeks to disrupt the capital markets and democratize access to those markets for retail investors. By the fall of 2014, LOYAL3 had three products. In the first,... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Stocks; Strategic Planning

January 2025
Article

Reducing Prejudice with Counter-stereotypical AI

By: Erik Hermann, Julian De Freitas and Stefano Puntoni

Based on a review of relevant literature, we propose that the proliferation of AI with human-like and social features presents an unprecedented opportunity to address the underlying cognitive and affective drivers of prejudice. An approach informed by the psychology of... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; AI and Machine Learning; Interpersonal Communication; Social and Collaborative Networks

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Roberto Verganti (rverganti@hbs.edu) is in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Design Theory and Practice for the View Details

Keywords: consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products

2016
Working Paper

Towards a Prescriptive Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategic Choice, Learning, and Competition

By: Gary P. Pisano

The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage

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The field of customer experience (CX) design — which aims to ensure that customers have positive touch points with companies while buying and consuming their products and services — has grown quickly in recent years. Research has shown that memorable experiences,... View Details

"Learning Through Noticing: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment"

We consider a model of technological learning under which people "learn through noticing": they choose which input dimensions to attend to and subsequently learn about from available data. Using this model, we show how people with a great deal of experience may... View Details

August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Paktor: Designing a Dating App

By: Michael Luca, Stephanie Chan and Essie Alamsyah

Paktor is a popular mobile-based online dating app from Singapore, where a user can swipe right or left on a profile to indicate her interest in a potential match. The case is designed to explore issues related to pricing, market design, and launch strategies in the... View Details

Keywords: Mobile and Wireless Technology; Design; Price; Product Launch; Global Strategy

19 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 19

uncertainty, and the development of specialized expertise, while the benefits of greater breadth are linked to the economies of scope achieved by sharing common resources, such as advertising or production capacity, across activities.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Learning Through Noticing: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment

By: Rema Hanna, Sendhil Mullainathan and Joshua Schwartzstein

We consider a model of technological learning under which people "learn through noticing": they choose which input dimensions to attend to and subsequently learn about from available data. Using this model, we show how people with a great deal of experience may... View Details

Keywords: Perception; Behavior; Learning

February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

OpenInvest

By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Impact Investing; Investment Portfolio; Customization and Personalization; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

Working Paper

Covenant-Light Contracts and Creditor Coordination

By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina

In 2015, 70% of newly issued leveraged loans had weaker enforcement features, called covenant-light or "cov-lite"; this is nearly a three-time increase in cov-lite issuance compared to a previous peak in 2007. We evaluate whether this development can be attributed to... View Details

Keywords: Credit Cycles; Loan Contracts; Debt Covenants; Contracts; Financing and Loans; Credit; Borrowing and Debt

SSRN

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March 2022 (Revised July 2022)
Teaching Note

Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences

By: Jill Avery

Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details