Publications
- March 2015
- AFP Exchange
Well Said: Why Articulating Your Strategy Can Set You Apart.
Abstract—Senior finance managers now operate in an altered c-suite landscape. The executives reporting to the CEO have doubled in the past 30 years, mostly an increase in functional specialists, not general managers responsible for cross-functional integration. Three decades ago, COOs outnumbered CFOs in Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, but the proportions have flipped. Many CFOs are now charged with driving strategic planning in their firms and, in this role, often serve as the glue across functions and business units. But without clarity about strategy and the ability to articulate strategy, people can only pick up random, disconnected cues about priorities, and alignment is then hit-and-miss, especially when it comes to linking sales behaviors with strategic priorities. This article explains core links between selling initiatives and basic drivers of enterprise value, and it provides suggestions about how best to communicate strategy to busy people in the field.
- May 2015
- Management Science
When 3+1>4: Gift Structure and Reciprocity in the Field
Abstract— Do higher wages elicit reciprocity and lead to increased productivity? In a field experiment with 266 employees, we find that paying higher wages, per se, does not have a discernible effect on productivity (in a context with no future employment opportunities). However, structuring a portion of the wage as a clear and unexpected gift-by offering a raise (with no additional conditions) after the employee has accepted the contract-does lead to higher productivity for the duration of the job. Gifts are roughly as efficient as hiring more workers.
Publisher's link: http://people.hbs.edu/mluca/oDesk.pdf
- May 2015
- HR Certification Institute
Leave No Slice of Genius Behind: Selecting and Developing Tomorrow's Leaders of Innovation
Abstract— No abstract available.
Publisher's link: http://hrleadsbusiness.org/rise-of-hr-e-book
- May 2015
- JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association
Medicine's Continuous Improvement Imperative
Abstract— Maintaining quality and spurring innovation have long been central objectives of the U.S. health care system. Like other health care professionals, physicians are challenged to minimize the likelihood of errors that could harm patients while simultaneously making efforts to understand the causes of illnesses and develop better ways to prevent, treat, and cure them.
Publisher's link: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2290658
- May 2015
- Oxford University Press
Entrepreneurial Creativity: The Role of Learning Processes and Work Environment Supports.
Abstract— No abstract available.
Publisher's link: Book Link
Working Papers
Frenemies in Platform Markets: The Case of Apple's iPad vs. Amazon's Kindle
Abstract— We study the compatibility decisions of two competing platforms that generate profits through both hardware sales and royalties from content sales. We consider a game-theoretic model in which the platform hardware may offer different standalone utilities to users who have different preferences over the two platforms. We find that incentives to establish one-way compatibility-the platform with smaller standalone value allows users of the competing platform to access its content-can arise from the difference in their profit foci. As the difference in the standalone utilities increases, royalties from content sales become less important to the platform with greater standalone value but becomes more important for the other platform. Compatibility increases asymmetry between the platforms' profit foci and, when the difference in the standalone utilities is sufficiently large, yields greater profits for both platforms. We further show that social welfare is greater under one-way compatibility than under incompatibility, and there exist no incentives for either platform to establish one-way compatibility the other way round. We investigate as well how factors such as different platform production costs, exclusive content, and endogenized royalty rates affect compatibility incentives.
Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49171
Can Marshall's Clusters Survive Globalization?
Abstract— It is widely presumed that in today's globalized economy, the value of geographic clustering of manufacturing industries is no longer valuable. Manufacturing is represented as a highly mobile "commodity" that can be sourced from anywhere in the world where factor costs are favorable. This paper re-examines this assumption and suggests that not all manufacturing is highly mobile. We suggest that manufacturing sectors should be viewed along a continuum from highly mobile to highly "sticky." Manufacturing clusters can decline for two completely different reasons. The first is a change in technology that reduces the value of co-location (stickiness). This tends to lead to the decoupling of design and production activities and to a broad geographic diffusion of manufacturing. The second is a shift in the relative comparative advantage of clusters located in one region versus another. Under this scenario, geographic concentration is still valuable, but the center of production activity can shift from one location to another. The paper then analyzes how firm supply chain strategies impact stickiness and the survival manufacturing clusters.
Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49178
Business Models-Nature and Benefits
Abstract— This paper considers the nature of the business model and its strategic relevance to negotiations. We elaborate a definition of the business model as decisions enforced by the authority of the firm; this definition builds on the analytical success of previous approaches while enabling the analysis of business models through the analysis of individual firm choices. We situate negotiation outcomes within the strategy literature by considering "ambivalent value," value produced by the interaction of two firms that does not necessarily accrue to either. The extent of "ambivalent value" is unclear, but its persistence despite changing structural features of the market promises to help sustain superior profits in the long run. We conclude with an exploration of ways in which a firm's business model may impact negotiation outcomes. Several of the proposed pathways work intuitively through the intrinsic characteristics of agents (motivation, personality, etc.) negotiating on behalf of the firm; others operate independently of these characteristics.
Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49196
Learning by Thinking: Overcoming the Bias for Action through Reflection.
Abstract— Research on learning has primarily focused on the role of doing (experience) in fostering progress over time. Drawing on literature in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, we propose that one of the critical components of learning is reflection, or the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience. In particular, we argue that purposeful reflection on one's accumulated experience leads to greater learning than the accumulation of additional experience. We explain this boost in learning through self-efficacy: reflection builds confidence in the ability to achieve a goal, which in turn translates into higher rates of learning. We test the resulting model experimentally, using a mixed-method design that combines two laboratory experiments with a field experiment conducted in a large business-process outsourcing company in India. We find that individuals who are given time to reflect on a task improve their performance at a greater rate than those who are given the same amount of time to practice with the same task. Our results also show that if individuals themselves are given the choice to either reflect or practice, they prefer to allocate their time to gaining more experience with the task-to the detriment of their learning.
Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=47062
Making a Difference: Leader Evaluation, Selection, and Impact
Abstract— The relationship between leader selection and impact is important to both researchers and practitioners. This paper introduces Leader Filtration Theory (LFT)-a theory from political science-to managerial audiences, applies it to organizations, and uses it to improve our understanding of leader selection and impact. While traditional theories of leader selection describe organizations as picking leaders with particular characteristics, LFT sees organizations as having a filtration process that evaluates a pool of candidates and iteratively removes them from the pool, with the odds of removal increasing the less similar a candidate is to a hypothetical ideal leader. The better the filtration process evaluates candidates, the more homogenous the pool becomes and the more similar the selected leader and the ideal leader are likely to be. Thoroughness of evaluation has three determinants: how much information exists about a candidate; how much of that information is accessible to organizational elites; and how heavily that information was weighted in the selection of the next leader. Individual, organizational, and contextual factors interact to influence these three determinants. Less evaluated leaders are likely to vary more in performance, produce more outlier performances, innovate more, and change their organizations more than highly evaluated ones.
Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49169
Cases & Course Materials
- Harvard Business School Case 815-114
Bloodbuy
In 2015, Chris Godfrey, founder and CEO of Bloodbuy, has to consider the best path to growth for his young company, which is attempting to disrupt the blood donation industry.
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/815114-PDF-ENG
- Harvard Business School Case 815-116
Medalogix
This case examines an exciting new approach to health care that will help care providers identify when hospice services are the appropriate type of care for patients. The company, Medalogix, already has a product on the market that uses a proprietary algorithm to consider dozens of factors and determine when a patient qualifies for a hospice care eligibility review. The product has started to gain traction, and the case explores how Medalogix can scale and disseminate its innovative product.
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/815116-PDF-ENG
- Harvard Business School Case 615-069
The I-PASS Patient Handoff Program
In 2015, the I-PASS Patient Handoff Program Team, led by six pediatricians around the U.S., had to determine the best way to disseminate their program that had been proven to reduce communication errors in patient handoffs in hospital settings. Should they turn it into a standalone business, continue publishing in academic journals, license their content to an established medical vendor, or some combination of these? This case allows students to develop and evaluate approaches to disseminating simple and proven innovations with complex service settings.
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/615069-PDF-ENG
- Harvard Business School Case 615-068
Twine Health
In late 2014, Dr. John Moore (CEO), Frank Moss (chairman), and Scott Gilroy (CTO) of Twine Health (Twine) had to resolve several challenges that threatened to restrict the widespread dissemination of its sole product, Twine. Twine was a cloud-based platform that enabled patients to create and manage chronic disease treatment plans in conjunction with their primary care providers and specialized coaches. Twine had already enjoyed impressive successes in early clinical trials and among early adopters. The issues Twine's leadership team had to address included identifying clinical care providers willing to pay for Twine, ensuring adoption and effective use by both patients and health care providers, adding capabilities to support the management of additional chronic diseases, and seamlessly integrating Twine with a client organization's electronic medical record (EMR) system and information technology (IT) infrastructure. The need to solve these problems had become more pressing since Twine was named a finalist in the Health Acceleration Challenge (HAC) sponsored by Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School.
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/615068-PDF-ENG
- Harvard Business School Case 315-054
AltSchool: School Reimagined
Max Ventilla and his team launches in 2013 AltSchool, a new network of tech-savvy independent K-8 "micro-schools." AltSchool is born out of Ventilla's frustration with the education options available for his young daughter. During his search, Ventilla comes to the conclusion that American schools are not adequately preparing students for the future. Ventilla leverages his network and his expertise in personalization developed during his time as a serial entrepreneur and a founding team member of Google+; he sets about recruiting engineers, educators, VC investors, and families to set in motion his mission to provide high-quality personalized education that will change the way parents, students, and educators experience the school day. Ventilla focuses on three aspects: 1) using technology to reduce operational costs of the traditional school; 2) intense focus on customer service and reframing school as a service for parents, teachers, and students; and 3) using technology and data in the classroom to create a continuous improvement cycle. As Ventilla and the AltSchool team wrap up their first year in operation, they reflect on lessons learned from their iterative process; they reflect on the best ways for the team to grow their network of schools, to demonstrate success to their investors, and to have an impact on changing education in America. The case gives students the opportunity to explore how an education technology company can build new education technology tools and alter school structures and funding models to set the stage for a new model for the education sector.
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/315054-PDF-ENG
- Harvard Business School Case 815-081
Solar Geoengineering
On December 8, 2013, as Dr. David Keith was leaving the set of the Colbert Show, he couldn't help but replay the interview over and over in his mind. Did he actually get his point of view on solar geoengineering across, or had he just added to the stereotype that he was more of a "mad scientist" than a scholar? Science knew, beyond doubt, that volcanoes cooled the planet by forcing sulfates high into the stratosphere. This cooling effect had been recorded in history over and over again. The question that Keith and many other climate scientists wanted to answer was, could humanity learn how to design, deploy, and manage similar cooling effects to manage the threats from climate change?
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/815081-PDF-ENG
- Harvard Business School Case 814-047
Carolinas HealthCare System: Consumer Analytics
In 2014, Dr. Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research and head of the Dickson Advanced Analytics (DA2) group at Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), successfully unified all analytics talent and resources into one group over a three-year period. Rapid increases in computing power and decreases in data storage costs had enabled DA2's data architects to build predictive models incorporating complex clinical, financial, demographic, and claims data that would have been impossible to create only a few years before. However, in 2014, both Apple and Google announced features in their new mobile operating systems that collected and displayed output from various health-wearables (like heart-rate monitors or step-counters), as well as electronic medical record (EMR) data. Their expertise in analytics, access to demographic and location data, as well as large consumer bases, led Dulin to consider which players consumers would trust to integrate their healthcare data in the future and what role DA2 could play.
Purchase this case:
https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/515060-PDF-ENG