Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,156)
- Faculty Publications (454)
Page 1 of 454
Results →
- August 5, 2025
- Article
Data-driven Equation Discovery Reveals Nonlinear Reinforcement Learning in Humans
By: Kyle J. LaFollette, Janni Yuval, Roey Schurr, David Melnikoff and Amit Goldenberg
Computational models of reinforcement learning (RL) have significantly contributed to our understanding of human behavior and decision-making. Traditional RL models, however, often adopt a linear approach to updating reward expectations, potentially oversimplifying the... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
Toilets for the Underserved: The SURT Commercialization Challenge
By: Maria P. Roche, Anne Marie Knott and Alexander Oettl
In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” initiative stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT), engineered by Dr. Shannon Yee, offered an off-grid, self-contained... View Details
- Article
Using Gen AI for Early-Stage Market Research
By: James Brand, Ayelet Israeli and Donald Ngwe
Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), offers a promising new tool for early-stage market research by simulating customer responses to product concepts. This can allow companies to draw conclusions similar to those they’d obtain by surveying... View Details
- July 2025
- Article
No Free Lunch? Welfare Analysis of Firms Selling Through Expert Intermediaries
By: Matt Grennan, Kyle R. Myers, Ashley Swanson and Aaron Chatterji
We study how firms target and influence expert intermediaries. In our context, pharmaceutical manufacturers provide payments to physicians during promotional interactions. We develop an identification strategy based on plausibly exogenous variation in payments driven... View Details
- May–June 2025
- Article
Balancing Digital Safety and Innovation
By: Tomomichi Amano and Tomomi Tanaka
Designers of consumer-facing digital products have tended to focus on novelty and speed (“move fast and break things”). They’ve spent more effort on innovating than on anticipating how customers—and bad actors—might engage with products. But as digital products become... View Details
- Summer 2025
- Article
Dynamic Competition for Customer Memberships
By: Cristian Chica, Julian Jimenez-Cardenas and Jorge Tamayo
A competitive two-period membership (subscription) market is analyzed. Two symmetric firms charge a “membership” fee that allows consumers to buy products or services at a given unit price for both periods. Firms can choose between long- or short-term memberships. When... View Details
- June 2025
- Article
Ideation with Generative AI—In Consumer Research and Beyond
By: Julian De Freitas, G. Nave and Stefano Puntoni
The use of large language models (LLMs) in consumer research is rapidly evolving, with applications including synthetic data generation, data analysis, and more. However, their role in creative ideation—a cornerstone of consumer research—remains underexplored. Drawing... View Details
- May 2025
- Supplement
On (B): The Cyclon Spins On
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger, Sascha Mader and Karen Elterman
A follow-up to the On case (723-430), this short case explores how the performance athletic shoe company On expanded its Cyclon subscription and recycling program through 2024, adding two new shoe models to the subscription and a one-time-purchase recyclable T-shirt. View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Distribution Channels; Environmental Sustainability; Marketing Strategy; Product Design; Product Development; Technological Innovation; Expansion; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; China; Europe; Germany; Japan; Switzerland; United States
- May 2025 (Revised June 2025)
- Case
Netflix Beyond Streaming: Strategies for the Next Era of Entertainment
By: Juan Alcácer and Lorenzo Lucidi
Netflix loses subscribers for the first time in over a decade—can the streaming pioneer reinvent itself before competitors, costs, and churn catch up? In 2022, facing fierce competition and shifting consumer behaviors, Netflix confronts its most critical strategic... View Details
- May–June 2025
- Article
Slowly Varying Regression Under Sparsity
By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Michael Lingzhi Li and Omar Skali Lami
We consider the problem of parameter estimation in slowly varying regression models with sparsity constraints. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer optimization problem and demonstrate that it can be reformulated exactly as a binary convex optimization problem... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
The Limits of Insurance Demand and the Growing Protection Gap
By: Parinitha Sastry, Tess Scharlemann, Ishita Sen and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva
In a world with rising risk, how much are U.S. households willing to pay for homeowners insurance, and what does their demand imply for the future of insurance markets? We provide the first estimates of household willingness to pay for homeowners insurance and the... View Details
- April 2025
- Teaching Note
Tabby: Winning Customers' Digital Wallets
By: Eva Ascarza
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 524-056. Tabby, a Saudi-based fintech founded in 2019, rapidly became one of the MENA region’s first unicorns by offering buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services with a unique twist: instead of charging end consumers, it partnered with... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Perplexity: Redefining Search
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak
By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Stagwell: AI and the Future of Marketing
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Radhika Kak
In early 2025, Mark Penn, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Stagwell, a global marketing company with a network of over 70+ agencies that served over 4000 blue-chip customers across 40 countries, was looking at ways that marketers should navigate the disruption emanating... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships
between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant
challenges.... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Intuition Robotics: An AI Companion for Older Adults
By: Amit Goldenberg, Elie Ofek and Orna Dan
Intuition Robotics, a startup that makes an AI companion robot to alleviate older adults’ loneliness, debates whether to pursue a B2C model or B2G route. If it opts for the government vertical, it must determine how to negotiate a favorable deal. Two weeks after... View Details
- January 2025
- Technical Note
Get Cool: Air Conditioning Industry Background
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small
The “air conditioning paradox” is tied to climate change: the more the planet warms, the greater the need for cooling (due to the dangers of extreme heat as well as comfort within buildings), but the use of electricity-powered AC contributes to further warming. There... View Details
- January 2025
- Teaching Note
Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service
By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel and Stacy Straaberg
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 124-007. The Germany-based startup Vytal operated the largest digital-native reusable packaging-as-a-service network globally, having raised nearly €15 million, established a large network of restaurant partners, and prevented the use of... View Details
Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Invention; Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Startups; Resource Allocation; Risk Management; Adoption; Strategy; Performance Productivity; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Supply Chain; Distribution; Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Business Model; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Profit; Financing and Loans; Expansion; Green Technology Industry; Service Industry; Retail Industry; Germany; Europe
- January 2025
- Case
GE Appliances 2025: Energizing Change
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small
At the turn of 2025, Kevin Nolan, CEO of GE Appliances following its acquisition by Chinese appliance giant Haier in 2016, is reviewing progress toward his net zero carbon vision for homes, which would otherwise exacerbate the global warming climate crisis. An... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Driving Efficiency and Sustainability at P&G China
By: Feng Zhu, Philip Kuai and Billy Chan
P&G China’s business had reached new heights thanks to the explosive growth of e-commerce in the country, but the rapidly increasing volume of shipments to customers had created operational and environmental challenges in terms of packaging waste, shipping damage, and... View Details