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- April 2025
- Background Note
Customer Acquisition and the Cash Flow Trap
By: E. Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
Startups as well as existing firms recognize the need to invest in order to acquire customers for their new ventures. And as each customer is expected at some point to have generated sufficient gross margins to cover their CAC, management expects that, soon enough, the... View Details
- February 2025
- Case
Managing EPS at Stanley Black & Decker?
The case explores Stanley Black and Decker’s (SBD) 2022 financial restatement announcement, which related to how SBD accounted for certain equity issuances in 2019. These transactions had a minimal effect on earnings but significantly reduced shares outstanding, and... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Shifting Winds: DEI in Corporate America
By: Clayton S. Rose, Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon and David Lane
In the 2020s, intense and conflicting social and political pressures challenged organizational leaders around the world. Prominent among these were powerful competing views on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) in the United States. Public... View Details
Keywords: Disruption; Leadership; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Satisfaction; Diversity; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Employees; Retention; Recruitment; Adaptation; Programs; Consulting Industry; Auto Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Motorcycle Industry; Technology Industry; Education Industry; United States; Massachusetts; Maryland; Tennessee; District of Columbia
- November 2024
- Case
Demond Martin and WellWithAll
By: Hise Gibson, Archie L. Jones and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
This case study chronicles the transformative entrepreneurial path of Demond Martin, co-founder and CEO of WellWithAll, a health and wellness startup. Motivated by a pivotal life experience and deep concern for racial health inequities, Martin transitions from a... View Details
Keywords: Customers; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Health; Recruitment; Leadership Style; Management Style; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Organizational Culture; Mission and Purpose; Relationships; Trust; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Investment; Business Startups; Transition; Entrepreneurship; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Health Industry; United States; Chicago; Boston; Atlanta; North Carolina; District of Columbia
- October 2024
- Article
Racial Inequality in Organizations: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective
By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William A. Kahn and Robin J. Ely
This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. organizations and to inform an approach for disrupting it. We treat White men as the dominant group and Black people as the archetypal subordinate group... View Details
- Fall, 2024
- Article
Sixty Years of the Voting Rights Act: Progress and Pitfalls
By: Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa
We review the literature on the effects of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which removed formal restrictions to Black political participation. After a brief description of racial discrimination suffered by Black Americans since Reconstruction, we introduce the goals... View Details
- September 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Ming Min Hui at Boston Ballet
By: Edward H. Chang, David Allen and Annelena Lobb
This case asks how Ming Min Hui, the newly appointed executive director of Boston Ballet, should ensure that the company stays true to its art form yet relevant to its times. Hui stood out among ballet leaders as a young, Asian American woman with a Harvard Business... View Details
- August 2024
- Background Note
Your True Moral Compass
This note explores the concept of a "moral compass" for making difficult decisions in leadership roles. It argues that the standard view of a moral compass as a simple, internal guide is inadequate for complex situations. Instead, it proposes that our true moral... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Narrative AI Advantage? A Field Experiment on Generative AI-Augmented Evaluations of Early-Stage Innovations
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Léonard Boussioux, Charles Ayoubi, Ying Hao Chen, Camila Lin, Rebecca Spens, Pooja Wagh and Pei-Hsin Wang
The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming creative problem-solving, necessitating new approaches for evaluating innovative solutions. This study explores how human-AI collaboration can enhance early-stage evaluations, focusing on the interplay... View Details
- July 2024
- Case
Bridging Networks: The Afrodescendant Leadership Alliance's Black Wealth Club
By: Hise O. Gibson, Darryl Rice and Nicholas A.G. Johnson
- 2024
- Working Paper
Demographically Biased Technological Change
By: Victor Manuel Bennett, John-Paul Ferguson, Masoomeh Kalantari and Rembrand Koning
Who gets the jobs that automation creates? A consensus has begun to emerge that said technologies complement rather than substitute for labor. However, they also shift the demand for specific types of skills and other worker competencies. Such shifts imply unequal... View Details
- May 13, 2024
- Article
What Companies Get Wrong About Skills-Based Hiring
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Matthew Sigelman
In recent years companies have removed college-degree requirements from many of their job postings. They’ve done this for good reason: Talent is scarce, and requiring degrees eliminates almost two-thirds of workers from consideration, a disproportionate number of them... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Social Movements and Public Opinion in the United States
By: Amory Gethin and Vincent Pons
Recent social movements stand out by their spontaneous nature and lack of stable leadership, raising doubts on their ability to generate political change. This article provides systematic evidence on the effects of protests on public opinion and political attitudes.... View Details
- 2024
- Book
The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions
By: Michael Norton
Our lives are filled with repetitive tasks meant to keep us on track—what we come to know as habits. Over time, these routines (for example, brushing your teeth or putting on your right sock first) tend to be performed automatically. But when we’re more mindful about... View Details
- 2024
- Book
Deals: The Economic Structure of Business Transactions
By: Guhan Subramanian and Michael Klausner
Drawing on real-life cases from a wide range of industries, two acclaimed experts offer a sophisticated but accessible guide to business deals, designed to maximize value for your side.
Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details
Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar... View Details
- February 2024
- Case
Innovation Strategy at Stanley Black & Decker: Setting the Direction for Growth
By: David L. Ager and Antonio Manuel Oftelie
On July 1, 2022, Don Allan was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Stanley Black & Decker (SBD). Although Allan had been with the firm for 23 years, most recently serving as President and Chief Financial Officer, he recognized that he was stepping into his new role as... View Details
- February 2024
- Article
Representation and Extrapolation: Evidence from Clinical Trials
By: Marcella Alsan, Maya Durvasula, Harsh Gupta, Joshua Schwartzstein and Heidi L. Williams
This article examines the consequences and causes of low enrollment of Black patients in clinical
trials. We develop a simple model of similarity-based extrapolation that predicts that evidence is
more relevant for decision-making by physicians and patients when it... View Details
- January 2024
- Case
Vibrant Health
By: Henry McGee and Sarah Mehta
This case is about nutritional supplements company Vibrant Health, among the 100 largest Black-owned businesses in the U.S. After acquiring the company from its white founder in 2007, co-owners Ted and Paige Parker significantly grew its sales. Set in September 2023,... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Uncle Nearest: Creating a Legacy
By: Hise Gibson, Archie L. Jones, Nicole Gilmore and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
Fawn Weaver, as a Black woman and industry outsider in a capital-intensive, highly regulated, competitive and male-dominated spirits industry, successfully overcame numerous obstacles to launch a premium American whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest in 2017, which became the... View Details
Keywords: Advertising; Business Startups; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Age; Ethnicity; Gender; Entrepreneurship; Working Capital; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Intellectual Property; Trademarks; Leadership Style; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Marketing Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Private Ownership; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Entrepreneurial Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; Tourism Industry; United States; Tennessee; France
- December 2023
- Article
Association of Hospital System Affiliation with COVID-19 Capacity Burden
By: Zachary Levin, Pinar Karaca-Mandic, Richard J. Boxer and Regina E. Herzlinger
What is the message? The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the highly variable and uncoordinated responses by hospitals. The authors found that while the non-top ten system affiliated hospitals had a larger COVID-19 share index relative to independent hospitals, top-ten system... View Details