This series introduces D^3 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 pursuing research on the […]
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 D^3 Frontier Firm affiliate Shunyuan Zhang and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Every January, a familiar resolution makes the rounds: “This year, I’m going to read more novels.” You buy a couple of ambitious titles, maybe even join a book club, and for a few weeks it feels great, until life speeds up and the plot starts slipping. Who was that character who vanished for five chapters, […]
Workers have moved past the initial shock of Generative AI’s arrival. The tool is here, it’s accessible, and it might be open in one of your browser tabs right now. But a critical challenge remains: knowing that you should use AI is very different from knowing how to weave it into the complex, interconnected reality […]
Agentic AI has recently been moving through a period of heightened excitement and innovation, but empirical data on how these tools are actually being used has been scarce. The new study “The Adoption and Usage of AI Agents: Early Evidence from Perplexity,” by Jeremy Yang, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and […]