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

      Can Historic Social Injustices be Addressed Through Reparations?

      Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and their descendants believe historic social injustices should be addressed through reparations. Professor Mihir Desai discusses the arguments for and against reparations in response to the Tulsa Massacre and, more broadly, to the effects of slavery and racist government policies in the US in his case, “The Tulsa Massacre and the Call for Reparations.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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      JapanRemove Japan →

      Page 1 of 34 Results →
      • 26 Jun 2020
      • Research & Ideas

      Why Japanese Businesses Are So Good at Surviving Crises

      by Dina Gerdeman

      As demonstrated after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japanese businesses have a unique capability for long-term survival. Hirotaka Takeuchi explains their strategy of investing in community over profits during turbulent times. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 18 Dec 2019
      • Book

      6 Skills That Wise Companies Harness for World-Changing Innovation

      by Kristen Senz

      What does it take to truly change the world? In The Wise Company, Hirotaka Takeuchi shares the practices that help leading companies turn knowledge into lasting breakthroughs. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 27 Sep 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Ratcheting, Competition, and the Diffusion of Technological Change: The Case of Televisions Under an Energy Efficiency Program

      by Tomomichi Amano and Hiroshi Ohashi

      The diffusion of innovation in many markets is greatly influenced by the presence of policy intervention. Importantly, diffusion is further affected by the fact that firms often also have a say in affecting the implementation of policy. This analysis of the Japanese TV market suggests that firms may delay the introduction of more high quality products when there are across-the-board policy standards.

      • 06 Sep 2018
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Should US Companies Still Care About the Paris Climate Change Agreement?

      American President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change one year ago. Vincent Pons discusses what it means for US business leaders in confronting environmental challenges. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 04 Sep 2018
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting

      by Michael Webb, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom, and Josh Lerner

      This study details the growth of patenting in software, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and related technologies in the twenty-first century, and the continuing dominance of inventors in large US, Japanese, and Korean companies. Researchers still need to understand the impact of such trends on social welfare more generally.

      • 04 Jan 2018
      • Cold Call Podcast

      How to Monetize Happiness

      Is there a business model around happiness? Hitachi believes that a happy employee is a productive one, and is investing in "happiness sensors" to prove the connection. Ethan Bernstein explains why in this podcast. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 16 Nov 2017
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten

      Japan’s largest online retailer, Rakuten, is rapidly expanding into global markets and requiring all employees, where ever they are located, to conduct business in English. Tsedal Neeley discusses the strong connection between language and globalization. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 29 Aug 2017
      • Book

      Using Language to Build a Global Company

      by Sean Silverthorne

      In her new book The Language of Global Success, Tsedal Neeley describes Japanese tech giant Rakuten's five-year effort to adopt English as its lingua franca of business. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 07 Aug 2017
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior in Japan

      by Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer, and Charles C.Y. Wang

      By exploiting the unique features of Japan’s JPX-Nikkei 400 index, this paper examines how membership in a stock index serves as a source of prestige that can motivate managers and influence corporate governance norms. Findings are important for understanding non-pecuniary mechanisms to induce meaningful changes in corporate behavior.

      • 07 Sep 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Decision-Making by Precedent and the Founding of American Honda (1948–1974)

      by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and John Heilbron

      While the production and distribution of goods in a firm is commonly overseen by a hierarchy of management, decision-making within these organizations is often frenetic. This paper demonstrates empirically that the president of American Honda made important strategic decisions by following the precedent set by his boss and former mentor, Honda’s chief strategist, Takeo Fujisawa—by making careful, educated guesses about how Fujisawa would have addressed similar issues. This study identifies the guiding influence of historical precedent and hypothesized intentions and emphasizes the social character of strategic decision-making.

      • 27 Jul 2015
      • Research & Ideas

      The ‘Promotion’ That Makes You Feel Bad

      by Roberta Holland

      Receiving an unexpected professional status bump doesn't always feel good, especially if it wasn't really earned. Companies need to be aware of potential problems with unearned status gain, and be ready with solutions, says Tsedal Neeley. Open for comment; 2 Comment(s) posted.

      • 15 May 2015
      • Research & Ideas

      Kids Benefit From Having a Working Mom

      by Carmen Nobel

      Women whose moms worked outside the home are more likely to have jobs themselves, are more likely to hold supervisory responsibility at those jobs, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time, according to research by Kathleen McGinn and colleagues. Open for comment; 33 Comment(s) posted.

      • 27 Aug 2014
      • Lessons from the Classroom

      Learning From Japan’s Remarkable Disaster Recovery

      by Sean Silverthorne

      Harvard Business School students make an annual trek to businesses in the Japanese area wrecked by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Their objectives: learn all they can about human resilience and share their own management knowledge. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 22 Jan 2014
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space

      by Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta & Mikołaj Jan Piskorski

      People are often more willing to try new things when they see others doing so. This phenomenon, which academics call "social influence", has a profound impact on many aspects of customer decision-making and marketing. For example, social influence affects consumers' willingness to take up new technologies, adopt and use social networks, and ask their physicians for particular prescription medicines. Marketers are thus eager to understand how and to what extent social influence affects people's consumption decisions. To date, however, it has been difficult to pinpoint the effects of social influence, as researchers have struggled to separate it from a simple fact that like-minded people tend to enjoy the same things, per the adage "Birds of a feather flock together." The authors use the field of mobile app adoption in Japan to examine this problem. Japan is an ideal testing ground because approximately 80-85 percent of all page views occur through mobile. In addition, mobile apps are often social in nature, especially those that are linked to a social network platform. The authors devise a new method to assess social influence by controlling for other factors that usually complicate the picture. Overall, the findings show that peer usage accounts for more than a quarter of all mobile app adoptions. The paper also highlights a risk that firms could overestimate social influence by 40 percent on average, even up to 100 percent in certain cases. The authors' method helps overcome this risk. Key concepts include: Social influence is clearly important in customer decision making and marketing. It has a profound impact on the adoption of new technologies, social network usage and adoption, eCommerce, new prescriptions of pharmaceutical drugs, ad effectiveness, group decision making, and customer retention. Using a new approach, this paper documents the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. Results show that peers drive more than a quarter of all mobile app adoptions. Results also show that firms risk overestimating the impact of social influence by 40% on average, even up to 100% in certain cases. The authors' method helps overcome this risk. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 21 Oct 2013
      • Working Paper Summaries

      How Major League Baseball Clubs Have Commercialized Their Investment in Japanese Top Stars

      by Isao Okada & Stephen A. Greyser

      Japanese money flowing from broadcasting rights, sponsorships, and merchandise contributes substantially to the prosperity of Major League Baseball (MLB) in America. This market growth depends on wide exposure of and good performance by Japanese major leaguers. Acquiring and signing these stars can become a passport to get in touch with the Japanese market directly. The authors examine how the MLB clubs have tried to commercialize their investment in Japanese top stars and assesses whether the clubs have succeeded. Seven factors attract revenues from Japanese companies and fans: pitcher or position player, player's popularity, non-stop flights from Japan, distance from Japan, non-sport tourist attractions in a city, size of Japanese community in the city, and player's and team's performance. The most important factor, however, is the player's talent and popularity in terms of performance in both Japan and the US and his media exposure in Japan including endorsement contracts. Key concepts include: In terms of attracting Japanese spectators and corporate sponsors, signing a position player has a clear advantage for MLB clubs compared to signing a pitcher. High popularity for each player is a prerequisite condition for success in attracting revenues from Japanese companies and fans. In terms of attracting spectators from Japan, there is a presumed advantage for cities that have non-stop flights from Japan. However, it is difficult to estimate how big an impact direct flights have. When Japanese travelers whose prime interest is to see a MLB game plan to visit the US, distance from Japan affects somewhat their willingness to make the trip. When Japanese tourists choose a destination to see an MLB game in the US, attraction points other than MLB ballparks are influential, unless the tourists are solely fans of a specific player. The larger the local Japanese community, the larger the opportunity for a team to attract people to the ballpark for a Japanese star. If a Japanese major leaguer does not perform well in the MLB level, he could lose his luster even if he was a top player and very popular in Japan. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 05 Nov 2012
      • Research & Ideas

      What Wall Street Doesn’t Understand About International Trade

      by Carmen Nobel

      Firms that correlate their international trading activity with the local ethnic community significantly outperform those that don't, according to new research by Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy, and Umit G. Gurun. Closed for comment; 4 Comment(s) posted.

      • 18 Oct 2011
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Historical Trajectories and Corporate Competences in Wind Energy

      by Geoffrey Jones & Loubna Bouamane

      Analyzing developments in the wind turbine business over more than a century, Geoffrey Jones and Loubna Bouamane argue that public policy has been a key variable in the spread of wind energy since the 1980s, but that public policy was more of a problem than a facilitator in the earlier history of the industry. Geography has mattered to some extent, also: Both in the United States and Denmark, the existence of rural areas not supplied by electricity provided the initial stimulus to entrepreneurs and innovators. Building firm-level capabilities has been essential in an industry which has been both technically difficult and vulnerable to policy shifts. Key concepts include: Firms from Denmark have been unusually prominent throughout the history of the wind energy business. The basis of the competitive Danish industry was laid without support or even encouragement from its government. US-based firms have also been regularly found among the leading wind energy companies. But their relative importance varied considerably over time, has rarely reflected the overall importance of the U.S. market, and has involved a changing cast of actual firms. German and Spanish, and more recently Indian and Chinese firms, have emerged to become amongst the largest turbine manufacturers in the industry. The most striking change over the last decade has been in the competitive landscape. Engineering powerhouses, such as GE and Siemens, and wholly or partly state-owned Chinese firms with low-cost bases, are now prominent actors in this industry. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 31 May 2011
      • Research & Ideas

      Japan Disaster Shakes Up Supply-Chain Strategies

      by Dennis Fisher

      The recent natural disaster in Japan brought to light the fragile nature of the global supply chain. Professor Willy Shih discusses how companies should be thinking about their supply-chain strategy now. Closed for comment; 16 Comment(s) posted.

      • 08 Apr 2011
      • Research & Ideas

      Will the Japan Disaster Remake the Landscape for Green Energy in Asia?

      by Dennis Fisher

      Entrepreneurs at the recent Asia Business Conference at Harvard Business School said the disaster in Japan could accelerate the move toward "green" energy sources in Asia, opening opportunities. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 17 Mar 2011
      • Research & Ideas

      Harvard Business School Faculty Comment on Crisis in Japan

      Re: Multiple Faculty

      Harvard Business School faculty share their views and insights about the challenges that lie ahead for Japan's business leaders and for global companies operating there. Closed for comment; 11 Comment(s) posted.

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