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    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      COVID-19 Business Impact Center
      Cold Call
      A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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      • 23 Feb 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Examining Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States

      The late 20th century saw dramatic growth in incarceration rates in the United States. Of the more than 2.3 million people in US prisons, jails, and detention centers in 2020, 60 percent were Black or Latinx. Harvard Business School assistant professor Reshmaan Hussam probes the assumptions underlying the current prison system, with its huge racial disparities, and considers what could be done to address the crisis of the American criminal justice system in her case, “Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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      Luo, HongRemove Luo, Hong →

      Page 1 of 15 Results
      • 10 Feb 2021
      • Research & Ideas

      Has #MeToo Changed How Hollywood Hires?

      by Rachel Layne

      Sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein united women in the film industry. But has the message of the #MeToo movement reached men? Research by Hong Luo and colleague. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 07 May 2020
      • Research & Ideas

      The One Good Thing Caused by COVID-19: Innovation

      by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso

      Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso see risk-mitigating innovation everywhere the virus spreads. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 23 Mar 2020
      • Research & Ideas

      Product Disasters Can Be Fertile Ground for Innovation

      by Michael Blanding

      Rather than chilling innovation, product accidents may provide companies an unexpected opportunity to develop new technologies desired by consumers, according to Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 16 Sep 2019
      • Research & Ideas

      Crowdsourcing Is Helping Hollywood Reduce the Risk of Movie-Making

      by Michael Blanding

      Hollywood insiders have created "The Black List," which helps surface good but often overlooked scripts. Does the wisdom of the crowd work at the box office? Research by Hong Luo. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 02 Jul 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Risk-Mitigating Technologies: The Case of Radiation Diagnostic Devices

      by Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo

      Changes in risk perception, driven by extensive media coverage of accidents, for example, can be an important driver of innovation and shape the direction of technological progress. Large firms may play an important role in the development and commercialization of risk-mitigating technologies, with important implications for the dynamics of competitive advantage and market structure.

      • 27 Feb 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry

      by Hong Luo, Jeffrey T. Macher, and Michael Wahlen

      Selecting early-stage ideas in creative industries is challenging because consumer taste is hard to predict and the quantity to sift through is large. Using The Black List that ranks scripts annually based on nominations from film executives, this study shows that aggregating expert opinions helps reduce quality uncertainty and can influence high-budget production.

      • 26 Feb 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Infringing Use as a Path to Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment

      by Hong Luo and Julie Holland Mortimer

      Copyright infringement may result from frictions preventing legal consumption, but also reveals demand. This study quantifies the effects of providing more-suitable options and reducing search costs.

      • 28 Nov 2016
      • Research & Ideas

      Challenging the Belief that Liability Laws Kill Medical Device Innovation

      by Michael Blanding

      Many policymakers believe liability laws need reforming so that medical device makers are free to innovate without threat of costly lawsuits. But new research by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso suggests innovation is not thwarted—just rechanneled. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 17 Jul 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Tort Reform and Innovation

      by Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo

      This paper investigates how tort reforms might affect the development of new medical device technologies. The authors find that caps on non-economic damages (such as pain and suffering) are associated with an average decline in patenting for medical instrument technologies. The effect, however, is highly varied and depends on the characteristics of both the devices and the medical fields.

      • 15 Jun 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Slack Time and Innovation

      by Ajay Agrawal, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb, and Hong Luo

      This study combines data about projects posted on Kickstarter with the timing of school breaks of top US colleges to find that slack time can lead to an increase in creative projects, particularly those that are relatively complex and high quality. Managers in corporations that emphasize innovation should consider providing their employees with coordinated slack time particularly to advance development of novel ideas.

      • 23 May 2016
      • Research & Ideas

      A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers to Pay Up

      by Michael Blanding

      Many Internet users don't give a second thought to copying and reusing an image. Hong Luo and Julie Holland Mortimer explain how copyright holders can gently persuade abusers to do the right thing. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 06 Apr 2016
      • Research & Ideas

      Should Entrepreneurs Pitch Products or Ideas for Products?

      by Carmen Nobel

      Entrepreneurs with a new product idea must decide whether to pitch the concept or provide an actual prototype. Which works best? Professor Hong Luo finds answers in Hollywood screenplays. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 25 Sep 2015
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Invest in Information or Wing It? A Model of Dynamic Pricing with Seller Learning

      by Huang Guofang, Hong Luo & Jing Xia

      Dealers who need to price idiosyncratic products--like houses, artwork, and used cars--often struggle with a lack of information about the demand for their specific items. Analyzing sales data from the used-car retail market, the authors of this paper develop a model of dynamic pricing for idiosyncratic products, showing that seller learning has an impact on pricing dynamics through a rich set of mechanisms. Overall, findings suggest a potentially high return to taking a more serious information-based approach to pricing idiosyncratic products.

      • 04 Oct 2013
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Imperfect Information, Patent Publication, and the Market for Ideas

      by Deepak Hegde & Hong Luo

      The market for ideas improves the innovation process by promoting division of labor between upstream inventors and downstream developers. Frictions such as asymmetric information and search costs may hinder the smooth functioning of the market and delay, or even block, mutually profitable transactions between buyers and sellers. In this paper, the authors study the effects of an important disclosure mechanism, the publication of patent applications, on mitigating these frictions and, thus, facilitating transactions in the market for ideas. In particular, they employ an important policy change in the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA), which required that U.S. patent applications filed beginning on November 29, 2000 be published 18 months after the application date. Findings show that post-AIPA patents, on average, are licensed 8.5 months earlier than pre-AIPA inventions. This shortening of the licensing lag is economically significant, given the 20-year duration of U.S. patents, and can translate to millions of dollars in profits and licensing revenues. Key concepts include: Disclosure through patent publication facilitates transactions in the market for ideas, potentially through reducing frictions such as information asymmetries, search costs, and costs of evaluating competing ideas. For inventors that choose to license, 18-month publication accelerates licensing by 8.5 months on average. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 09 Jan 2012
      • Working Paper Summaries

      When to Sell Your Idea: Theory and Evidence from the Movie Industry

      by Hong Luo

      How completely should an innovator develop his idea before selling it? HBS assistant professor Hong Luo addresses this question in a theoretical framework that links the sales stage to the innovator's "observable quality." She uses the context of Hollywood movie script writing-looking at whether it's better to pitch the mere idea for a film or to write the entire screenplay and then try to sell it "on spec." Key concepts include: Pitching an idea before a script is written can be advantageous in that it affords the opportunity to get early feedback from a prospective buyer, and saves time for the writer if the buyer thinks the idea is worthless. However, pitching comes with the risk of expropriation. Lesser-known, inexperienced writers are excluded from the market for pitches, forcing them to either fully develop the idea or drop it entirely. Writers who have a choice in the matter tend to sell their better ideas on spec-turning them into fully-formed screenplays before introducing them to prospective buyers. But they will pitch their worse ideas at an early stage. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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