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Why Western Digital Firms Have Failed in China

Harvard Business Review

However, they have all failed in China, the world’s largest digital market. Google, for example, has succeeded in dominating many foreign markets that have radically different political systems and cultures (including Indonesia, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia). (The imposing technological platforms developed for the U.S.

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When Human Judgment Works Well, and When it Doesn’t

Harvard Business Review

A number of people noted that Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman’s work, nicely summarized in his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow , influenced their thinking a great deal. .” This is true, and what’s amazing is that these are exactly the conditions under which algorithms do better than people. Why is this?

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How to Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

Harvard Business Review

Should we bring product A or B to market? Which marketing strategy should we use? ” The first step, then, is to use a checklist to minimize decision biases, much like the one suggested by Kahneman. In this case, you have to change your expectation, not your marketing strategy. Why is that?

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What Really Makes Customers Buy a Product

Harvard Business Review

But there is a touchpoint that is even more influential, which marketers rarely think about and almost never measure: observing what other customers actually do. Each person was asked to report their experiences during the week of a brand in one of four categories: mobile handsets, soft drinks, technology products, and electrical goods.

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The Persistence of the Innovator's Dilemma

Harvard Business Review

In 1995, a young Harvard Business School Professor co-authored an article in Harvard Business Review , "Disruptive Technology: Catching the Wave." The most punishing innovations, they argued, were the ones that were easy to dismiss at first blush — simple, affordable solutions that took root outside the mainstream market.

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Ethics for Technologists (and Facebook)

Harvard Business Review

The ongoing explosion of technologically-enabled business opportunities inherently expand the ethical dilemmas, quandaries and trade-offs managements will confront. Marketing experiments that might have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1995 might cost a couple of hundred dollars in 2015; maybe less.

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Why Companies Are Betting Against Big Ideas

Harvard Business Review

This idea of prospect theory, developed by Tversky and Kahneman and reported in a classic 1979 article (for which the Nobel prize was awarded) demonstrated that individuals do not make decisions rationally by selecting options with the highest expected value, because they are risk-averse and 'losses loom larger than gains.'.