Pick of the day

Emotional Manipulation By AI Companions

Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Kaan-Uğuralp

HBS Working Paper, 2025

AI-companion apps such as Replika, Chai, and Character.ai promise relational benefits—yet many boast session lengths that rival gaming platforms while suffering high long-run churn.

A New Framework For Reducing Healthcare Disparities

Susanna Gallani, Mary Witkowski, Lidia Moura, Katie Sonnefeldt

Article, 2025

Despite decades of initiatives to address healthcare inequities in the U.S., disparities across race, gender, geography, and income remain stubbornly persistent.

Employee Stress Is A Business Risk—Not An HR Problem

Marion Chomse, Lydia Roos, Reeva Misra, Ashley Whillans

Editorial, 2025

Workplace stress, on the rise for decades, has been treated by many organizations as a personal issue instead of a business-critical risk that merits executive oversight.

Don’t Let An AI Failure Harm Your Brand

Julian De Freitas

Article, 2025

How companies market their AI systems affects the repercussions they face when their products fail. Marketers must promote their AI products with potential failure in mind.

Balancing Engagement And Polarization: Multi-Objective Alignment Of News Content Using LLMs

Mengjie Cheng, Elie Ofek, Hema Yoganarasimhan

HBS Working Paper, 2025

We study how media firms can use LLMs to generate news content that aligns with multiple objectives—making content more engaging while maintaining a preferred level of polarization/slant consistent with the firm’s editorial policy.

Ideation With Generative AI—In Consumer Research And Beyond

Julian De Freitas, Gideon Nave, Stefano Puntoni

Article, 2025

The use of large language models (LLMs) in consumer research is rapidly evolving, with applications including synthetic data generation, data analysis, and more.

Why People Resist Embracing AI

Julian De Freitas

Article, 2025

The success of AI depends not only on its capabilities, which are becoming more advanced each day, but on people’s willingness to harness them.

Overcoming Barriers To Employee Ownership: Insights From Small And Medium-Sized Businesses

John Guzek, Ashley Whillans

Article, 2025

This research investigates the limited adoption of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) among small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.S.

AI Companions Reduce Loneliness

Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Uğuralp, Stefano Puntoni

Article, 2025

Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers in the domain of relationships, providing a potential coping solution to widescale societal loneliness.

Training Within Firms

Brayan Diaz, Andrea Neyra-Nazarrett, Julian Ramirez, Raffaella Sadun, Jorge Tamayo

HBS Working Paper, 2025

Training investments are essential for improving worker and firm productivity, yet their implementation is often hindered by low participation rates and insufficient worker engagement.

Advancing Personalization: How To Experiment, Learn & Optimize

Aurelie Lemmens, Jason Roos, Sebastian Gabel, Eva Ascarza, Hernan Bruno, Elea Feit, Brett Gordon, Ayelet Israeli, Carl Mela, Oded Netzer

Not in a Series, 2025

Personalization has become the heartbeat of modern marketing.

Communication Within Firms: Evidence From CEO Turnovers

Stephen Impink, Andrea Prat, Raffaella Sadun

Article, 2025

This paper uses novel, firm-level communication measures derived from communications metadata several months before and after a CEO transition for 102 firms to study whether and how this organizational event is reflected in employees’ communication flows.

The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment On Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork And Expertise

Fabrizio Dell'Acqua,Charles Ayoubi,Hila Lifshitz-Assaf,Raffaella Sadun,Ethan Mollick,Lilach Mollick,Yi Han,Jeff Goldman,Hari Nair,Stewart Taub,Karim Lakhani

HBS Working Paper, 2025

We examine how artificial intelligence transforms the core pillars of collaboration— performance, expertise sharing, and social engagement—through a pre-registered field experiment with 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble, a global consumer packaged goods company.

Strategy In An Era Of Abundant Expertise: How To Thrive When AI Makes Knowledge And Know-How Cheaper And Easier To Access

Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, John Corwin, Yang Li, Karim R. Lakhani

Editorial, 2025

AI is changing the cost and availability of expertise, and this will fundamentally alter how businesses organize and compete.

Prices And Concentration: A U-Shape? Theory And Evidence From Renewables

Michele Fioretti, Junnan He, Jorge Tamayo

HBS Working Paper, 2025

We show that when firms compete via supply functions, transferring high-cost capacity to the largest, most efficient firm—thereby diversifying its production technologies while increasing concentration—can lower prices by prompting the leader to expand output and competitors to aggressively defend market shares.

Learning to Cover: Online Learning And Optimization with Irreversible Decisions

Alexander Jacquillat, Michael Lingzhi Li

Not in a Series, 2024

We define an online learning and optimization problem with discrete and irreversible decisions contributing toward a coverage target.

Public Attitudes On Performance For Algorithmic And Human Decision-Makers

Kirk Bansak, Elisabeth Paulson

Article, 2024

This study explores public preferences for algorithmic and human decision-makers (DMs) in high-stakes contexts, how these preferences are shaped by performance metrics, and whether public evaluations of performance differ depending on the type of DM.

The Human Side Of The Future Of Work: Understanding The Role People Play In Shaping A Changing World

Jochen Menges, Lauren Howe, Erika Hall, Jon Jachimowicz, Sharon Parker, Riki Takeuchi, Abhijeet Vadera, Ashley Whillans, Susan Cohen

Article, 2024

For as long as there has been work, there has been a “future of work,” through humans’ ingenuity and drive to get things done easier, faster, and better.

Why Most Resist AI Companions

Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Stefano Puntoni, Julian De Freitas

HBS Working Paper, 2024

AI companion applications—designed to serve as synthetic interaction partners—have recently become capable enough to reduce loneliness, a growing public health concern.

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