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- November 5, 2021
- Article
Leaders: Stop Confusing Correlation with Causation
By: Michael Luca
We’ve all been told that correlation does not imply causation. Yet many business leaders, elected officials, and media outlets still make causal claims based on misleading correlations. These claims are too often unscrutinized, amplified, and mistakenly used to guide...
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- November 2021
- Case
Kwame Spearman at Tattered Cover: Reinventing Brick-and-Mortar Retail
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Kerry Herman
The case spotlights Kwame Spearman’s career-shifting decision to leave a NYC-based consulting job to return to his hometown of Denver, Colorado, and take over an iconic independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. The case lays out ways Spearman envisions a new approach...
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- June 2021
- Technical Note
Introduction to Linear Regression
By: Michael Parzen and Paul J. Hamilton
This technical note introduces (from an applied point of view) the theory and application of simple and multiple linear regression. The motivation for the model is introduced, as well as how to interpret the summary output with regard to prediction and statistical...
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- May 2021
- Case
The International Space Station, Principal-Agent Problems, and NASA's Quest to Keep Humans in Space
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
In building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA opened the door to the development of a robust in-space economy in low-Earth Orbit, and yet the decision to build the station, and continue to extend its lifetime, placed a huge burden on NASA’s Human Spaceflight...
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- May 2021
- Article
Choice Architecture in Physician–patient Communication: A Mixed-methods Assessments of Physicians’ Competency
By: J. Hart, Yadav, K., Szymanski, S., Summer, A., Tannenbaum, A., Zlatev, J., Daniels, D. and Halpern, S.D.
Background: Clinicians’ use of choice architecture, or how they present options, systematically influences the choices made by patients and their surrogate decision makers. However, clinicians may incompletely understand this influence....
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- April 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Kitopi: The Brave New World of Cloud Kitchens
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in February 2021 as Mohamad Ballout, co-founder and CEO of Kitopi, a Dubai-based managed cloud kitchen platform, is looking over the company’s 2020 results. Propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, delivery orders had been on the rise globally and dine-in...
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- February 2021
- Background Note
Jobs to Be Done: A Toolbox
By: Derek C. M. van Bever, Bob Moesta, Iuliana Mogosanu, Shaye Roseman and Katie Zandbergen
The Jobs to Be Done methodology is both a theory and a practical approach for understanding customer behavior and why people make the choices they make. Many practitioners, whether they work for startups or incumbent businesses, find Jobs to Be Done useful because it...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Technical Note
Strategy and Strategic Thinking
This note gives managers a concrete perspective on what ‘a strategy’ really is, what makes a decision ‘strategic,’ and what ‘strategic thinking’ means. It also gives them practical frameworks to assess whether some set of decisions is really a strategy and how to...
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- January 2021
- Case
The FIRE Savings Calculator
By: Michael Parzen and Paul J. Hamilton
This case follows Carol Muñoz, a member of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) lifestyle movement. At the age of 45, Carol is considering retiring and living off the $1 million she has accumulated. Using Monte Carlo simulation, Carol forecasts the...
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- January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Aptiv PLC Board of Directors (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Aptiv’s board must decide whether a joint venture with an auto maker is the right next step in the company’s efforts to develop and commercialize a production-ready autonomous driving system. While many commentators believed that Aptiv’s self-driving technologies had...
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Keywords:
Automotive Industry;
Bankruptcy Reorganization;
Board Of Directors;
Board Committees;
Board Decisions;
Board Dynamics;
Corporate Boards;
Innovation And Strategy;
Legal Aspects Of Business;
Spin Off;
Strategic Alliances;
Strategic Change;
Strategic Evolution;
Supplier Relationships;
Technological Change;
Corporate Governance;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Innovation Strategy;
Going Public;
Joint Ventures;
Leadership;
Restructuring;
Technological Innovation;
Transformation;
Auto Industry;
Europe;
United States
- Winter 2021
- Article
Dealmaking Disrupted: The Unexplored Power of Social Media in Negotiation
By: James K. Sebenius, Ben Cook, David A. Lax, Isaac Silberberg and Paul Levy
While social media has had profound effects in many realms, the theory and practice of negotiation have remained relatively untouched by this potent phenomenon. In this article, we survey existing research in this area and develop a broader framework for understanding...
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- December 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
The Dance of Dharma: On the Difficulty of Being Good
By: Arthur I. Segel and Tyler M. Richard
When deciding how to be good and act well, we often seek outside help. Many of our oldest and most frequently consulted sources of ethical guidance are our religious traditions. Just as one might consult a thoughtful friend, countless people seek direction from their...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 3 Transaction Free Zones
In Chapter 2 we saw that the most economical locations for transactions in a task network are the so-called thin crossing points—places where transfers are easy to define, count and pay for. However, in many places in the task network, transfers of material, energy,...
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- Article
Price and Quality Decisions by Self-Serving Managers
By: Marco Bertini, Daniel Halbheer and Oded Koenigsberg
We present a theory of price and quality decisions by managers who are self-serving. In the theory, firms stress the price or quality of their products, but not both. Accounting for this, managers exploit any uncertainty about the cause of market outcomes to credit...
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- May 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- 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;
Technology;
Hardware;
Technology Platform;
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
- May 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (A)
By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin
In April 2020, the world struggled to contain the exponential escalation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Dozens of countries had imposed restrictions on travel, work, and social gatherings. A large share of the global population was under lockdowns and...
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Keywords:
Demand and Consumers;
Supply and Industry;
Finance;
Central Banking;
Financial Markets;
International Finance;
Globalization;
Government and Politics;
Health Pandemics;
Decision Making;
Macroeconomics;
Employment;
Crisis Management;
Supply Chain;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Air Transportation Industry;
Banking Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Employment Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Health Industry;
Medical Devices and Supplies Industry;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
Public Administration Industry;
Retail Industry;
Service Industry;
Shipping Industry;
Tourism Industry;
Travel Industry;
Asia;
China;
Europe;
Latin America;
Africa;
United States
- 2020
- Working Paper
On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout
By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers
Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Incentive Effects of Subjective Allocations of Rewards and Penalties
By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee Eun Shin
We examine the incentive effects of subjective adjustments in the allocation of tournament-based financial rewards and penalties based on performance rankings. We use data from a company where the reward and penalty allocations are based on a combination of objective...
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Keywords:
Compensation Interdependence;
Nominal And Opportunity Effects;
Managerial Discretion;
Performance Measurement;
Subjectivity;
Rewards;
Expectancy Theory;
Tournament-based Incentives;
Penalties;
Tournaments;
Reciprocity Theory;
Employees;
Compensation and Benefits;
Management;
Decisions;
Performance;
Measurement and Metrics
- November 2019
- Supplement
Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called “the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades.” According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by...
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- November 2019
- Case
Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called “the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades.” According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by...
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