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Faculty & Research

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    • HBS Book

    Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

    By: Amy Edmondson

    A revolutionary guide that will transform your relationship with failure, from the pioneering researcher of psychological safety and award-winning Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well. After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us.

    • HBS Book

    Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

    By: Amy Edmondson

    A revolutionary guide that will transform your relationship with failure, from the pioneering researcher of psychological safety and award-winning Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all...

    • Quarterly Journal of Economics 139, no. 1 (February 2024): 575-635

    Representation and Extrapolation: Evidence from Clinical Trials

    By: Marcella Alsan, Maya Durvasula, Harsh Gupta, Joshua Schwartzstein and Heidi L. Williams

    This article examines the consequences and causes of low enrollment of Black patients in clinical trials. We develop a simple model of similarity-based extrapolation that predicts that evidence is more relevant for decision-making by physicians and patients when it is more representative of the group that is being treated. This generates the key result that the perceived benefit of a medicine for a group depends not only on the average benefit from a trial, but also on the share of patients from that group who were enrolled in the trial. In survey experiments, we find that physicians who care for Black patients are more willing to prescribe drugs tested in representative samples, an effect substantial enough to close observed gaps in the prescribing rates of new medicines.

    • Quarterly Journal of Economics 139, no. 1 (February 2024): 575-635

    Representation and Extrapolation: Evidence from Clinical Trials

    By: Marcella Alsan, Maya Durvasula, Harsh Gupta, Joshua Schwartzstein and Heidi L. Williams

    This article examines the consequences and causes of low enrollment of Black patients in clinical trials. We develop a simple model of similarity-based extrapolation that predicts that evidence is more relevant for decision-making by physicians and patients when it is more representative of the group that is being treated. This generates the key...

    • Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society

    'Care in Every Drop': Ayala Corporation and Manila Water (A)

    By: Debora L. Spar, Paul Healy, Tricia Peralta and Julia M. Comeau

    Since 1834, eight generations of the Ayala family have used their conglomerate to fund nation-building projects in the Philippines, including investments in tramcars, telecommunications, hospitals, and schools. In 1997, Ayala’s subsidiary, Manila Water, took control of the failing water distribution system in Metro Manila’s east zone, vowing to rebuild the infrastructure and bring cleaner, safer, and more widespread water to the area. Manila Water largely succeeded in this mission in its early years, but, as time went on and the climate grew more unpredictable, it became increasingly difficult to source water for the growing population.

    • Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society

    'Care in Every Drop': Ayala Corporation and Manila Water (A)

    By: Debora L. Spar, Paul Healy, Tricia Peralta and Julia M. Comeau

    Since 1834, eight generations of the Ayala family have used their conglomerate to fund nation-building projects in the Philippines, including investments in tramcars, telecommunications, hospitals, and schools. In 1997, Ayala’s subsidiary, Manila Water, took control of the failing water distribution system in Metro Manila’s east zone, vowing to...

    • Featured Case

    Frank Cornelissen: The Great Sulfite Debate (A)

    By: Tiona Zuzul and Susan Pinckney

    In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world’s leading natural wine vineyards. Its founder, Frank Cornelissen, faced weather related conditions that forced him to have to decide between staying true to the tenets of the natural wine community or breaking with his public beliefs to save that year’s wines.

    • Featured Case

    Frank Cornelissen: The Great Sulfite Debate (A)

    By: Tiona Zuzul and Susan Pinckney

    In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world’s leading natural wine vineyards. Its founder, Frank Cornelissen, faced weather related conditions that forced him to have to decide between staying true to the tenets of the natural wine community or breaking with his public beliefs to save that year’s wines.

    • Featured Case

    Data-Driven Denim: Financial Forecasting at Levi Strauss

    By: Mark Egan

    The case examines Levi Strauss’ journey in implementing machine learning and AI into its financial forecasting process. The apparel company partnered with the IT company Wipro in 2017 to develop a machine learning algorithm that could help Levi Strauss forecast its revenues and earnings. The CFO of Levi Strauss, Harmit Singh, believed incorporating AI and machine learning into Levi Strauss’ forecasting process would make the process more efficient and the resulting forecasts more accurate. While the algorithm led to more accurate forecasts, there were challenges to implementing and interpreting the AI-produced forecasts.

    • Featured Case

    Data-Driven Denim: Financial Forecasting at Levi Strauss

    By: Mark Egan

    The case examines Levi Strauss’ journey in implementing machine learning and AI into its financial forecasting process. The apparel company partnered with the IT company Wipro in 2017 to develop a machine learning algorithm that could help Levi Strauss forecast its revenues and earnings. The CFO of Levi Strauss, Harmit Singh, believed...

    • Working Paper

    The Value of Open Source Software

    By: Manuel Hoffmann, Frank Nagle and Yanuo Zhou

    The value of a non-pecuniary (free) product is inherently difficult to assess. A pervasive example is open source software (OSS), a global public good that plays a vital role in the economy and is foundational for most technology we use today. However, it is difficult to measure the value of OSS due to its non-pecuniary nature and lack of centralized usage tracking. Therefore, OSS remains largely unaccounted for in economic measures. Although prior studies have estimated the supply-side costs to recreate this software, a lack of data has hampered estimating the much larger demand-side (usage) value created by OSS. Therefore, to understand the complete economic and social value of widely-used OSS, we leverage unique global data from two complementary sources capturing OSS usage by millions of global firms.

    • Working Paper

    The Value of Open Source Software

    By: Manuel Hoffmann, Frank Nagle and Yanuo Zhou

    The value of a non-pecuniary (free) product is inherently difficult to assess. A pervasive example is open source software (OSS), a global public good that plays a vital role in the economy and is foundational for most technology we use today. However, it is difficult to measure the value of OSS due to its non-pecuniary nature and lack of...

    • HBS Working Paper

    When Insurers Exit: Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets

    By: Pari Sastry, Ishita Sen and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva

    This paper studies how homeowners insurance markets respond to growing climate losses and how this impacts mortgage market dynamics. Using Florida as a case study, we show that traditional insurers are exiting high risk areas, and new lower quality insurers are entering and filling the gap. These new insurers service the riskiest areas, are less diversified, hold less capital, and 20 percent of them become insolvent. We trace their growth to a lax insurance regulatory environment. Yet, despite their low quality, these insurers secure high financial stability ratings, not from traditional rating agencies, but from emerging rating agencies. Importantly, these ratings are high enough to meet the minimum rating requirements set by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

    • HBS Working Paper

    When Insurers Exit: Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets

    By: Pari Sastry, Ishita Sen and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva

    This paper studies how homeowners insurance markets respond to growing climate losses and how this impacts mortgage market dynamics. Using Florida as a case study, we show that traditional insurers are exiting high risk areas, and new lower quality insurers are entering and filling the gap. These new insurers service the riskiest areas, are less...

Initiatives & Projects

Health Care

The Health Care Initiative serves as a gateway for health care research, educational programs, and collaboration across all sectors of the health care industry.
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Seminars & Conferences

Apr 16
  • 16 Apr 2024

Zsolt Katona, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business

Apr 17
  • 17 Apr 2024

Roberto Cram-Gomez, NYU Stern

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Recent Publications

Enhancing Value and Well-Being: The Basket of Motivators Framework for Aligning Neurology Clinical Practices with Performance Outcomes

By: Peter N. Hadar, Susanna Gallani and Lidia Moura
  • June 1, 2024 |
  • Article |
  • Neurology Clinical Practice
Physician burnout, which is prevalent in neurology, has accelerated in recent years. While multifactorial, a major contributing factor to burnout is a payment model that rewards volume over quality, leaving physicians overburdened and unfulfilled. The aim of this review was to investigate ways of reducing burnout while improving quality-based outcomes in a value-based health care model.
Citation
Related
Hadar, Peter N., Susanna Gallani, and Lidia Moura. "Enhancing Value and Well-Being: The Basket of Motivators Framework for Aligning Neurology Clinical Practices with Performance Outcomes." Neurology Clinical Practice 14, no. 3 (June 1, 2024).

Real Growth in Space Manufacturing Output Substantially Exceeds Growth in the Overall Space Economy

By: Tina Highfill and Matthew Weinzierl
  • June 2024 |
  • Article |
  • Acta Astronautica
Accurately measuring real economic output in the space economy is made difficult by the rapid increase in capabilities and decrease in prices of launch and satellite technologies achieved over the past two decades. Nominal measures of output in space will tend to underestimate real growth if customers are paying lower prices for better services over time. In this paper, we use price indexes that apply techniques to the space economy that have been used for decades to adjust nominal measures of output in sectors such as information technology, including matched-model and explicit hedonic quality adjustment. We find that adjusting for price and quality changes in the space economy has substantial effects on estimated growth in economic output, especially across its sectors. Price increases over time in the space information sector, which is dominated by direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television, mean that real growth has been slower than nominal growth since at least 2012, the typical pattern in industries not undergoing rapid technological change. In sharp contrast, rapid price decreases and quality increases in other areas—especially launch and manufacturing of satellite, earth observation, and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) equipment—have meant that nominal growth rates substantially understate real growth rates in those industries. Given the central importance of space to our modern economy, having accurate information on growth in the space economy is vital for efficiently allocating the substantial private and public investment being devoted to its development.
Citation
Related
Highfill, Tina, and Matthew Weinzierl. "Real Growth in Space Manufacturing Output Substantially Exceeds Growth in the Overall Space Economy." Acta Astronautica 219 (June 2024): 236–242.

Moral Thin-Slicing: Forming Moral Impressions from a Brief Glance

By: Julian De Freitas and Alon Hafri
  • May 2024 |
  • Article |
  • Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Despite the modern rarity with which people are visual witness to moral transgressions involving physical harm, such transgressions are more accessible than ever thanks to their availability on social media and in the news. On one hand, the literature suggests that people form fast moral impressions once they already know what has transpired (i.e., who did what to whom, and whether there was harm involved). On the other hand, almost all research on the psychological bases for moral judgment has used verbal vignettes, leaving open the question of how people form moral impressions about observed visual events. Using a naturalistic but well-controlled image set depicting social interactions, we find that observers are capable of ‘moral thin-slicing’: they reliably identify moral transgressions from visual scenes presented in the blink of an eye (< 100 ms), in ways that are surprisingly consistent with judgments made under no viewing-time constraints. Across four studies, we show that this remarkable ability arises because observers independently and rapidly extract the ‘atoms’ of moral judgment (i.e., event roles, and the level of harm involved). Our work supports recent proposals that many moral judgments are fast and intuitive and opens up exciting new avenues for understanding how people form moral judgments from visual observation.
Citation
Related
De Freitas, Julian, and Alon Hafri. "Moral Thin-Slicing: Forming Moral Impressions from a Brief Glance." Art. 104588. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 112 (May 2024).

Business Experiments As Persuasion

By: Orie Shelef, Rebecca Karp and Robert Wuebker
  • 2024 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
Much of the prior work on experimentation rests upon the assumption that entrepreneurs and managers use—or should optimally adopt—a "scientific approach" to test possible decisions before making them. This paper offers an alternative view of experimental strategy, introducing the possibility that at least some business experiments privilege persuasion over generating unbiased information. In this view, actors may craft experiments designed to gain support for their ideas, even if doing so reduces the informativeness of the experiment. However, decision-makers are not naïve— they are aware that the results they are reviewing may be the product of a curated information environment. Using a formal model, this paper shows that under a wide range of conditions, actors prefer to enact a less than fully informative experiment designed to persuade—even when a fullyinformative experiment is feasible at the same cost.
Citation
Related
Shelef, Orie, Rebecca Karp, and Robert Wuebker. "Business Experiments As Persuasion." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-065, March 2024.

Does the Case for Private Equity Still Hold?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Philipp Chvanov
  • 2024 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
Citation
Related
Lietz, Nori Gerardo, and Philipp Chvanov. "Does the Case for Private Equity Still Hold?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-066, January 2024.

Zegna

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Dante Roscini and James Barnett
  • April 2024 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Citation
Purchase
Related
Deshpandé, Rohit, Dante Roscini, and James Barnett. "Zegna." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 524-077, April 2024.

Leader as a Motivator

By: Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams and Katherine Connolly Baden
  • April 2024 |
  • Background Note |
  • Faculty Research
Citation
Educators
Purchase
Related
Groysberg, Boris, Robin Abrahams, and Katherine Connolly Baden. "Leader as a Motivator." Harvard Business School Background Note 424-044, April 2024.

Leader as a Communicator

By: Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams and Katherine Connolly Baden
  • April 2024 |
  • Background Note |
  • Faculty Research
Citation
Educators
Purchase
Related
Groysberg, Boris, Robin Abrahams, and Katherine Connolly Baden. "Leader as a Communicator." Harvard Business School Background Note 424-045, April 2024.
More Publications

In The News

    • 10 Apr 2024
    • Harvard Kennedy School

    CID Faculty Spotlight: Vincent Pons on Understanding and Upholding Democracy

    Re: Vincent Pons
    • 10 Apr 2024
    • Harvard Business Review

    Should Your Brand Hire a Virtual Influencer?

    By: Shunyuan Zhang
    • 10 Apr 2024
    • Harvard Business Review

    Advice for the Unmotivated

    By: Boris Groysberg
    • 10 Apr 2024
    • New York Times

    This Is What You Get When Fear Mixes With Money

    Re: Rawi Abdelal
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The Case Method

Introduced by HBS faculty to business education in 1925, the case method is a powerful interactive learning process that puts students in the shoes of a leader faced with a real-world management issue and challenges them to propose and justify a resolution.
Today, HBS remains an authority on teaching by the case method. The School is also the world’s leading case-writing institution, with HBS faculty members contributing hundreds of new cases to the management curriculum a year via the School’s unique case development and writing process.
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Faculty Positions

Harvard Business School seeks candidates in all fields for full time positions. Candidates with outstanding records in PhD or DBA programs are encouraged to apply.
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