Publications

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August 2009
Case

Intuit

By: Frank V. Cespedes

This case study provides an overview of Intuit's growth and, in particular, the sales and service initiatives that historically fueled the company's growth from start-up to a corporation. It also outlines certain processes and cultural values, as well as specific... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Product; Service Delivery; Business Processes; Organizational Culture; Sales; Business Strategy

Educators

2013
Article

What Goes Up Must Come Down? Experimental Evidence on Intuitive Forecasting

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Andreas Fuster, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

Do laboratory subjects correctly perceive the dynamics of a mean-reverting time series? In our experiment, subjects receive historical data and make forecasts at different horizons. The time series process that we use features short-run momentum and long-run partial... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cognition and Thinking

2024
Working Paper

The Revised-Is-Quality Heuristic: Why Consumers Prefer Products Labeled as Revised

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton

From downloading never-ending updates to tracking ever-newer releases, consumers today are surrounded by revised products that purport to have improved upon their predecessors. Seven experiments examine when and why consumers rely on a “revised-is-quality”... View Details

Keywords: Product Change; Versioning; Expectancy Effects; Heuristics; Intuitive Processing; Product Marketing; Change; Perception; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

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05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Understanding the Process of Innovation

data-driven analytical approach to understanding new market opportunities. "That's a great process for finding gaps in well-established markets," says Christensen, "but it's a bad process for... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gray

March 2016
Article

The Role of Investor Gut Feel in Managing Complexity and Extreme Risk

By: Laura Huang

Securing financial resources from investors is a key challenge for many early stage entrepreneurial ventures. Given the inherent uncertainty surrounding a decision to invest in these ventures, prior research has found that experienced investors rely heavily on their... View Details

Keywords: Angel Investors; Gut Feel; Intuition; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Risk and Uncertainty; Complexity; Decision Making

11 Nov 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Increased Speed Equals Increased Wait: The Impact of a Reduction in Emergency Department Ultrasound Order Processing Time

Keywords: by Jillian Berry Jaeker, Anita L. Tucker & Michael H. Lee; Health

04 Feb 2010
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Way to Make Careful Decisions?

the Complete Solution ought to be the key." Most argued for a process involving intuition based on analysis and experience. Rowland Freeman commented, "A great deal depends on the magnitude of the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

07 Aug 2013
What Do You Think?

Is There Still a Role for Judgment in Decision-Making?

is far more valuable in decisions regarding people " However, intuition lags reality. "Use it to consider if the new idea makes sense, but don't give it more weight than it deserves." B. Graham equated judgment with a... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

31 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

When Not to Trust Your Gut

Unfortunately, most people—especially busy managers and executives—fall back on System 1 thinking during their negotiations. Reliance on intuition increases when a situation is complex and negotiators reach a state of cognitive overload.... View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman & Deepak Malhotra

03 Sep 2019
News

At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure

30 Nov 2019
News

Elon Musk and the Dying Art of the Big Bet

September 2010 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Assembling Smartphones: Takt Time ≠ Cycle Time?

By: Willy Shih and Ethan Bernstein

The case was prepared to be used as part of a process review in the first year Technology and Operations Management course at HBS. It offers students an opportunity to discuss the context of a manufacturing process choice, and then examine actual production numbers... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Research and Development; Design; Six Sigma; Measurement and Metrics; Production

Educators

08 Nov 2021
Blog Post

4 Ways the MS/MBA is Preparing Me for a Career in Health Care and the Life Sciences

such an intuitive fit, one where I could leverage my previous experiences and improve my fluency in both the languages of business and science, to ultimately drive innovation in a sustainable and impactful way. Being part of the inaugural... View Details

September 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Interactive Insurance Services: Redefining Insurance Distribution

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Marla Malcom-Nagler

Founded in July 1995, Interactive Insurance Services provided personal lines of insurance over the World Wide Web. In June 1996, the company was acquired by Intuit for $7.5 million. The case details the competitive and organizational issues faced by this rapidly... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Restructuring; Growth and Development; Distribution; Business Processes; Competitive Strategy; Web; Insurance Industry

07 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Rocket Science Retailing

that have not been shipped. This process of reading and reacting to market signals has improved CompUSA's ability to match supply with demand. Finally, book and music retailer Borders Group uses historical sales data to customize the... View Details

Keywords: by Marshall L. Fisher, Ananth Raman & Anna Sheen McClelland; Retail

October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Teaching Note

Intuit: Turbo Tax PersonalPro - A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

By: Joseph Fuller, Shikhar Ghosh and Monica Baraldi

Teaching Note for HBS No. 816-048. The case tells the story of a product manager within Intuit who develops an idea for a new product that spans two of the company's existing business units—professional tax software, sold to accountants, and the consumer focused... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business or Company Management; Applications and Software; Accounting; Product Development; Financial Services Industry

April 2020
Article

Collective Emotions

By: Amit Goldenberg, David Garcia, Eran Halperin and James J. Gross

When analyzing situations in which multiple people are experiencing emotions together—whether the emotions are positive or negative and whether the situations are online or offline—we are intuitively drawn to the emotions of each individual in the situation. However,... View Details

Keywords: Emotions; Social Psychology

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2022
Article

Open or Closed? Your Mind, Your Decision!

By: Gerald Zaltman

The marketing profession faces challenging times. The shelf life for decisions and the half-life of the knowledge used, are becoming shorter and shorter while the problems addressed are becoming messier. Fortunately, the emergence of what I call the “prosthetic age” is... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Information; Cognition and Thinking; Innovation and Invention