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- March 2025
- Case
O2X: Optimizing to the X
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Thomas Jennings and Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon
- March 2025
- Case
GiveDirectly: Can Direct Cash Transfers End Extreme Poverty?
By: Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth, Sarah Mehta and John Schultz
Founded in 2008, GiveDirectly was a nonprofit organization that used direct cash transfers—giving people cash via mobile money—to combat poverty worldwide. By August 2024, the organization had transferred over $800 million to poor people in targeted communities and... View Details
- March 2025
- Article
Optimal Illiquidity
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We study the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias with naive beliefs. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty.... 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
- February 2025
- Article
Variation in Batch Ordering of Imaging Tests in the Emergency Department and the Impact on Care Delivery
By: Jacob C. Jameson, Soroush Saghafian, Robert S. Huckman and Nicole Hodgson
Objectives: To examine heterogeneity in physician batch ordering practices and measure the impact of a physician's tendency to batch order imaging tests on patient outcomes and resource utilization.
Study Setting and Design: In this retrospective study, we used... View Details
Study Setting and Design: In this retrospective study, we used... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
We estimate the value employees place on remote work using revealed preferences in a high-stakes, real-world context, focusing on U.S. tech workers. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles. Our estimates are three to... 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
- 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
- December 2024
- Supplement
Core Innovation Capital: Investing in Fintech for Good (B)
In 2017, Core Innovation Capital invested $725,000 in Hugo Insurance, a pay-as-you-drive auto insurance startup targeting the non-standard market. Core followed with $300,000 in 2019 during a Seed II round. By 2022, Hugo founder, David Bergendahl, sought $10 million in... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Balancing Impact: Modeling the Future at British International Investment
By: Shawn Cole and Jonah Zahnd
In 2022, British International Investment (BII), the £8.1 billion development finance arm of the British government, implemented a new impact measurement system called the Impact Score to align its financial and impact objectives systematically. The tool was designed... View Details
- October 2024
- Supplement
NOW PT (A)
By: George A Riedel, Allison J. Wigen and Dave Habeeb
Pre-Abstract: Instructors should consider the timing of making videos available to students, as they may reveal key case details.
Abstract: In fall 2021, a team of students from the HBS Impact Investing Fund considered Neurologic Optimal Wellness Physical... View Details
Abstract: In fall 2021, a team of students from the HBS Impact Investing Fund considered Neurologic Optimal Wellness Physical... View Details
- October 2024
- Supplement
NOW PT (B)
By: George A Riedel, Allison J. Wigen and Dave Habeeb
Pre-Abstract: Instructors should consider the timing of making videos available to students, as they may reveal key case details.
Abstract: In fall 2021, a team of students from the HBS Impact Investing Fund considered Neurologic Optimal Wellness Physical... View Details
Abstract: In fall 2021, a team of students from the HBS Impact Investing Fund considered Neurologic Optimal Wellness Physical... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Canary Categories
By: Eric Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli and Duncan Simester
Past customer spending in a category is generally a positive signal of future customer spending. We show that there exist “canary categories” for which the reverse is true. Purchases in these categories are a signal that customers are less likely to return to that... View Details
- September 24, 2024
- Article
4 Steps That Can Optimize Your Sales Process
By: Frank V. Cespedes, Scott Peterson and Daniel Weinfurter
Sales is a performance art where outcomes matter, so most advice here focuses on closing the sale. But a close is the result of actions and choices that occur earlier in the process: how much time and effort to spend on customer discovery (understanding what and to... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Behavioral Attenuation
By: Thomas Graeber, Benjamin Enke, Ryan Oprea and Jeffrey Yang
We report a large-scale examination of behavioral attenuation: due to information-processing constraints, the elasticity of people’s decisions with respect to economic fundamentals is generally too small. We implement more than 30 experiments, 20 of which were... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
Iogen: Decarbonizing Hard-to-Abate Sectors
By: George Serafeim, Charlotte Foody and John Mulliken
Brian Foody, CEO of Iogen Corporation, was an early leader in advanced biofuels, developing a range of technologies to transform agricultural waste into transportation fuel. With $100 million in revenue and 350 patents across various biofuel technologies, Iogen was... View Details
- July–August 2024
- Article
Doing More with Less: Overcoming Ineffective Long-Term Targeting Using Short-Term Signals
By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza
Firms are increasingly interested in developing targeted interventions for customers with the best response,
which requires identifying differences in customer sensitivity, typically through the conditional average treatment
effect (CATE) estimation. In theory, to... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Learning to Cover: Online Learning and Optimization with Irreversible Decisions
By: Alexander Jacquillat and Michael Lingzhi Li
- 2024
- Working Paper
Advancing Personalization: How to Experiment, Learn & Optimize
By: Aurelie Lemmens, Jason M.T. Roos, Sebastian Gabel, Eva Ascarza, Hernan Bruno, Elea McDonnell Feit, Brett Gordon, Ayelet Israeli, Carl F. Mela and Oded Netzer
Personalization has become the heartbeat of modern marketing. Advances in causal inference and machine learning enable companies to understand how the same marketing action can impact the choices of individual customers differently. This article provides an academic... View Details