Faculty Research Online
HBS Working Knowledge is an online forum for innovation in business practice, offering a first look at new thinking from HBS faculty. Read the complete articles summarized below by visiting their Web links.
Behavioral Finance — Benefiting from Irrational Investors
Do investors really behave rationally? HBS professors Malcolm Baker, Joshua Coval, and Harvard University professor Jeremy Stein don’t think humans are such cold calculators. One proof: Individual and even institutional investors often give in to inertia and retain shares of unwanted stock. And therein lies an opportunity for investment managers and firms. See http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5648.html.
Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer
Apple’s iTunes music download service and illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) music downloads offer two contrasting approaches to delivering digital content to users. Can Apple and the recording industry seriously compete against free downloads? Do iTunes and P2P help each other in some ways? Associate Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell discusses recent research on competition in digital distribution. See http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5594.html.
Are Great Teams Less Productive?
While studying teamwork, Professor Amy Edmondson chanced upon a seeming paradox: Well-led teams appeared to make more mistakes than average teams. Could this be true? As it turns out, good teams, which value communication, report more errors. Edmondson and Sara Singer (Ph.D. ’07) explore this and other hidden barriers to organizational learning. See http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5588.html.
