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New research from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including academic management research, how business research can contribute to public policy, and empirical approaches to entrepreneurship.
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Why Great Ideas Get Stuck in Universities

by Ben Rand

Academic institutions incubate novel ideas and are important innovation partners for companies, but getting products out of universities and onto the market can be challenging. A study by Maria Roche and Justine Boudou illustrates how researchers might be getting in their own way.

New Hires Lose Psychological Safety After Year One. How to Fix It.

by Michael Blanding

New hires begin their roles eager to offer ideas. But research by Amy Edmondson shows how they become more reluctant to share over time. She explains how psychological safety erodes on the job and provides advice for strengthening it.

Gen AI Marketing: How Some 'Gibberish' Code Can Give Products an Edge

by Ben Rand

An increasing number of consumers are turning to generative AI for buying recommendations. But if companies can subtly manipulate the technology to favor their own products, some businesses may gain unfair advantage, says Himabindu Lakkaraju.

Called Back to the Office? How You Benefit from Ideas You Didn't Know You Were Missing

by Ben Rand

As companies continue to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of remote work, a study of how knowledge flows among academic researchers by Karim Lakhani, Eamon Duede, and colleagues offers lessons for hybrid workplaces. Does in-person work provide more opportunities for innovation than people realize?

The Critical Minutes After a Virtual Meeting That Can Build Up or Tear Down Teams

by Michael Blanding

Weak communication and misunderstandings during virtual meetings can give way to resentment and rifts when the cameras turn off. Research by Leslie Perlow probes the nuances of digital communication. She offers advice for improving remote teamwork.

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

by Rachel Layne

Could artificial intelligence systems eventually perform surgeries or fly planes? First, AI will have to learn to navigate shifting conditions as well as people do. Julian De Freitas and colleagues pit humans against machines in a video game to study AI's current limits and mine insights for the real world.

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

by Ben Rand

Universities tend to evaluate professors based on their research output, but does that measure reflect the realities of higher ed? A study of 4,300 professors by Kyle Myers, Karim Lakhani, and colleagues probes the time demands, risk appetite, and compensation of faculty.

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

by Bill George

Aggressive cost cutting and rocky leadership changes have eroded the culture at Boeing, a company once admired for its engineering rigor, says Bill George. What will it take to repair the reputational damage wrought by years of crises involving its 737 MAX?

What Chandrayaan-3 Says About India's Entrepreneurial Approach to Space

by Clea Simon, Harvard Gazette

India reached an unexplored part of the moon despite its limited R&D funding compared with NASA and SpaceX. Tarun Khanna discusses the significance of the landing, and the country's advancements in data and digital technology.

The FDA’s Speedy Drug Approvals Are Safe: A Win-Win for Patients and Pharma Innovation

by Kasandra Brabaw

Expediting so-called breakthrough therapies has saved millions of dollars in research time without compromising drug safety or efficacy, says research by Ariel Stern, Amitabh Chandra, and colleagues. Could policymakers harness the approach to bring life-saving treatments to the market faster?

Why Business Travel Still Matters in a Zoom World

by Kara Baskin

Meeting in person can make all the difference for colleagues from different time zones or cultural backgrounds. A study by Prithwiraj Choudhury traces flight patterns among 5,000 airports around the world to show how business travel propels innovation.

Population Interference in Panel Experiments

by Iavor I. Bojinov, Kevin Wu Han, and Guillaume Basse

In panel experiments, units are exposed to different interventions over time. This article introduces a unifying framework for studying panel experiments with population interference, in which a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit's outcome. Findings have implications for fields as diverse as education, economics, and public health.

Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics

by Efraim Benmelech, Janice Eberly, Dimitris Papanikolaou, and Joshua Krieger

Research and development (R&D) by pharmaceutical firms focuses disproportionately on medical conditions afflicting the elderly. The proportion of R&D spending targeting older age groups is increasing over time. Even though these investments in R&D prolong life expectancy and improve quality of life, they have little effect on measured productivity and output growth.

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

by Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial, and Matthew C. Weinzierl

The approach used by most economists to check academic research results is flawed for policymaking and evaluation. The authors propose an alternative method for designing economic policy analyses that might be applied to a wide range of economic policies.

Short-Termism, Shareholder Payouts, and Investment in the EU

by Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang

Shareholder-driven “short-termism,” as evidenced by increasing payouts to shareholders, is said to impede long-term investment in EU public firms. But a deep dive into the data reveals a different story.

Estimating Causal Effects in the Presence of Partial Interference Using Multivariate Bayesian Structural Time Series Models

by Fiammetta Menchetti and Iavor Bojinov

A case study of an Italian supermarket introducing a new pricing policy—in which it reduced prices on some brands—offers managers a new approach to reduce uncertainty. The approach is flexible and can be applied to different business problems.

Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments

by Iavor I. Bojinov, David Simchi-Levi, and Jinglong Zhao

This paper presents a framework for managers to design and run switchback experiments.

What Can Economics Say About Alzheimer's Disease?

by Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile, and Corina Mommaerts

This essay discusses the role of market frictions and "missing medicines" in drug innovation and highlights how frameworks and toolkits of economists can help our understanding of the determinants and effects of Alzheimer's disease on health.

When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects

by Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani

Evaluators of early-stage scientific proposals tend to systematically focus on the weaknesses of proposed work rather than its strengths, according to evidence from two field experiments.

COVID's Surprising Toll on Careers of Women Scientists

by Rachel Layne

Women scientists and those with young children are paying a steep career price in the pandemic, according to new research by Karim Lakhani, Kyle Myers, and colleagues. Open for comment; 0 Comments.