The Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard is now the Harvard Business School AI Institute.

Insights

Colorful digital market chart showcases rising business stocks, investment data, and financial profit graph, indicating successful entrepreneurial ventures and prosperous economic growth.

The AI Deep Research Race Has a New Leaderboard

A new cross-domain benchmark reveals how the leading AI research tools perform on real-world production tasks Listen to this article: Two AI-generated research reports land on your desk before a major decision. Both are polished, confidently written, and well-structured, but they reach different conclusions. Which one do you trust, and how would you even begin […]

HBS AI Institute Associates Spotlight Series: Elie Ofek and Julian De Freitas

This series introduces Harvard Business School AI Institute Associates Program projects which aim to answer important questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and digital technologies in business and society. This article shares insights from Elie Ofek, Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, Harvard Business School and Julian De Freitas, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, […]

HBS AI Institute Associates Spotlight Series: Dr. Livia Alfonsi

This series introduces Harvard Business School AI Institute Associates Program projects which aim to answer important questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and digital technologies in business and society. This article shares insights from Dr. Livia Alfonsi, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, whose research studies labor markets and the transition […]

HBS AI Institute Associates Spotlight Series: Alex Chan

This series introduces Harvard Business School AI Institute Associates Program projects which aim to answer important questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and digital technologies in business and society. This article shares insights from Alex Chan, Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School who is […]

Puzzled manager asking questions, AI chatbot on laptop provides answers, ideas, and puzzle piece solution.

The Manager’s AI Dilemma

How to design AI adoption so decision makers can say yes without self-sabotage Lots of organizations can green-light AI. Far fewer can absorb it. That gap, between excitement and real, embedded use, keeps showing up even when ROI is compelling and leadership is visibly supportive. New research from Harvard Business School AI Institute Frontier Firm […]

Computer user interacting with a chatbot

The Fast-Talking AI Chat Agent

New research shows when AI boosts service, and when it backfires. Think about the last time you contacted customer support. Did you start with a chatbot? If it failed to resolve your problem, how did you feel when transferred to a human agent? This dynamic defines our expectations of the modern customer service experience: the […]

Blue money bag on a computer chip

How AI Can Spot Your Next Billion-Dollar Idea

A new study shows how AI can influence the kind of innovation you end up funding. Many of us have started using AI as an “answer machine” to brainstorm ideas, analyze data, and pressure-test assumptions. You might even have a set of preferred prompts saved for just these purposes. But how often do you switch […]

The New Influence War: How AI Could Hack Democracy

What the rise of AI swarms reveals about the future of influence, information, and democratic resilience. Listen to this article: As we move into the era of agentic AI, what kind of influence will this emerging technology have on democracy and misinformation? In the new Science paper “How Malicious AI Swarms Can Threaten Democracy,” Amit […]

Call center staff working

The Power of AI Stopping Agents

When Machine Learning Meets Sales Psychology Listen to this article: Conventional sales wisdom treats persistence as virtue: stay in the conversation, overcome objections, keep the line alive. But recent research into the dynamics of sales conversations suggests that our bias toward persistence leads to a massive misallocation of resources. In “Learning When to Quit in […]

Is GenAI Heading for a Tech Monopoly?

New research on how the competitive dynamics that created early tech giants may not repeat in the age of generative AI. For the last two decades, businesses have operated under the shadow of the Web 2.0 era, where a handful of giants like Google built unassailable tech fortresses. Now, as generative AI transforms every industry, […]

Engage With Us

Join Our Community

Ready to dive deeper with the HBS AI Institute? Subscribe to our newsletter, contribute to the conversation and begin to invent the future for yourself, your business and society as a whole.