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- 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
- February 2025
- Article
Disclosure, Humanizing, and Contextual Vulnerability of Generative AI Chatbots
By: Julian De Freitas and I. Glenn Cohen
In the wake of recent advancements in generative AI, regulatory bodies are trying to keep pace. One key decision is whether to require app makers to disclose the use of generative AI-powered chatbots in their products. We suggest that some generative AI-based chatbots... View Details
- January 2025
- Teaching Plan
Knowledge Transfer: Toyota, NUMMI, and GM
By: Willy Shih
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 625-003. New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. It was an opportunity for GM to learn about the Toyota Production System, which was quite different from the mass production... View Details
Keywords: Culture Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Joint Ventures; Transformation; Selection and Staffing; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Labor Unions; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Production; Labor and Management Relations; Auto Industry; Japan; United States
- January 2025
- Case
Colbún’s Angostura Dam Project (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Nicolas Andrade
The A case describes Colbún Chile’s plans for the Angostura dam in the Bío Bío River, a hydroelectric construction venture with major challenges given the region’s history of indigenous resistance. This context was especially unfavorable given the highly contentious... View Details
- January 2025
- Supplement
Colbún’s Angostura Dam Project (B)
By: James K. Sebenius and Nicolas Andrade
The A case describes Colbún Chile’s plans for the Angostura dam in the Bío Bío River, a hydroelectric construction venture with major challenges given the region’s history of indigenous resistance. This context was especially unfavorable given the highly contentious... View Details
- January 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
- Working Paper
AI in Disguise—How AI-generated Ads' Visual Cues Shape Consumer Perception and Performance
By: Yannick Exner, Jochen Hartmann, Oded Netzer and Shunyuan Zhang
Generative AI’s recent advancements in creating content have offered vast potential to transform the advertising industry. This research investigates the impact of generative AI-enabled visual ad creation on real-world advertising effectiveness. For this purpose, we... View Details
- 2025
- Article
Humor as a Window into Generative AI Bias
By: Roger Samure, Julian De Freitas and Stefano Puntoni
A preregistered audit of 600 images by generative AI across 150 different prompts explores the link between humor and discrimination in consumer-facing AI solutions. When ChatGPT updates images to make them “funnier”, the prevalence of stereotyped groups changes. While... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
CEO-Firm Matches and Productivity in 42 Countries
By: Amanda Dahlstrand, Dávid László, Helena Schweiger, Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun
Firms are key to economic development, and CEOs are key to firm productivity. Are firms in countries at varying stages of development led by the right CEOs, and if not, why? We develop a parsimonious measure of CEO time use that allows us to differentiate CEOs into... View Details
- January 2025
- Article
Overcoming Barriers to Employee Ownership: Insights From Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
By: John Guzek and Ashley Whillans
This research investigates the limited adoption of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) among small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. Through interviews with 30 SMB owners across various industries, we identify the key barriers to ESOP adoption as lack of... View Details
- January 2025
- Article
Reducing Prejudice with Counter-stereotypical AI
By: Erik Hermann, Julian De Freitas and Stefano Puntoni
Based on a review of relevant literature, we propose that the proliferation of AI with human-like and social features presents an unprecedented opportunity to address the underlying cognitive and affective drivers of prejudice. An approach informed by the psychology of... View Details
- 2025
- Article
Statistical Inference for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Discovered by Generic Machine Learning in Randomized Experiments
By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li
Researchers are increasingly turning to machine learning (ML) algorithms to investigate causal heterogeneity in randomized experiments. Despite their promise, ML algorithms may fail to accurately ascertain heterogeneous treatment effects under practical settings with... View Details
- 2025
- Book
Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
We all struggle with difficult conversations, but we're often not very good at easy ones either. Though we do it all the time, conversation is one of the most complex, demanding, and delicate of all human tasks, rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and... View Details
Keywords: Interpersonal Communication
- January–February 2025
- Article
Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?: Learn Fast by Democratizing Testing
By: Iavor Bojinov, David Holtz, Ramesh Johari, Sven Schmit and Martin Tingley
For years, online experimentation has fueled the innovations of leading tech companies, enabling them to rapidly test and refine new ideas, optimize product features, personalize user experiences, and maintain a competitive edge. The widespread availability and lower... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Too Much, Too Soon? Early Funding, Technological Unconventionality, and Innovation Capabilities
By: Harsh Ketkar and Maria Roche
The availability of financial resources significantly shapes firm innovation outcomes, especially for early-stage,
innovation-focused technology firms. However, prior research has provided conflicting findings about this
relationship: On the one hand, resource... View Details
- December 2024
- Case
WayCool: Addressing Food Loss
By: Rajiv Lal and Kairavi Dey
Headquartered in Chennai, India, WayCool started by focusing on solving the growing challenge of food losses and low farmer incomes. Dasari and Jayaraman, surprised at the amount of fruits and vegetables lost in the agricultural supply chain, set up the company with... View Details
- December 2024
- Case
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM): The AI Journey
By: Shikhar Ghosh
In early 2024, Bill Fandrich, Executive VP and CIO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM), faced a critical decision about AI adoption within the organization. Fandrich had championed AI implementation at BCBSM. After successfully developing three AI... View Details
Keywords: AI; Machine Learning; Blue Cross; Automation; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation; Generative Ai; Health Insurance; Insurance Companies; Innovation; IT Strategy; Leadership; Organizational Transformations; Technology; Non-profit; Michigan; AI and Machine Learning; Health; Health Industry; Michigan
- 2024
- Working Paper
Charting (and Updating) the Path: A Bayesian Perspective on Entrepreneurial Learning
This chapter explores two distinct modes of entrepreneurial learning: assessing
venture viability and choosing between alternative development paths. It introduces
a framework for decomposing venture viability into technological feasibility, commercial
potential and... View Details
- 2024
- Book
The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal ... And What to Do About It
What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? In this book, I address how we can rekindle the fading light of democratic capitalism as an... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Why Most Resist AI Companions
By: Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni
Chatbots are now able to form emotional relationships with people and alleviate loneliness—a growing public health concern. Behavioral research provides little insight into whether everyday people are likely to use these applications and why. We address this question... View Details