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Studies of online word of mouth have frequently posited―but never systematically conceptualized and explored―that the level of disagreement between...
- August 2021
- Article
Don't Take Their Word for It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds
By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Umit Gurun
We provide evidence that bond fund managers misclassify their holdings, and that these misclassifications have a real and significant impact on investor capital flows. In particular, many funds report more investment grade assets than are actually held in their...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Time Dependency, Data Flow, and Competitive Advantage
Data is fundamental to machine learning-based products and services and is considered strategic due to its externalities for businesses, governments, non-profits, and more generally for society. It is renowned that the value of organizations (businesses, government...
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- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jamie Merkrebs
AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120 billion furniture market, despite its...
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Keywords:
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Mobile;
Digital Marketing;
Word-of-Mouth;
Word-of-mouth Marketing;
Word Of Mouth;
Internet Marketing;
Growth Strategy;
Platform;
Platforms;
Two Sided Markets;
Two-sided Market;
Two-sided Marketplace;
Two-Sided Markets;
Two-sided Network;
Black Entrepreneurs;
Black Leadership;
African Americans;
Circular;
Peer-to-peer Markets;
Furniture Industry;
Furniture;
Growth Hacking;
Monetization Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Strategy;
Entrepreneurship;
Market Platforms;
Marketing Channels;
Online Advertising;
Consumer Behavior;
Acquisition;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Two-Sided Platforms;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Technology Industry;
Web Services Industry;
United States;
North America;
New York (city, NY);
New York (state, US)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation
By: Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning and Ramana Nanda
Using data from a prominent online platform for launching new digital products, we document that the composition of the platform's ‘beta testers’ on the day a new product is launched has a systematic and persistent impact on the venture's success. Specifically, we use...
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- September 2020 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
Tulsa Remote: Moving Talent to Middle America
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Emma Salomon
Tulsa Remote sought to attract a diverse group of remote workers to the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma—and was willing to put its money where its mouth was, offering $10,000 and a range of wraparound services for its program participants. After a successful pilot year, which...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Time and the Value of Data
By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Newsha Ardalani and Marco Iansiti
This paper investigates the effectiveness of time-dependent data in improving the quality of AI-based products and services. Time-dependency means that data loses its relevance to problems over time. This loss causes deterioration in the algorithm's performance and,...
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- December 2019
- Article
Communicating with Warmth in Distributive Negotiations Is Surprisingly Counterproductive
By: M. Jeong, J. Minson, M. Yeomans and F. Gino
When entering into a negotiation, individuals have the choice to enact a variety of communication styles. We test the differential impact of being “warm and friendly” versus “tough and firm” in a distributive negotiation, when first offers are held constant and...
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- November 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Starbucks: Reaffirming Commitment to the Third Place Ideal
By: Francesca Gino, Katherine B. Coffman and Jeff Huizinga
On April 12, 2018, two African American entrepreneurs had scheduled a business meeting at a Starbucks in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. They sat without ordering, waiting for a local businessman to show up for the meeting. The store manager called 911...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Going Digital: Implications for Firm Value and Performance
By: Wilbur Chen and Suraj Srinivasan
We examine firm value and performance implications of the growing trend of non-technology companies adopting digital technologies, using a measure based on the disclosure of digital words in the business description section of 10-Ks. Digital adoption is associated with...
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- January 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Ajeej Capital: Investing in Emerging Markets
By: Luis M. Viceira and Eren Kuzucu
In October 2007, Tarek Sakka and Fouad Dajani launched Ajeej Capital, the first independent investment advisory in the MENA region. Fittingly named ajeej, an Arabic word that translates to “growth and propagation in a chaotic setting,” the firm’s AUM grew from $20...
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- 2018
- Book
The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy
The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the 18th century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the 19th, they paradoxically sought to make the...
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Keywords:
Enlightenment;
Political Economy;
Italy;
Commercial Society;
Economic Systems;
Trade;
History;
Markets;
Society;
Italy
- November 2018
- Case
Yatooq: Longing for Arabic Coffee
By: Mark Roberge, Gamze Yucaoglu and Samer Al-Rachedy
As one of the few female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, Lateefa Alwaalan had been trying to produce the perfect cup of Arabic coffee for over a decade. In 2007, she began testing various coffee blends, which she later branded Yatooq, the Arabic word for “craving” or...
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Keywords:
Entrepreneurial Sales;
Entrepreneurial Selling;
Entrepreneurial Marketing;
Barrier To Entry;
Business Start-ups;
Yatooq;
Entrepreneurship;
Private Sector;
For-Profit Firms;
Business Strategy;
Patents;
Business Startups;
Strategic Planning;
Competitive Strategy;
Adaptation;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Corporate Strategy;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Saudi Arabia;
Asia
- October 2018
- Case
Zenefits Board of Directors (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”...
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Keywords:
Ethics;
Business Model;
Corporate Accountability;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Corporate Governance;
Crisis Management;
Entrepreneurship;
Human Resources;
Leadership;
Risk Management;
Venture Capital;
Technology Industry;
Telecommunications Industry;
Information Technology Industry;
United States;
California
- October 2018
- Case
The Proxy Fight at ADP
By: Robin Greenwood and E. Scott Mayfield
In July 2017, shares of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) surged 12% following a report that the activist investor Bill Ackman had acquired a sizable stake in the company and planned to nominate his own slate of directors at the company’s annual meeting in...
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- September 2018
- Article
Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia
By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu
Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,...
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- June 2018
- Article
Personal and Social Usage: The Origins of Active Customers and Ways to Keep Them Engaged
By: Clarence Lee, Elie Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh
We study how digital service firms can develop an active customer base, focusing on two questions. First, how does the way that customers use the service postadoption to meet their own needs (personal usage) and to interact with one another (social usage) vary across...
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- January 2018 (Revised January 2021)
- Background Note
Customer Lifetime Social Value (CLSV)
By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
One of the hallmarks of the digital revolution is the rise of the socially connected consumer. Concomitantly, the ability of companies to affect and measure the social interactions among customers has grown tremendously. Consequently, in assessing the full value of...
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- Article
Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive
By: Amelia Goranson, Ryan S. Ritter, Adam Waytz, Michael I. Norton and Kurt Gray
In people’s imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of...
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Keywords:
Death;
Language;
LIWC;
Positivity;
Affective Forecasting;
Open Materials;
Perspective;
Attitudes
- 2017
- Working Paper
Seeking to Belong: How the Words of Internal and External Beneficiaries Influence Performance
By: Paul Green, Francesca Gino and Bradley R. Staats
In this paper, we examine how connecting to beneficiaries of one’s work increases performance and argue that beneficiaries internal to an organization (i.e., one’s own colleagues) can serve as an important source of motivation, even in jobs that—on the surface—may seem...
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