Technology & Operations Management

- 2025
- Book
The World Is Your Office: How Work from Anywhere Boosts Talent, Productivity, and Innovation

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

A research-based look at a growing phenomenon—companies allowing their employees to work from anywhere in the world—and how those who adopt this model can boost talent, innovation, and productivity. In recent years, companies in a wide range of industries have adopted radically flexible work policies that allow employees and teams to work from anywhere (WFA), untethered to a physical office. The leaders at these companies understand that geographic flexibility is a competitive advantage: a way to attract and retain high-quality and diverse talent at a global scale. If other companies want to find and keep the very best talent, they must embrace WFA. In The World Is Your Office, I take readers inside the companies at the forefront of this growing phenomenon—from startups to bigger, more traditional organizations—while offering leaders a playbook for implementing a variety of WFA policies they can tailor to their own needs. This includes: *Using WFA as a means of hiring and retaining the best talent in your field *Best practices for meeting the challenges of managing a WFA team or workforce, including ways to build community, improve communication, and share knowledge *Understanding how AI and automation are extending WFA to manufacturing and other deskless settings *Case studies of companies that have implemented WFA to great effect Filled with smart insights and in-depth examples, and inspired by a decade's worth of pioneering research, i>The World Is Your Office will help leaders attract superior talent, boost innovation, and improve productivity and diversity.
- 2025
- Book
The World Is Your Office: How Work from Anywhere Boosts Talent, Productivity, and Innovation

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

A research-based look at a growing phenomenon—companies allowing their employees to work from anywhere in the world—and how those who adopt this model can boost talent, innovation, and productivity. In recent years, companies in a wide range of industries have adopted radically flexible work policies that allow employees and teams to work from...
- January 8, 2025
- Article
Why Retailers Are Turning to Third-Party Marketplaces

By: Antonio Moreno

Some traditional retailers—including Walmart, Target, and Best Buy—are adopting third-party marketplaces, which connect customers with external sellers and thereby offer customers a much broader selection. Many other traditional retailers are considering whether to follow suit. Making the choice isn’t clear-cut. It involves weighing a host of benefits and challenges. The benefits include: expanding the product range, boosting customer engagement, monetizing existing assets, and collecting valuable data. The challenges include: operational issues, offering customers a good experience, and shifting from an internal focus towards managing an external network of sellers.
- January 8, 2025
- Article
Why Retailers Are Turning to Third-Party Marketplaces

By: Antonio Moreno

Some traditional retailers—including Walmart, Target, and Best Buy—are adopting third-party marketplaces, which connect customers with external sellers and thereby offer customers a much broader selection. Many other traditional retailers are considering whether to follow suit. Making the choice isn’t clear-cut. It involves weighing a host of...
- January 2025
- Case
VOCEL(A): Democratizing Brain Science for Early Childhood Education

By: Elisabeth Paulson, Christopher T. Ryan and Nanxi Zhang
- January 2025
- Case
VOCEL(A): Democratizing Brain Science for Early Childhood Education

By: Elisabeth Paulson, Christopher T. Ryan and Nanxi Zhang

About the Unit

As the world of operations has changed, so have interests and priorities within the Unit. Historically, the TOM Unit focused on manufacturing and the development of physical products. Over the past several years, we have expanded our research, course development, and course offerings to encompass new issues in information technology, supply chains, and service industries.

The field of TOM is concerned with the design, management, and improvement of operating systems and processes. As we seek to understand the challenges confronting firms competing in today's demanding environment, the focus of our work has broadened to include the multiple activities comprising a firm's "operating core":

the multi-function, multi-firm system that includes basic research, design, engineering, product and process development and production of goods and services within individual operating units;
the networks of information and material flows that tie operating units together and the systems that support these networks;
the distribution and delivery of goods and services to customers.

Recent Publications

The World Is Your Office: How Work from Anywhere Boosts Talent, Productivity, and Innovation

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

2025 |
Book |
Faculty Research

A research-based look at a growing phenomenon—companies allowing their employees to work from anywhere in the world—and how those who adopt this model can boost talent, innovation, and productivity. In recent years, companies in a wide range of industries have adopted radically flexible work policies that allow employees and teams to work from anywhere (WFA), untethered to a physical office. The leaders at these companies understand that geographic flexibility is a competitive advantage: a way to attract and retain high-quality and diverse talent at a global scale. If other companies want to find and keep the very best talent, they must embrace WFA. In The World Is Your Office, I take readers inside the companies at the forefront of this growing phenomenon—from startups to bigger, more traditional organizations—while offering leaders a playbook for implementing a variety of WFA policies they can tailor to their own needs. This includes: *Using WFA as a means of hiring and retaining the best talent in your field *Best practices for meeting the challenges of managing a WFA team or workforce, including ways to build community, improve communication, and share knowledge *Understanding how AI and automation are extending WFA to manufacturing and other deskless settings *Case studies of companies that have implemented WFA to great effect Filled with smart insights and in-depth examples, and inspired by a decade's worth of pioneering research, i>The World Is Your Office will help leaders attract superior talent, boost innovation, and improve productivity and diversity.

Citation

Purchase

Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion

By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Margaret Underwood and Gamze Yucaoglu

January 2025 |
Teaching Note |
Faculty Research

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 622-070.

Citation

Purchase

Vanguard Retail Operations

By: Antonio Moreno, Willy C. Shih and Margaret Underwood

January 2025 |
Teaching Note |
Faculty Research

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 620-104.

Citation

Purchase

Why Retailers Are Turning to Third-Party Marketplaces

By: Antonio Moreno

January 8, 2025 |
Article |
Harvard Business Review (website)

Some traditional retailers—including Walmart, Target, and Best Buy—are adopting third-party marketplaces, which connect customers with external sellers and thereby offer customers a much broader selection. Many other traditional retailers are considering whether to follow suit. Making the choice isn’t clear-cut. It involves weighing a host of benefits and challenges. The benefits include: expanding the product range, boosting customer engagement, monetizing existing assets, and collecting valuable data. The challenges include: operational issues, offering customers a good experience, and shifting from an internal focus towards managing an external network of sellers.

Keywords: Marketplace Matching; Distribution Channels; Customer Focus and Relationships; Cost vs Benefits; Retail Industry

Citation

VOCEL(B): Powered by VOCEL

By: Elisabeth Paulson, Christopher T. Ryan and Nanxi Zhang

January 2025 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

Citation

VOCEL(A): Democratizing Brain Science for Early Childhood Education

By: Elisabeth Paulson, Christopher T. Ryan and Nanxi Zhang

January 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Turning Around Sam's Club

By: Ryan W. Buell, Zeynep Ton and Sarah Kalloch

January 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Statistical Inference for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Discovered by Generic Machine Learning in Randomized Experiments

By: Kosuke Imai and Michael Lingzhi Li

2025 |
Article |
Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

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 many covariates and small sample size. In addition, the quantification of estimation uncertainty remains a challenge. We develop a general approach to statistical inference for heterogeneous treatment effects discovered by a generic ML algorithm. We apply the Neyman's repeated sampling framework to a common setting, in which researchers use an ML algorithm to estimate the conditional average treatment effect and then divide the sample into several groups based on the magnitude of the estimated effects. We show how to estimate the average treatment effect within each of these groups, and construct a valid confidence interval. In addition, we develop nonparametric tests of treatment effect homogeneity across groups, and rank-consistency of within-group average treatment effects. The validity of our methodology does not rely on the properties of ML algorithms because it is solely based on the randomization of treatment assignment and random sampling of units. Finally, we generalize our methodology to the cross-fitting procedure by accounting for the additional uncertainty induced by the random splitting of data.

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

Citation

Read Now

More Publications