Publications

August 1995 (Revised June 1997)
Case

Hillcrest Research Associates, Inc.

Hillcrest designs and administers testing procedures for drugs to determine whether they pass FDA specifications. As the company grows, it encounters problems with information technology and with the clinical research associates, who feel pressured to report more... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Information Technology; Health Testing and Trials; Pharmaceutical Industry

February 2003
Exercise

Restructuring the U.S. Steel Industry: Spreadsheet Exercise

By: William E. Fruhan Jr.

Description of an EXCEL spreadsheet exercise to test the impact of changes in wage rates on the value of debt and equity securities. View Details

Keywords: Equity; Debt Securities; Valuation; Wages; Restructuring; Steel Industry

18 Aug 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Business Plan Contest: 15 Years of Building Better Entrepreneurs

An online shipping platform that uses social networks and smartphones. Low-cost medical care and monitoring that helps seniors to live at home. The "Skype" of broadband, offering free Internet service. On an April morning known as "Super Saturday," 63 student teams... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

September 1995 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Loblaw Companies Limited: Differentiation in the 90s and Beyond

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Thomas N. Urban Jr and Jane L. Wertz

Loblaw wants to develop long-term relationships with its customers and is testing a variety of strategies to do this. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business or Company Management; Marketing Strategy

September 2012
Article

Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy

By: A. G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin, Jan W. Rivkin and Nicolaj Siggelkow

For all its emphasis on data and number crunching, conventional strategic planning is not actually scientific. It lacks the hypothesis generation and testing that's at the heart of the scientific method. To produce novel and successful strategies, teams need to adopt a... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Science

2007
Chapter

Legal Origin vs. the Politics of Creditor Rights: Bond Markets in Brazil, 1850-2002

By: Aldo Musacchio

This paper explores the question: Do institutions persist over time and determine current economic outcomes? Specifically, does the adoption or inheritance of a legal tradition in the past determine the subsequent course of institutional and financial development? This... View Details

Keywords: History; Rights; Common Law; Code Law; Financial Markets; Credit; Economy; Government and Politics; Financial Services Industry

31 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Do Measures of Financial Constraints Measure Financial Constraints?

Keywords: by Joan Farre-Mensa & Alexander Ljungqvist

October 2015
Case

DPDHL Group: Employee Safety and Wellbeing

By: John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Management at Deutsche Post DHL Group is designing a three-country test of investment in a new health and wellbeing strategy. View Details

Keywords: Health; Wellbeing; Wellness; Safety; Risk; Employees; Human Resources; Risk Management; Service Industry; China; Mexico; Middle East

2016
Book

Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work

By: Joseph L. Badaracco

Part of a manager's job is making tough calls, and the hardest challenge can be resolving "gray area” problems—situations in which analysis of the numbers, facts, and data fails to provide a clear answer. Gray areas test not only managers’ skills but also their... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Decision Choices and Conditions

29 Jun 2009
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Leading Change

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions To Be Answered: How do I build my business in this environment? What should leaders communicate? My organization doesn't... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

Article

National Trends in the Safety Performance of Electronic Health Record Systems From 2009 to 2018

By: David Classen, A Jay Holmgren, Zoe Co, Lisa Newmark, Diane Seger, Melissa Danforth and David Bates

Importance Despite the broad adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems across the continuum of care, safety problems persist. Objective To measure the safety performance of operational EHRs in hospitals across the country during a 10-year period. Design,... View Details

Keywords: Electronic Health Record Systems; Health Care and Treatment; Information Technology; Performance; Safety; Measurement and Metrics; United States

Read Now

July 2007 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Andrea Jung: Empowering Avon Women (A)

By: William W. George, Diana Mayer and Andrew N. McLean

In October 2005 Andrea Jung is coping with a 30% decline in Avon's stock price--the biggest test of her leadership since she became CEO in 2000. View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Price; Stocks; Crisis Management; Gender

01 Dec 2003
Research & Ideas

Sometimes Success Begins at Failure

In the late 1980s, scientists for New York City-based drug-maker Pfizer began testing what was then known as compound UK-92,480 for the treatment of angina. Although UK-92,480 seemed promising in the lab and in animal tests, the compound... View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough; Health; Pharmaceutical

June 2004
Article

A Catering Theory of Dividends

By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler

We propose that the decision to pay dividends is driven by prevailing investor demand for dividend payers. Managers cater to investors by paying dividends when investors put a stock price premium on payers, and by not paying when investors prefer nonpayers. To test... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Catering; Financial Instruments; Investment Return; Business and Shareholder Relations

Read Now

April 2020 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Singapore: 'Facing Challenges Together'

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

Since its expulsion from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore had transformed itself from a third world island nation into a vibrant city-state with one of the highest levels of GDP per capita in the world. However, sluggish demand among Singapore's major trade partners began... View Details

July 2016
Supplement

Mahindra Tool: Project Economics

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Christopher Payton

The case describes Mahindra Lifespace Developers’ (MLDL), a unit of Indian conglomerate Mahindra and Mahindra, foray into the affordable housing segment. MLDL sees a huge opportunity in selling apartments to the burgeoning population of urban workers, which is badly... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Business Startups; Development Economics; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Housing; Emerging Markets; Business and Government Relations; Human Needs; Social Issues; Urban Development; Real Estate Industry; India

11 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

When Business Competition Harms Society

UCLA Anderson School, and Michael W. Toffel of Harvard Business School. In the quest to discover whether competition breeds unethical behavior, the researchers examined the vehicle emissions testing program in New York State, one of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Auto

November 2008 (Revised May 2011)
Case

David Neeleman: Flight Path of a Servant Leader (A)

By: William W. George and Matthew D. Breitfelder

David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue, is forced to confront a crisis in customer confidence following operational difficulties on February 14, 2007. This becomes a vital test of his leadership. View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Leadership; Crisis Management; Trust; Air Transportation Industry

March 2023
Case

MrBeast: Building a YouTube Empire

By: Anita Elberse and Oliver Band

Wednesday November 16, 2022 was a historic day in the ascent of Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, to the top echelon of YouTube creators. That day he became the YouTuber with the most subscribers ever—a total of 112 million. The meteoric rise of the 24-year-old... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Power and Influence; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry