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- 2023
- Working Paper
Firm Purpose and Problem Wickedness: A Review of the Academic Literature
By: Caroline Adelson, Charlotte Kuller, Cate Tompkins, Ellora Sarkar, Samantha Price and Marco Iansiti
Our understanding of the firm’s role in society has evolved greatly over the past 70 years, with more recent years seeing a sharp rise in interest for how firms can contribute more than profits to society – that is, have a purpose beyond profits. Businesses engaged in...
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- March–April 2023
- Article
Market Segmentation Trees
By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis
Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market...
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- January–February 2023
- Article
The Overlooked Key to a Successful Scale-Up
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Davide Sola and Martin Kupp
Many start-ups experience enormous popularity and runaway growth, but only a few go on to become stable giants. What separates them from the pack? They all go through a developmental stage called extrapolation, say three business school professors.
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- September 2022
- Case
HPP: Tapping the Netherlands’ Potential
By: Brian Trelstad and Idelès Kaandorp
Stichting Het Potentieel Pakken (HPP) was launched to solve a systemic problem in the Dutch Labor Market: gender inequity that was leading to a large number of women to work part-time in fields that were in desperately short supply of labor, like health care, child...
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Keywords:
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Grants;
Scaling And Growth;
Nonprofit Organizations;
Opportunities;
Gender;
Income;
Employment;
Health Care and Treatment;
Human Capital;
Mission and Purpose;
Motivation and Incentives;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Employment Industry;
Health Industry;
Education Industry;
Consulting Industry;
Europe;
Netherlands
- 2022
- Working Paper
What Would It Mean for a Machine to Have a Self?
By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp, Laurie Paul, Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Tomer Ullman
What would it mean for autonomous AI agents to have a ‘self’? One proposal for a minimal
notion of self is a representation of one’s body spatio-temporally located in the world, with a tag
of that representation as the agent taking actions in the world. This turns...
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- August 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
NewLab: Scaling an Innovation Engine
By: Tarun Khanna and George Gonzalez
Silicon Valley-veteran Shaun Stewart is the CEO of NewLab, a dynamic technology hub headquartered in the storied Brooklyn Navy Yard. Founded in 2016, NewLab fostered a community of entrepreneurs, corporate and government partners, and investors, all seeking to apply...
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- Article
Creating High-Impact Coalitions: CEOs Can Lead the Charge on Society’s Biggest Problems
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Tuna Cem Hayirli
Traditionally, responses to crises and societal problems—the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, racial inequities—are considered the responsibility of the public sector and NGOs. But addressing the world’s most critical problems requires leadership, resources, and...
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- Other Article
Sustainable Strategies and Net-Zero Goals
By: Mark L. Frigo, Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Kaplan and Ramanna describe a rigorous approach, the E-liability method, for companies’ ESG reporting, especially as it pertains to GHG emissions measurements. They argue that the current standards for measuring...
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- Article
Eliminating Unintended Bias in Personalized Policies Using Bias-Eliminating Adapted Trees (BEAT)
By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli
An inherent risk of algorithmic personalization is disproportionate targeting of individuals from certain groups (or demographic characteristics such as gender or race), even when the decision maker does not intend to discriminate based on those “protected”... View Details
- Article
The Messy but Essential Pursuit of Purpose
By: Ranjay Gulati
Most forward-thinking executives have embraced the notion that purpose-driven companies can solve social and environmental problems while also generating wealth, creating win-win outcomes that benefit everyone. But ideal solutions are rare. Many purpose-driven...
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- February 24, 2022
- Article
Want to Prevent the Next Hospital Bed Crisis? Enlist the SEC
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer
During the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. hospitals could not provide enough beds to meet demand. Solving the problem of inadequate capacity is of utmost importance in the “new normal,” which requires recognizing the ongoing need for hospital-based...
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- February 18, 2022
- Article
Transparency as a Solution for COVID-19 Related Hospital Capacity Issues
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer
In the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. hospitals could not provide an adequate supply of beds to meet demand. Solving the problem of hospital bed capacity is of great importance in the “new normal,” which requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but...
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Keywords:
COVID;
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Health Care;
Health Care Demand;
Health Care Delivery;
Health Care Industry;
Health Care Operations;
Health Care Policy;
Transparency;
Hospital;
Hospital Management;
Hospitals;
Health Pandemics;
Health Care and Treatment;
Service Delivery;
Operations;
Performance Capacity;
Policy;
Health Industry
- February 2022 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
InstaDeep: AI Innovation Born in Africa (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Esel Çekin
Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.]....
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- February 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Supplement
InstaDeep: AI Innovation Born in Africa (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Esel Çekin
Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.]....
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- January–February 2022
- Article
Algorithm-Augmented Work and Domain Experience: The Countervailing Forces of Ability and Aversion
By: Ryan Allen and Prithwiraj Choudhury
How does a knowledge worker’s level of domain experience affect their algorithm-augmented work performance? We propose and test theoretical predictions that domain experience has countervailing effects on algorithm-augmented performance: on one hand, domain experience...
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- September 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Dream: Impact Through Real Estate
By: Michael Chu and John Masko
The Canadian city of Toronto had one of the largest housing affordability problems of any city in the developed world. One company trying to address this problem was Dream, one of the largest real estate groups in Canada. In 2021, Dream had just launched a new system...
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Keywords:
Impact Investing;
Real Estate Development;
Renewable Energy;
Energy Conservation;
Income;
Values and Beliefs;
Borrowing and Debt;
Equity;
Private Equity;
Public Equity;
Financing and Loans;
City;
Government Legislation;
Immigration;
Housing;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Property;
Business and Government Relations;
Civil Society or Community;
Human Needs;
Sustainable Cities;
Environmental Sustainability;
Social Enterprise;
Real Estate Industry;
Canada;
Toronto
- September 2021
- Article
Joint Problem-solving Orientation in Fluid Cross-boundary Teams
By: Michaela J. Kerrissey, Anna T. Mayo and Amy C. Edmondson
Using interviews, a national field survey, and an online laboratory study, we have examined teamwork in fluid cross-boundary teams. Across three studies, we qualitatively discovered and quantitatively explored "joint problem-solving orientation" as a new team factor....
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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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- Spring 2021
- Article
Building Cities' Collaborative Muscle
By: Jorrit De Jong, Amy C. Edmondson, Mark Moore, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Jan Rivkin, Eva Flavia Martínez Orbegozo and Santiago Pulido-Gomez
The most pressing social problems facing cities today require multiagency and cross-sector solutions. We offer tools and techniques to facilitate the process of diagnosing and solving problems by breaking down silos to build up cities.
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