Publications

October 2005
Case

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool 2005

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Mary L. Shelman

CEO Mayo Schmidt had just guided his firm through five difficult years. Survival had come with the difficult decision to change the 80-year-old agricultural cooperative into a Canadian business corporation. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) now faced the future with a... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Capital; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Demand and Consumers; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada

Find at Harvard

September 2002 (Revised August 2014)
Case

Cardinal Health (A): The Medicine Shoppe Acquisition

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Miguel Abecasis and Brenda Cheng

Robert Walter, the founder and CEO of Cardinal Health, a pharmaceutical distributor, is contemplating the purchase of Medicine Shoppe, a chain of apothecaries. The purchase might be construed as competition against his own drugstore customers. But one of its many... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Retail Industry

March 2001 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Merrill Lynch HOLDRS

By: Andre F. Perold and Simon E. Brown

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and HOLDRS (Holding Company Depositary Receipts) represent recent and highly successful capital market innovations. HOLDRS closely approximates a buy-and-hold strategy, and Merrill Lynch believes the product has significantly lower taxes... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Cost; Stocks; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Taxation; Innovation and Invention; Product; Success; Expansion

01 Dec 2007
News

Rediscovering America

a path to success in many schools. What business could survive if it didn’t have the resources to buy supplies and attract and retain quality employees? What retail store could motivate customers in a dingy, outmoded building where even... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

20 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

How Much Is Freedom Worth? For Gig Workers, a Lot.

considerations in choosing gig work, despite the lack of benefits and legal protections that other employees enjoy. Armed with data on 426,385 meal-delivery drivers working for DoorDash in California, Oberholzer-Gee, the Andreas Andresen Professor in the View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Technology

04 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

Bezos was still working on Wall Street. After decades of tax-free sales, ecommerce was just 11.4 percent of US retail sales in 2019, according to the Department of Commerce. Meanwhile, social media usage on the major platforms had been... View Details

Keywords: by Frank V. Cespedes

20 Mar 2007
First Look

First Look: March 20, 2007

Working PapersIncorporating Price and Inventory Endogeneity in Firm-Level Sales Forecasting Authors:Saravanan Kesavan, Vishal Gaur, and Ananth Raman Abstract As numerous papers have argued, sales, inventory, and gross margin for a View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

18 Oct 2021
Blog Post

How Much is Freedom Worth? For Gig Workers, a Lot.

considerations in choosing gig work, despite the lack of benefits and legal protections that other employees enjoy. Armed with data on 426,385 meal-delivery drivers working for DoorDash in California, Oberholzer-Gee, the Andreas Andresen Professor in the View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products

01 Jun 2012
News

Alumni Book Briefs

way to success, the first step, the authors say, is to take action now and learn on the way. They show how to determine the best strategy and tactics when the future is uncertain, how to minimize financial risk in every decision, and why... View Details

Keywords: Retail Trade; Retail Trade; Retail Trade; Retail Trade

December 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Boll & Branch

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Mel Martin

Boll & Branch is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. It was the first Fair-Trade Certified manufacturer of linens. The case provides background on the company, its start, business model, and evolution through 2019. View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Channels; Disruption; Business Model; Brands and Branding; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Retail Industry; United States; Canada

29 May 2013
Blog Post

It’s going to be a beautiful summer…

to the technology side of things. Specifically, I am interning in the Direct (dot com) Marketing group and working on developing an A/B testing and targeting strategy for the company. In simple terms, A/B testing is when you show part of... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

23 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 23, 2008

Chinese joint ventures annually, Hong Kong China Gas executives began extracting cross-border negotiating lessons from their 80 existing Chinese JVs. Chairman Alfred Chan and CEO Peter Wong knew that HKGC's growth strategy required... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 2000 (Revised December 2005)
Case

Garanti Bank: Transformation in Turkey

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Maximilian Martin and Daniel Galvin

Discusses the complete transformation and turnover in every division of Garanti Bank. Describes the multiple change projects managed and cross-cultural issues confronted during the 1990s and the organizational challenge of transforming Garanti Bank into one of Turkey's... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Private Ownership; Restructuring; Business Divisions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Culture; Change Management; Expansion; Corporate Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Projects; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Turkey

November 1999 (Revised June 2000)
Case

VerticalNet (www.verticalnet.com)

By: Das Narayandas

VerticalNet, a leading creator of targeted business-to-business vertical trade communities on the Internet, is trying to expand its model to facilitate e-commerce. Mark Walsh, the CEO of VerticalNet, has to decide how far he can extend the firm's business model without... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Decisions; Digital Platforms; Expansion; Internet and the Web