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- October 2016
- Article
Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity
By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant
Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development
By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas
Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven on one side by the proliferation of a new technological, cultural, and economic landscape commonly referred to as “digital disruption” and on the other by a widening gap between the... View Details
- 2016
- Book
Innovation Equity: Assessing and Managing the Monetary Value of New Products and Services
By: Elie Ofek, Eitan Muller and Barak Libai
This book bridges the gap between what academics know, and what innovation stakeholders—from managers, to investors, to analysts, to consumers—need to know about how new products and services are expected to perform in the marketplace. The book develops a compelling... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Technology Diffusion; New Products; Customer Lifetime Value; Monetization Strategy; Social Influence; Innovation Adoption; Forecasting Demand; Commercialization; Marketing Strategy; Practice; Customer Value and Value Chain; Research; Innovation and Management; Technology Adoption; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Development
- August 2016 (Revised July 2017)
- Background Note
Brand Portfolio Strategy and Brand Architecture
By: Jill Avery
While companies choose to brand their products and services in many different ways, there are some central tenets that help define an optimal brand portfolio and associated brand architecture. Brand portfolio strategy involves the design, deployment, and management of... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests
Research has shown that women skip more questions than men on multiple-choice tests with penalties for wrong answers. We propose and test five policy changes aimed at eliminating this source of gender bias in test scores. Our data show that simply removing the penalty... View Details
- Article
Beyond Beta-Delta: The Emerging Economics of Personal Plans
By: John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman and Joshua Schwartzstein
People make personal plans regarding whether, when, where, and how to undertake certain actions. We discuss three questions related to personal plans. First, what are the effects of plans on behavior? Second, when are plans formed? Third, how do plans deviate from... View Details
- February 2016
- Article
After The Break-Up: The Relational and Reputational Consequences of Withdrawals from Venture Capital Syndicates
By: Pavel Zhelyazkov and Ranjay Gulati
Traditional research has long treated reputation as an egocentric attribute, typically described as an intangible asset directly shaped by the focal actor's track record. We argue, however, that reputation is dyadic: that an actor can have different reputations with... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Do External Labor Market Job Switches Affect the Gender Compensation Gap?
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Eric Lin
This paper investigates how external mobility influences the gender compensation gap for job switching executives. Using proprietary data for 2,034 executive placements from a global search firm, we find job switching narrows the gender gap by 45%, from 11% to 6%. We... View Details
- Article
Transition to Clean Technology
By: Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Douglas Hanley and William R. Kerr
We develop a microeconomic model of endogenous growth where clean and dirty technologies compete in production and innovation, in the sense that research can be directed to either clean or dirty technologies. If dirty technologies are more advanced to start with, the... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, 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
- September 2015 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Gap Inc.: Refashioning Performance Management
By: Joshua Margolis, Paul McKinnon and Michael Norris
In 2014, clothing retailer Gap Inc. rolled out a new performance management process for headquarters staff that did away with a traditional rating and ranking system. The new process involved informal monthly meetings between managers and their reports, and it more... View Details
- Article
The Payoff of Pay-for-Success
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Lisa Chase
Pay-for-success contracts also known as social impact bonds, have been widely touted as a clever way to fill the funding gap plaguing social programs by attracting a tranche of the trillions of dollars in private return-seeking capital. This article takes an in-depth... View Details
- June 2015 (Revised February 2016)
- Case
Team Rubicon: Bridging the Gap from Startup to National Organization
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Dan Nidess
Team Rubicon, a military veteran volunteer disaster relief organization, has experienced significant success in attracting attention and support in its first four years of operation. The challenges of managing the volunteer base, the cost of responding to disasters,... View Details
- Article
Does Management Matter in Schools?
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden,... View Details
Keywords: Management; Education; Business Strategy; Education Industry; Germany; Sweden; India; Canada; Italy; Brazil; United Kingdom; United States
- January 2015
- Background Note
Note on Economic Inequality (2015)
By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia
For over half a century, most of the world's economies have enjoyed steady growth and prosperity. However, beginning in the 1980s, and continuing essentially unabated to the present, the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in developed countries has widened,... View Details
- 2014
- Report
Managing the Talent Pipeline: A New Approach to Closing the Skills Gap
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Robert G. Sheets and Jason A. Tyszko
- December 2014
- Article
Rethink What You 'Know' about High-Achieving Women
By: Robin Ely, Pamela Stone and Colleen Ammerman
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Business School's MBA program, the authors, who have spent more than 20 years studying professional women, set out to learn what HBS graduates had to say about work and family and how their... View Details
- Article
Getting the Most Out of Giving: Concretely Framing a Prosocial Goal Maximizes Happiness
By: Melanie Rudd, Jennifer Aaker and Michael I. Norton
Across six field and laboratory experiments, participants assigned a more concretely-framed prosocial goal (e.g., making someone smile or increasing recycling) felt happier and reported creating greater personal happiness after performing a goal-directed act of... View Details
- Article
How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay
By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton
Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different... View Details
- August 2014
- Article
The New Empirical Economics of Management
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen
Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details