Publications

2014
Working Paper

Entrepreneurship as Experimentation

By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Entrepreneurship research is on the rise but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

Article

Entrepreneurship as Experimentation

By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Entrepreneurship research is on the rise, but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed, and unknowable until an investment is made. At a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention

Article

Product Positioning in a Two-Dimensional Vertical Differentiation Model: The Role of Quality Costs

By: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek

We study a duopoly model where consumers are heterogeneous with respect to their willingness to pay for two product characteristics and marginal costs are increasing with the quality level chosen on each attribute. We show that while firms seek to manage competition... View Details

Keywords: Duopoly and Oligopoly; Customers; Quality; Product Positioning; Competition; Management; Cost; Product

2004
Article

Sources of Structural Inequality in Managerial Labor Markets

By: Rakesh Khurana and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

This article proposes two mechanisms that allow actors to obtain unearned advantages in labor markets. The ﬁrst mechanism is consistent with collusive closure arguments. However, it questions the assumption that those who seek to beneﬁt from collusive closure will... View Details

Keywords: Management; Labor; Markets

December 2005 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Migros

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Vincent Marie Dessain and Anders Sjoman

In October 2005, Urs Riedener, head of marketing at Swiss retailer Migros, is contemplating the company's competitive position. Primarily a retailer for foods and near-foods products, the cooperative Migros, with close to 600 retail outlets in Switzerland (but only... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Corporate Governance; Corporate Strategy; Cooperative Ownership; Supply Chain Management; Product Marketing; Environmental Sustainability; Social Enterprise; Business or Company Management; Marketing Strategy; Retail Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Switzerland

February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Yahoo! in China (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Daniel Baer

In 2007 Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, was lambasted by U.S. Representative Tom Lantos, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, for Yahoo's role in the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese journalist and democracy advocate Shi Tao. The case describes the... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Governance Compliance; Laws and Statutes; Rights; Business and Government Relations; Internet; Information Technology Industry; China; United States

05 Apr 2016
First Look

April 5, 2016

skills to work, fashion a company environment that meets your own needs, and profit directly from your success. But finding the right business to buy and closing the deal isn't always easy. In the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business, we... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthlorne

February 2023
Case

Grupo Sancor Seguros: Facing the Digital Transformation of Insurance in Argentina (A)

By: Jorge Tamayo and Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago

In 2020, Alejandro Simón, CEO of Sancor Seguros Group, a nearly 75-year-old cooperative that had become Argentina’s insurance leader, had to decide about the Group’s digital transformation strategy. The Group’s values and history needed to be considered during the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Transformation; Organizational Culture; Cooperative Ownership; Strategy; Business Strategy; Adaptation; Technology Adoption; Insurance Industry; Latin America; South America; Argentina

30 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 30, 2007

process so that creators produce tangible artifacts regularly; (6) realize that there will always be some conflict between an organization's creators and its stewards; (7) avoid overly prescriptive control mechanisms that may alienate... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 Mar 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Risky Trust: How Multi-entity Teams Develop Trust in a High Risk Endeavor

Keywords: by Faaiza Rashid & Amy C. Edmondson

November 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

JOE & THE JUICE Crosses the Atlantic (with video link)

By: Ethan Rouen and Suraj Srinivasan

As JOE & THE JUICE began its rapid U.S. expansion in 2017, its founder and CEO, Kaspar Basse, fretted about how he could keep his employees feeling like they were doing meaningful work. Founded in 2001, JOE & THE JUICE had always focused on making healthy juices,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employees; Retention; Expansion; Growth Management

July 2020
Article

Recovering the Logic of Double Effect for Business: Intentions, Proportionality, and Impermissible Harms

By: Rosemarie Monge and Nien-hê Hsieh

Business actors often act in ways that may harm other parties. While the law aims to restrict harmful behavior and to provide remedies, legal systems do not anticipate all contingencies and legal regulations are not always well enforced. This article argues that the... View Details

Keywords: Double Effect; Intention; Exploitation; Risk; Practical Ethics; Competition; Risk and Uncertainty; Ethics

30 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

Why Anger Makes a Wrongly Accused Person Look Guilty

relying on a person’s facial expressions, try and get the data and see if the claim has merit before you decide on guilt." “That’s not always easy to do,” admits John, but the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Article

Analyzing Scrip Systems

By: Kris Johnson, David Simchi-Levi and Peng Sun

Scrip systems provide a nonmonetary trade economy for exchange of resources. We model a scrip system as a stochastic game and study system design issues on selection rules to match potential trade partners over time. We show the optimality of one particular rule in... View Details

Keywords: ＂Repeated Games＂; Stochastic Trust Game; Dynamic Program; P2P Lending; Scrip Systems; Artificial Currency; Non-monetary Trade Economies; Marketplace Matching; Currency; Operations; Game Theory