Publications

January 2025
Case

Hebbia: Redefining Productivity for Knowledge Workers Using AI

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Minoshka Narayan

In early 2025, George Sivulka, founder and CEO of Hebbia, reflected on the company’s rapid ascent as a pioneer in GenAI-powered productivity tools for knowledge workers. With its proprietary technology, Hebbia had redefined information retrieval and analysis and earned... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Customer Relationship Management; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Service Delivery; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)

2022
Article

Pills in a World of Activism and ESG

By: Guhan Subramanian and Caley Petrucci

Easterbrook and Fischel’s The Economic Structure of Corporate Law advances their now famous passivity thesis, which posits that managers should remain passive in the face of an unsolicited tender offer for the company’s shares. Consistent with the broader... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Governance Controls; Business and Shareholder Relations

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2021
Book

The Future of Executive Development

By: Mihnea C Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven by digital disruption and a widening gap between the skills that participants and their organizations demand and those provided by their executive programs. This work delves into the... View Details

Keywords: Executive Education; Leadership Development; Management Skills; Education Industry

May 2021
Case

Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and Olivia Hull

Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Survey Research; Performance Analysis; Entrepreneurship; Performance; Analysis; Business Startups; Failure; Surveys

SSRN

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December 2018
Supplement

The Global-Local Tension: Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao Leading with 'International Values and Local Roots' (B)

By: Tsedal Neeley

Vittorio Colao, CEO of telecommunication giant Vodafone, must respond to reports of disturbing accounting practices at two of Vodafone’s operating companies. In one case, €60 million have been misreported due to a series of failures to check manual accounting... View Details

Keywords: GLOBAL-LOCAL; Global Identity; Local Identity; Accounting Discrepency; Globalization; Leadership; Trust; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizations; Identity; Local Range; Global Range; Values and Beliefs; Accounting Audits

March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
Supplement

Sandlands Vineyards

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Greg Saldutte

Approximately 80% of the wineries in the US breakeven or lose money. An even greater percentage lose money on an economic basis (i.e., after a charge for the cost of equity). Tegan Passalacqua is a successful, young, Californian winemaker who specializes in making... View Details

June 2002 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Life, Death, and Property Rights: The Pharmaceutical Industry Faces AIDS in Africa

By: Debora L. Spar

In the final years of the 20th century, the world was hit by a plague of epidemic proportions--AIDS, a life-threatening disease that remained stubbornly immune to any cure or vaccine. In the developed nations of the West, AIDS was slowly brought under control through a... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Health Pandemics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Pharmaceutical Industry; Africa

September 2001
Background Note

Note on Application of the Antitrust Laws to the New Economy: An Analysis of United States v. Microsoft Corporation

Analyzes the 1991 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the seminal New Economy antitrust case United States vs. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3rd 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), which arose out of Microsoft's efforts to promote Internet Explorer... View Details

Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Software; Intellectual Property; Monopoly; Laws and Statutes; Information Technology Industry; District of Columbia

Aptiv's board must decide whether a joint venture with an auto maker is the right next step in the company's efforts to develop and commercialize a production-ready autonomous driving system. While many commentators believed that Aptiv's self-driving technologies... View Details

March 2018
Teaching Note

Making Target the Target: Boycotts and Corporate Political Activity (A) and (B)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Victor Wu

Through the challenges facing Target, the case examines the ways in which corporations can become involved in political and legislative debates and processes, ranging from campaign contributions to lobbying. In 2016, Target CEO Brian Cornell must determine how to... View Details

27 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?

with the media. It is in a bit of a slump in the United States right now due to the corporate financial reporting scandals, which have focused attention on CEOs with the ability to get things done right in... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

08 Mar 2021
In Practice

COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace. What Should Companies Do Now?

A year ago, COVID-19 forced many companies to send employees home—often with a laptop and a prayer. Now, with COVID cases subsiding and vaccinations rising, the prospect of returning to old office routines appears more possible. But will employees want to flock back to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Web

A New Vision – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

actuality—creating, in effect, a new vocabulary of human motives. Confronted with the chaos and human suffering of the Depression, even the most avowed scientific scholars like Roethlisberger and his colleagues felt a moral imperative to identify what the View Details

Web

Research Computing Services

centralized inbox research@hbs.edu . Please include as much detail as possible with your inquiry (screenshots, programming code, output, errors) so that we can send it to the right team member. You can also reach out to individual members... View Details

08 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 8, 2008

(forthcoming) Abstract In large U.S. corporations, founding families are the only blockholders whose control rights on average exceed their cash flow rights. We analyze how they achieve this wedge, and at what cost. Indirect ownership... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

18 Jul 2023
News

The First Five Years: Brooke Biederman (MBA 2019)

saw two street musicians playing their instruments while reclined on benches in Central Park. Into my head popped The Apathetic Busker. It went right into the pinned Snippets note on my iPhone. I think along the dimension of “what if”... View Details

Keywords: Robert Bochnak

October 2021
Article

Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach

By: Nicolas Padilla and Eva Ascarza

The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details

Keywords: Customer Management; Targeting; Deep Exponential Families; Probabilistic Machine Learning; Cold Start Problem; Customer Relationship Management; Programs; Consumer Behavior; Analysis