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- October 2024
- Background Note
The Semiconductor Industry
By: Andy Wu, Steve Blank and Matt Higgins
The semiconductor industry powers modern technology, from consumer electronics to data centers. This background note explores the layers of the semiconductor inudstry value chain, including Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs), fabless companies, and foundries, while... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Supply Chain; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; United States; China; Taiwan
- September–October 2024
- Article
Should a Family Business Accept a Returning Daughter’s Radical Proposal?
By: John D. Macomber
A family-owned and controlled conglomerate in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, has to decide what titles and authority to give to a daughter who is being courted to leave a promising career in Europe to come back and join the business. The choices of role range from an... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
InfraCredit and the Project Inception Facility
By: John Macomber, Namrata Arora and Maagatha Kalavadakken
Around the world, large infrastructure projects are frequently stymied by the high cost and high uncertainty of the project inception phase: the research and engineering and planning prior to financial close and start of construction. Could there be a new kind of... View Details
- September 2024 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
River Remedy: Navigating Mississippi’s Medical Marijuana Market
By: Robin Greenwood, Richard S. Ruback and Robert Ialenti
MBA student William Chism, the founder of a fully integrated medical marijuana company based in Mississippi, must respond to a significant disruption in the fledgling industry. In late 2023, Rapid Analytics, one of two active licensed testing facilities, has its... View Details
Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Business Growth and Maturation; Forecasting and Prediction; Microeconomics; Local Range; Government Legislation; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Mississippi
- September 2024
- Exercise
Building an AI First Snack Company: A Hands-on Generative AI Exercise
By: Iavor I. Bojinov
Although the term 'Generative AI' (GenAI) is widely recognized, its practical application in daily workflows has yet to be understood. This exercise introduces students to GenAI tools, demonstrating how they can be seamlessly integrated into professional work practices... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
Zipline: Expanding the World's Largest Autonomous Drone Delivery Network
By: Tarun Khanna and George Gonzalez
Zipline initially established the world's largest logistics network in Rwanda and Ghana by delivering medical supplies to hospitals via automated drones from a centralized hub. The company is now looking to expand to the U.S. home delivery market and designed a... View Details
- August 2024
- Module Note
Mastering the Complete Strategy Landscape
By: David J. Collis
As CEO, whether of a large established firm or an entrepreneurial startup, you have the responsibility to craft a strategy capable of creating, capturing, and realizing value. And yet, too often, the holistic perspective required to integrate those discrete tasks gets... View Details
- July 2024
- Case
Board Director Dilemmas: Strategic Leadership
By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti
Professor John Michaels, a distinguished scholar of corporate strategy, has served on the Board of OmniCo, a diversified industrial giant, for four years. Three months ago, the Board appointed a new CEO, Andrew Bennett, to lead growth, develop a more cooperative... View Details
- July 2024
- Case
Knowledge-Enabled Financial Advice: Digital Transformation at Edward Jones
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan
Edward Jones, a wealth management advisory firm that prided itself on its interpersonal connections and face-to-face interactions, was eager to augment their services with AI capabilities. Built on 1-to-1 close-knit relationships, the firm had more than 15,000 offices... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Innovation And Strategy; Financial Advisors; Big Data; AI; Artificial Intelligence; Digital Strategy; Digitization; Financial Institutions; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Business Plan; Technological Innovation; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Communication Strategy; Transformation; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Customer Relationship Management; AI and Machine Learning; Financial Services Industry; St. Louis; Missouri; United States; Canada
- June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Cementos Argos in the U.S.: Go Big or Go Home?
By: Jorge Tamayo, Ruth Costas, Pedro Levindo and Karina Souza
In April 2011, Colombian group Cementos Argos had to decide on whether to double down its business in the U.S., amidst the U.S. cement industry’s lowest performance in 30 years. Argos— Colombia’s leading cement producer and one of the “jewels” of Grupo GEA, the... View Details
Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Organization; Business Subsidiaries; Talent and Talent Management; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Financial Crisis; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Strategy; Construction Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Latin America; South America; North and Central America; United States; Colombia
- June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard
By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad
Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the... View Details
Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Restructuring; Training; Supply Chain Management; Distribution; E-commerce; Business Model; Business Plan; Decision Choices and Conditions; Marketing Strategy; Alignment; Brands and Branding; Negotiation; Joint Ventures; Strategic Planning; Salesforce Management; Competition; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; India
- May 20, 2024
- Article
Porter’s Five Forces and Competitive Advantage in Web3
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Liang Wu
Competitive strategy — the art of crafting and executing plans to achieve an advantageous position in the market — is integral to any business, and especially relevant for platforms because it determines their ability to achieve network effects and scale. But web3... View Details
- May 2024
- Case
Choosing the Course of Passion: Brooke Boyarsky Pratt at knownwell
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz and Alexis Lefort
Brooke Boyarsky Pratt (HBS ’13) enjoyed considerable success in her early career, quickly climbing the ranks to associate partner at McKinsey, and later becoming an executive vice president at Berkadia, a Berkshire Hathaway portfolio company. Throughout these years,... View Details
- May 2024
- Article
Going Beyond the 'Self' in Self-control: Interpersonal Consequences of Commitment Strategies
By: Ariella S. Kristal and Julian Zlatev
Commitment strategies are effective mechanisms individuals can use to overcome self-control problems. Across seven studies (and two supplemental studies), we explore the negative interpersonal consequences of commitment strategy choice and use. In Study 1, using an... View Details
- April 2024
- Supplement
RHI Magnesita (B): Brick by Brick—Diversification?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, David M Wagner, Oliver Gassmann and Jordan Mitchell
In Part A, as of April 2017, Austria’s RHI, a backward integrated refractory company is still within the midst of merging with the next biggest competitor, Brazil’s Magnesita, while weighing options for future growth. Should the company pursue organic growth options... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
H2 Green Steel: A Clean-Tech Triple Play?
By: Debora L. Spar, Gunnar Trumbull, Henry Tao and Julia Comeau
At the end of 2023, the Swedish startup H2 Green Steel was mid-way through construction on an integrated steel plant in Northern Sweden that would use abundant local hydro power to create Europe’s first commercial-scale green steel. Their goal was to help European... View Details
- March 2024
- Case
Nomad: A License to Bank
By: Paul A. Gompers and Pedro Levindo
In late 2023, Lucas Vargas, CEO and co-founder of Nomad, a fintech that offered financial services in the United States for Brazilian residents, had to decide what to do to ensure the company’s continued expansion. Nomad launched its first product, a U.S. digital bank... View Details
Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Startups; Customer Satisfaction; Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Banks and Banking; Initial Public Offering; Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Ownership Stake; Innovation and Invention; Strategic Planning; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Expansion; Vertical Integration; Leadership; Law; Banking Industry; Technology Industry; Service Industry; Brazil; United States; North America; Latin America
- March 7, 2024
- Article
Integrating Digital Tools into Every Stage of Your Sales Strategy
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Georg Krentzel
In their growth and customer-acquisition activities, most companies now face twin challenges: understanding and responding to omni-channel buying behavior and doing that without inadvertently decreasing sales productivity. Thirty years ago, Peter Drucker noted that... View Details
- February 2024
- Module Note
Collaborate on the Core, Compete on the Edges
By: Frank Nagle
In the rapidly evolving environment of modern business, the digitization of economic activity and the ubiquitous integration of technology across industries are fundamentally altering how companies develop and implement strategy. The rise of digital technologies has... View Details
- February 2024
- Case
Does “Matter” Matter? Amazon and Open Standards in the Smart Home Industry
By: Frank Nagle
In early 2023, the smart home industry stood at a pivotal juncture. The recent launch of “Matter” version 1.0, an ambitious interoperability standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), promised to unify a fragmented market plagued by incompatible... View Details