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- January 2023
- Case
Cleave Therapeutics: Taking a Risk on Oncology Drug Discovery
By: Regina Herzlinger and Brian Walker
How can a successful executive assess her next move as the CEO of a firm with a promising and yet uncertain new drug? Amy Burroughs’ mandate to find a therapeutic window for Cleave Therapeutics oncology drug was on track but faced an uncertain future. Overseeing the...
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- November–December 2022
- Article
Can AI Really Help You Sell?
By: Jim Dickie, Boris Groysberg, Benson P. Shapiro and Barry Trailer
Many salespeople today are struggling; only 57% of them make their annual quotas, surveys show. One problem is that buying processes have evolved faster than selling processes, and buyers today can access a wide range of online resources that let them evaluate products...
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- October 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Century Bank: Closing Time?
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Bill Kwon
Barry Sloane, second-generation Chairman, President, and CEO of his family’s bank, Century Bank, weighed whether to sell to Eastern Bank. As a small regional bank, Century faced a number of challenging trends, such as digitization and market share decline in the coming...
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Keywords:
Family Office;
Business Exit;
Banking;
Family;
Massachusetts;
Boston;
United States;
Acquisition;
Business Exit or Shutdown;
Family Business;
Family and Family Relationships;
Interpersonal Communication;
Decision Making;
Finance;
Banks and Banking;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Emotions;
Banking Industry;
Boston;
Massachusetts;
United States
- June 2022
- Teaching Plan
Pacesetters
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 322-019. City Sealcoating CEO Keith Chaney had just publicly called out the Boston Chamber of Commerce for their slow progress on their supplier diversity program, Pacesetters. Established in 2018 by regional business leaders,...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
The Effectiveness of Digital Interventions on COVID-19 Attitudes and Beliefs
By: Susan Athey, Kristen Grabarz, Michael Luca and Nils Wernerfelt
Public health organizations increasingly use social media advertising campaigns in pursuit
of public health goals. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of about $40 million of social media
advertisements that were run and experimentally tested on Facebook and...
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- April 2022
- Article
Consumers Value Effort over Ease When Caring for Close Others
By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Mary Steffel, Elanor F. Williams and Michael I. Norton
Many products and services are designed to make caregiving easier, from premade meals for feeding families to robo-cribs that automatically rock babies to sleep. Yet, using these products may come with a cost: consumers may feel they have not exerted enough effort....
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- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Proximie: Using XR Technology to Create Borderless Operating Rooms
By: Ariel D. Stern and Alpana Thapar
In mid-January 2022, Nadine Hachach-Haram, founder and CEO of Proximie, was thinking about the company’s growth plans. Launched in 2016, Proximie was a platform that enabled clinicians, proctors, and medical device company personnel to be virtually present in operating...
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- November 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Pacesetters
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin
City Sealcoating CEO Keith Chaney had just publicly called out the Boston Chamber of Commerce for their slow progress on their supplier diversity program, Pacesetters. Established in 2018 by regional business leaders, Pacesetters was supposed to facilitate...
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Keywords:
Racial Wealth Gap;
Procurement;
Suppliers;
Diversity;
Programs;
Small Business;
Restructuring;
Contracts;
United States;
Boston
- November 2021
- Article
Ratings, Reviews, and the Marketing of New Products
By: Itay P. Fainmesser, Dominique Olié Lauga and Elie Ofek
We study how user-generated content (UGC) about new products impacts a firm's advertising and pricing decisions and the effect on profits and market dynamics. We construct a two-period model where consumers value quality and are heterogeneous in their taste for the new...
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- October 2021
- Article
Communicating Resource Scarcity and Interpersonal Connection
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Anne V. Wilson, Ashley V. Whillans and Michael I. Norton
Consumers often cite insufficient time or money as an excuse for rejecting social invitations. We explore the effectiveness of these excuses in preserving interpersonal relationships. Six studies—including perceptions of couples planning their wedding—demonstrate that...
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- August 2021
- Case
Mylestone: Can Multiple Pivots Preserve the Life of a Death Tech Startup?
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Marilyn Morgan Westner
Dave Balter and Jim Myers co-founded Mylestone, a death tech startup that applied technology to transform how grieving people memorialize the dead. The startup addressed a cultural problem and promised to solve a pressing need in the antiquated, multi-billion dollar...
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- December 2020
- Article
Can't Buy Me Love (or Friendship): Social Consequences of Financially Contingent Self-Worth
By: D. Ward, L.E. Park, K. Naragon-Gainey, H. Jung and A.V. Whillans
Although people may think that money improves one’s relationships, research suggests otherwise. Focusing on money is associated with spending less time maintaining relationships (Whillans & Dunn, 2018) and less desire to rely on others for help (Vohs, Mead, & Goode,...
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- September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Algramo
By: Michael Chu, Monica Silva and Mariana Cal
Founded in 2013 by José Manuel Moller in Chile, Algramo first became known for addressing the “poverty tax” (the surcharge paid by lower income families for staples sold in smaller sizes) through specially-designed dispensers in low-income neighborhood grocery stores...
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Keywords:
Packaging-as-a-wallet;
Plastic Waste;
Business At The Base Of The Pyramid;
Reusable Packaging;
Alliances With FMCGs To Meet ESG Goals;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Strategy;
Value Creation;
Goals and Objectives;
Business Model;
Consumer Products Industry;
Latin America;
South America;
Chile
- 2020
- Working Paper
Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Ray Kluender
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates....
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- August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
PayPal: The Next Chapter
By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb
Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
In a Pandemic, People Must Remember: Friends Are Contagious
By: T. Schlager and A.V. Whillans
This article reveals a behavioral tendency that may contribute to the spread of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Across seven studies—including two representative samples of Americans and Canadians (N = 3,408)—we show that people consistently underestimate...
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- July 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
Mr. Five Percent: Calouste Gulbenkian and the Origins of Global Oil
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yazeed Al-Rashed
This case describes the business career of Calouste Gulbenkian, a skilled intermediary who was able to secure 5 percent of a vast oil concession covering much of the Middle East that was signed in 1928. Gulbenkian was an ethnic Armenian born in the Ottoman Empire,...
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Keywords:
Oil;
Globalization;
Energy Sources;
History;
Biography;
Energy Industry;
Turkey;
Central Asia;
Middle East
- May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal
In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Ethics;
Geography;
Geopolitical Units;
Finance;
Investment;
Markets;
Market Entry and Exit;
Demand and Consumers;
Network Effects;
Media;
Society;
Urban Development;
Sustainable Cities;
Information Technology;
Information Infrastructure;
Digital Platforms;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Expansion;
Relationships;
Partners and Partnerships;
Capital;
Venture Capital;
Advertising Industry;
Technology Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Cambridge
- 2020
- Working Paper
Topic Preference Detection: A Novel Approach to Understand Perspective Taking in Conversation
By: Michael Yeomans and Alison Wood Brooks
Although most humans engage in conversations constantly throughout their lives, conversational mistakes are commonplace— interacting with others is difficult, and conversation re-quires quick, relentless perspective-taking and decision making. For example: during every...
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- January 16, 2020
- Article
How Global Leaders Should Think About Solving Our Biggest Problems
By: Mark R. Kramer, Marc W. Pfitzer and Helge Mahne
The corporate social conscience will soon be on full display in Davos, Switzerland, where global leaders from business, government, and civil society will assemble on January 21 for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be...
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