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Engineering Serendipity: The Role of Cognitive Similarity in Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Production

by Jacqueline N. Lane, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, Eva C. Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani

By creating opportunities for cross-disciplinary scientists to meet and talk as part of a natural field experiment, this study analyzes and finds evidence for a systematic relationship between knowledge sharing and knowledge production in the sciences. Findings may extend to similar types of cross-disciplinary knowledge-sharing opportunities in other settings.

Managerial Recognition as an Incentive for Innovation Platform Engagement: A Field Experiment and Interview Study at NASA

by Jana Gallus, Olivia S. Jung, and Karim R. Lakhani

What gets workers to go the extra mile in creative problem solving? A field experiment and interviews with NASA employees finds that employees respond to managerial appreciation above other incentives.

From Know-It-Alls to Learn-It-Alls: Executive Development in the Era of Self-Refining Algorithms, Collaborative Filtering and Wearable Computing

by Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Learning happens most reliably and efficiently when it is contextualized, personalized, and socialized. This is important for executive learning in particular and adult learning more generally. Innovators and educational designers can leverage technologies that enable sensing, interacting, computing, searching, and storing to produce learner-optimal experiences.

The Future of Executive Development: The CLO’s Compass and The Executive Programs Designer’s Guide

by Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Digitalization is reshaping companies’ demand for executive education. Executive education providers have to adapt quickly to these new demands and cost structures if they wish to survive. This paper guides providers as well as chief learning officers and chief talent officers who want to chart effective routes through the emerging landscape of executive development.

Tech Clusters

by William R. Kerr and Frederic Robert-Nicoud

We are witnessing a major transformation of business to achieve strategic positions in powerful tech hubs, but most workers and consumers will always be far away. The authors describe the spatial concentration of tech activity in the United States and explore the economics of tech clusters with an eye to the future of innovation and economic geography.

Does Apple Anchor a Shopping Mall? The Effect of the Technology Stores on the Formation of Market Structure

by Doug J. Chung, Kyoungwon Seo, and Reo Song

How do technology stores, particularly those owned by Apple and Microsoft, affect retail sales and market dynamics at malls? Through modeling and simulation, the authors found that these stores helped malls draw more high-income consumers, supporting the entry of upscale stores and exit of midscale and discount stores.

When to Apply?

by Katherine Coffman, Manuela Collis, and Leena Kulkarni

Using a series of experiments, the authors studied gender differences in how job-seekers perceive their own qualifications for different opportunities and how this affects their decision to apply. Results suggest that soft touch employer interventions can improve the diversity of applicant pools even if candidate beliefs about their own ability are unchanged.

A Journal-Based Replication of 'Being Chosen to Lead'

by Erik Snowberg, Allan Drazen, Anna Dreber, and Erkut Y. Ozbay

Attempts to replicate experimental findings in economics and other disciplines have had a disappointing track record. This paper proposes and shows proof-of-concept for one way to ensure replication: contracting by a journal after a study is accepted for publication, but (ideally) before the actual publication occurs.

Intelligent Design of Inclusive Growth Strategies

by Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim, and Eduardo Tugendhat

How companies, working with a catalyst, can redesign supply chains to achieve economic, environmental, and social returns.

Pathways to Materiality: How Sustainability Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors

by Jean Rogers and George Serafeim

This paper provides a framework for understanding and predicting how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues become financially material.

The Effect of Systems of Management Controls on Misreporting

by Aishwarrya Deore, Susanna Gallani, and Ranjani Krishnan

This study provides insights for designing effective management control systems. Managers must select their individual management control practices with care, craft mission statements to convey clear messages that drive organizational alignment with the firm’s overall goals, and consider the effects of interaction between components of their system of controls.

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations series

by Carliss Y. Baldwin

Building on Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, coauthored by HBS professor Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark (MIT Press, 2000).

Shareholder Activism and Firms’ Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Risks

by Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel, and Kala Viswanathan

Shareholder resolutions typically fail, and often by a wide margin. So why do active investors bother? It turns out that resolutions nonetheless can influence corporate transparency. Specifically, after being targeted with shareholder resolutions on environmental topics, this research shows that companies are more likely to publicly disclose their climate change risks—and that such disclosure increases these companies’ valuation.

The Gender Gap in Self-Promotion

by Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

Many organizations and job applications require individuals to assess their own ability and performance. When women communicate to potential employers, however, they systematically give less favorable assessments of their own past performance and potential future ability than equally performing men. The study rules out potential explanations for the gap and discusses implications.

Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy

by Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman, and Jenny Tang

Collecting and analyzing microdata on prices and the reaction of importers, retailers, and exporters to US trade policy since 2018, this study finds most of the tariffs’ incidence rests with the US firms.

Why Does Business Invest in Education in Emerging Markets? Why Does It Matter?

by Valeria Giacomin, Geoffrey Jones, and Erica Salvaj

Drawing on 110 interviews with business leaders as part of the Creating Emerging Markets project at Harvard Business School, this paper represents the first systematic attempt to identify and compare investment in education across emerging economies, specifically in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf between the 1960s and the present day.

The Economic Effects of Private Equity Buyouts

by Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ben Lipsius, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda

Private equity buyouts are a major financial enterprise that critics see as dominated by rent-seeking activities with little in the way of societal benefits. This study of 6,000 US buyouts between 1980 and 2013 finds that the real side effects of buyouts on target firms and their workers vary greatly by deal type and market conditions.

Crowdsourcing Memories: Mixed Methods Research by Cultural Insiders-Epistemological Outsiders

by Tarun Khanna, Karim R. Lakhani, Shubhangi Bhadada, Nabil Khan, Saba Kohli Davé, Rasim Alam, and Meena Hewett

Research on the traumatic 1947 partition of British India has most often been carried out by scholars in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. This article presents mixed methods research and analysis to explore tensions within current scholarship and to inspire new understandings of the Partition, and more generally, mass migrations and displacement.

Decarbonization Factors

by Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington, and Hui (Stacie) Wang

This paper contributes to a growing knowledge base about how climate change impacts investor expectations, capital allocations and thereby pricing and returns. It provides actionable insights into how to decarbonize portfolios and evaluate the likely performance and carbon exposure differences across strategies.

Persuasion by Populist Propaganda: Evidence from the 2015 Argentine Ballotage

by Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian Galiani, and Ernesto Schargrodsky

This paper studies data generated prior to the 2015 Argentine presidential ballotage, when a government propaganda campaign was used to attack the opposition candidate and influence voter preferences. Results show the propaganda was persuasive.