Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School (2024)

By: Jason B. Liu, Robert S. Kaplan, David W. Bates, Mario O. Edelen, Rachel C. Sisodia and Andrea L. Pusic

• June 12, 2024 |
• Article |
• NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery

This article describes the strategies that leaders at the Mass General Brigham (MGB) health system have used in launching a standardized patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) collection program in 2012, a major step in the value-based transformation of health care. This article documents many benefits to patients, clinicians, and payers from the effective design, collection, and use of PROMs. These benefits include shared decision-making aligned to patients’ goals; improving patient expectations about their likely experiences and outcomes from treatment; empowering patients to self-monitor during recovery; facilitating communication between physicians and patients about what matters most to patients; enhancing treatment by having PROMs embedded in the patients’ electronic health record; and reducing disparities in access, treatment, and outcomes for previously underserved racial and ethnic groups. For payers, PROMs allow payments to be based on patient outcomes. By continuously answering each stakeholder’s “what’s in it for me” question, MGB has taken an important step toward building a learning health system to equitably achieve health outcomes that align with patients’ goals for their health. Working together, the MGB PROMs Program and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value, and Experience Center, a transdisciplinary PROMs research hub, plan to continue their efforts to improve and expand the use of PROMs to accelerate the shift toward accountable, patient-centered care.

• June 2024 |
• Teaching Note |
• Faculty Research

Miami-Dade County led the work to get South Florida designated a national climate resilience tech hub, the only one of 31 focused on climate change, an urgent major issue for the region in light of global warming and sea level rise. Venture capitalists saw the potential but not many investable ventures; some entrepreneurs created scalable ventures but without much regional support; economic development agencies were not yet fully building the ecosystem or just getting started. Most wanted more from government, higher education, and others. The label “climate tech hub” had to be backed by specific proposals to attract available funding. What are the gaps and missing ingredients? What actions might fill the gaps?

• June 2024 |
• Case |
• Faculty Research

This case asks how startup founders make scaling decisions in light of their priorities for their business and for themselves. Otto was a technology company that applied artificial intelligence technology to sales. It deployed natural language processing to find sales targets for companies, write messages for those targets, and send them over email, social media, and other means. Otto's automated sales outreach was personalized at scale and improved results for its clients. Early in 2024, its founders had to decide how to scale their business. They had three options: they could focus on business-to-business sales for individual clients, which posed the specific challenge of growing while working with large customer organizations; they could concentrate on the financial services field, in which they sourced deals for private equity companies and investment banks; or they could sell Otto to a larger sales firm.

• June 2024 |
• Supplement |
• Faculty Research

• June 2024 |
• Supplement |
• Faculty Research

• June 2024 |
• Case |
• Faculty Research

This case explores the fundamental challenges and accounting issues arising from the integration of blockchain technology into traditional business models. It features Wemade, a South Korean online gaming company that has staked its future on blockchain-based games. These games are designed for players to explicitly earn cryptocurrency rewards, which can be converted into cash or in-game non-fungible tokens. At the heart of this venture is the exploration of trust—a critical element that blockchain technology promises to enhance through transparency, security, and decentralization. The launch of the MIR4 Global game on WEMIX, Wemade’s blockchain platform, turned the company from a minor force into a pioneer; within a few months of its release, the company’s market capitalization rose tenfold. However, operating in a developing regulatory environment, Wemade suffered a series of scandals that resulted in the undoing of almost all of its growth the following year: it failed to disclose that it had sold its WEMIX cryptocurrency to fund an ambitious mergers and acquisitions strategy; it misclassified WEMIX coin liquidation proceeds as revenue, leading to a restatement; and every major South Korean crypto exchange delisted its WEMIX coin, claiming inadequate disclosures about the coin by the company. How could Wemade’s chief executive, Chang Hyun-Guk, rebuild the trust that was lost? What lessons should he take away about the benefits and challenges of introducing blockchain technology and crypto to the business?

• June 2024 |
• Supplement |
• Faculty Research

• June 2024 |
• Background Note |
• Faculty Research