Publications

December 2014 (Revised August 2024)
Case

HomeAway: Organizing the Vacation Rental Industry

By: Rory McDonald, Feng Zhu and Cheng Gao

In less than 10 years, cofounders Brian Sharples and Carl Shepherd had transformed HomeAway from just another Internet startup into the world's leading vacation-rental marketplace—a global online platform that links customers seeking vacation-home rentals to the... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Innovation; Technology; Acquisitions; Operations Management; Digital Platforms; Acquisition; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Disruption; Accommodations Industry

28 Apr 2011
News

Harvard Business School Holds 15th Annual Business Plan Contest

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

of experimentation. Taking all these factors into account, a startup can create dozens of ads within just a few days, and learn quickly and cheaply what is most effective to attract suppliers. Uber, for instance, made extensive use of View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

21 May 2014
HBS Seminar

Robert Kraut, Carnegie Mellon

October 2024
Case

Reed Group and Succession in a Family Business: An Impossible Job to Fill?

By: Lauren H. Cohen and Tonia Labruyere

James Reed had taken over Reed Group, the recruitment and career services company his father had founded and built, in 1994. He was now reflecting on succession planning and other challenges that lay ahead: with no obvious choice among his family members, he needed to... View Details

Keywords: Charity; Succession Planning; Family Business; Values and Beliefs; Management Succession; Mission and Purpose; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Family and Family Relationships; Recruitment; AI and Machine Learning; Employment Industry; United Kingdom; London

January 2021
Article

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ryan Allen and Michael G. Endres

Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used for exploratory inductive or abductive research, or for post-hoc analysis of regression results to detect... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Supervised Machine Learning; Induction; Abduction; Exploratory Data Analysis; Pattern Discovery; Decision Trees; Random Forests; Neural Networks; ROC Curve; Confusion Matrix; Partial Dependence Plots; AI and Machine Learning

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January 2020 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines

Article

The Functional Alibi

By: Anat Keinan, Ran Kivetz and Oded Netzer

Spending money on hedonic luxuries often seems wasteful, irrational, and even immoral. We propose that adding a small utilitarian feature to a luxury product can serve as a functional alibi, justifying the indulgent purchase and reducing indulgence guilt. We... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Product Marketing

2013
Chapter

The Most Successful CEOs Come from Within

By: Joseph L. Bower

The financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession caused a crisis of public confidence in business and American-style capitalism, with its focus on maximizing shareholder value. Corporate leaders understood that reform was needed and that they needed to commit... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Succession; Business and Community Relations; Management Teams

Web

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets - Faculty & Research

that “blinding” job applications reduces discrimination and increases the rate at which women are hired. Our study asks, how do blinding interventions impact the supply of candidates? Participants in our large online experiment are... View Details

Teaching

Overview

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

Professor Bernstein currently teaches a second-year MBA course in Managing Human Capital (MHC). He is also the faculty chair for the Harvard Business School Online Developing Yourself as a Leader course and teaches in a variety of executive education... View Details

Research Summary

When Cultural Worlds Collide: Investigating the Cross-Cultural Multiple Audience Problem

Today, many individuals have social networks that span cultural boundaries. For example, you may have a network of colleagues in China, friends and family in the U.S., and a group of childhood friends in Greece. Chances are, you are probably comfortable interacting... View Details

Keywords: Cross-cultural Networks; Multiple Audience Problem; Managing Multiple Identities

April 2018
Article

The Power of Voice in Stimulating Morality: Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance

By: Cait Lamberton, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Michael I. Norton

Decisions about paying taxes represent one of the most common moral quandaries faced by citizens. In the present research, we argue that taxpayer compliance can be raised by increasing “voice”: allowing taxpayers to express non-binding preferences about the way their... View Details

Keywords: Morality; Public Policy; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Taxation; Policy; Attitudes; Governance Compliance

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Article

Distance and Political Boundaries: Estimating Border Effects under Inequality Constraints

By: Fernando Borraz, Alberto Cavallo, Roberto Rigobon and Leandro Zipitria

The border effects literature finds that political boundaries have a large impact on relative prices across locations. In this paper we show that the standard empirical specification suffers from selection bias, and propose a new methodology based on binned-quantile... View Details

Keywords: Border Effects; Prices

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April 2011
Case

Designs by Kate: The Power of Direct Sales

By: John A. Deighton and Sarah Abbott

The sales representatives at Designs by Kate (DBK) sell private label jewelry at hosted parties and through online social media channels. They are also responsible for recruiting, training, and managing new sales reps. CEO and founder Kate Creevey designed the... View Details

Keywords: Direct Sales; Consumer Marketing; Marketing Management; Personal Selling; Sales Compensation; Sales Organization; Motivation and Incentives; Marketing Strategy; Salesforce Management; Performance; Compensation and Benefits; Apparel and Accessories Industry

April 2010
Supplement

The Auction for Travelport (B)

By: Andrei Hagiu and Misha Sanwal

This short case presents the epilogue of The Auction for Travelport (A). Blackstone decided to bid on its own, acquired Travelport for $4.3 billion and subsequently went on to acquire another GDS, Travelspan, for $1.4 billion. It then merged the two GDSs and partially... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Value Creation; Private Equity; Mergers and Acquisitions; Industry Structures; Initial Public Offering; Capital Markets; Market Transactions; Change; Auctions; Travel Industry