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- May 2025
- Case
Humana Commits to Value-Based Care
By: V.G. Narayanan, Henry Eyring and David Lane
In late 2023, CEO Bruce Broussard reviewed health insurer Humana’s transformation into a value-based care ecosystem. Under its CenterWell brand, the several millions of members in Humana Medicare Advantage plans now had access to Humana-provided primary care, home... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Balancing Engagement and Polarization: Multi-Objective Alignment of News Content Using LLMs
By: Mengjie Cheng, E. Ofek and Hema Yoganarasimhan
We study how media firms can use LLMs to generate news content that aligns with multiple objectives—making content more engaging while maintaining a preferred level of polarization/slant consistent with
the firm’s editorial policy. Using news articles from The New... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Extractive Taxation and the French Revolution
By: Tommaso Giommoni, Gabriel Loumeau and Marco Tabellini
We study the fiscal determinants of the French Revolution, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the salt tax—a large source of royal revenues and one of the most extractive forms of taxation of the Ancien Régime. Implementing a Regression Discontinuity... 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
- January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Duolingo: On a 'Streak'
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Nicole Luo
In December 2024, Severin Hacker, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duolingo, reflected on the remarkable evolution of the language-learning app he helped launch in 2011. As the #1 most downloaded education app in the world, Duolingo had over 100 million... View Details
- January 2025
- Technical Note
AI vs Human: Analyzing Acceptable Error Rates Using the Confusion Matrix
By: Tsedal Neeley and Tim Englehart
This technical note introduces the confusion matrix as a foundational tool in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) for assessing the performance of classification models, focusing on their reliability for decision-making. A confusion matrix... 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
Redwood & Strong: The Value of a Consulting Engagement
By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti
The board of Redwood & Strong LLP (R&S), the American branch of a large global law firm, is meeting to review the findings of a recent strategic initiative designed to identify potential merger candidates. The request for the engagement originated from Daniel Crawford,... View Details
- January–February 2025
- Article
The Double-Edged Sword of Exemplar Similarity
By: Majid Majzoubi, Eric Zhao, Tiona Zuzul and Greg Fisher
We investigate how a firm’s positioning relative to category exemplars shapes security analysts’ evaluations. Using a two-stage model of evaluation (initial screening and subsequent assessment), we propose that exemplar similarity enhances a firm’s recognizability and... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Scaling Core Earnings Measurement with Large Language Models
By: Matthew Shaffer and Charles CY Wang
We study the application of large language models (LLMs) to the estimation of core earnings, i.e., a firm's persistent profitability from its core business activities. This construct is central to investors' assessments of economic performance and valuations. However,... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Climate Solutions, Transition Risk, and Stock Returns
By: Shirley Lu, Edward J. Riedl, Simon Xu and George Serafeim
Using large language models to measure firms' climate solution products and services, we find that high-climate solution firms exhibit lower stock returns and higher market valuation multiples. Their stock prices respond positively to events signaling increased demand... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Moonfare and the Democratization of Private Equity
By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu
Founded in 2016, Moonfare headquartered in Europe, was a pioneer in the “democratization” of private equity investments. Historically, private equity was accessible only to institutional investors like pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and large family... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Catalysts for Climate Solutions: Corporate Responses to Venture Capital Financing of Climate-tech Startups
By: Shirley Lu, George Serafeim and Simon Xu
We study whether incumbent firms increase their product focus on climate solutions in response to venture capital (VC) financing of climate-tech startups. Using large language models to measure a firm's focus on climate solutions, we find that incumbents in similar... View Details
- November 2024
- Article
Preference Externality Estimators: A Comparison of Border Approaches and IVs
By: Xi Ling, Wesley R. Hartmann and Tomomichi Amano
This paper compares two estimators—the Border Approach and an Instrumental Variable (IV) estimator—using a unified framework where identifying variation arises from “preference externalities,” following the intuition in Waldfogel (2003). We highlight two dimensions in... View Details
- October 2024
- Technical Note
Prompt Engineering
By: Michael Parzen and Jo Ellery
This note covers the basics of prompt engineering, a key tool for making use of modern generative AI. We discuss the principles of prompt engineering and illustrate these principles with techniques for asking questions. We further list the types of prompts that can be... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Pitfalls of Demographic Forecasts of U.S. Elections
By: Richard Calvo, Vincent Pons and Jesse M. Shapiro
Many observers have forecast large partisan shifts in the US electorate based on demographic trends. Such forecasts are appealing because demographic trends are often predictable even over long horizons. We backtest demographic forecasts using data on US elections... View Details
- September–October 2024
- Article
The Crowdless Future? Generative AI and Creative Problem-Solving
The rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) open up attractive opportunities for creative problem-solving through human-guided AI partnerships. To explore this potential, we initiated a crowdsourcing challenge focused on sustainable, circular economy... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Xendit: Hiring for Growth
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Steve Castano, Quoc Anh Nguyen and Claire Wu
In 2019, Xendit, a growth-stage Southeast Asia (SEA) fintech venture based in Jakarta, was looking to hire a Head of Sales and Head of Product to lead its next phase of growth. Founded by Moses Lo and Tessa Wijaya, Xendit provided payment infrastructure, modeling... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Markups and Cost Pass-through Along the Supply Chain
By: Santiago Alvarez-Blaser, Alberto Cavallo, Alexander MacKay and Paolo Mengano
We study markups and pricing strategies along the supply chain. Our unique dataset combines detailed price and cost information from a large global manufacturer with matched retail prices collected online for the period July 2018 through June 2023. We show that total... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Financial Anatomy of Climate Solutions: A Large Language Model Approach to Company Classification and Analysis
By: George Serafeim
Leveraging advancements in large language models (LLM), we study the financial characteristics of firms offering climate solutions-products and services aimed at fostering a transition to a low-carbon economy. We use a new measure that applies LLM to 10-K Item 1... View Details