Publications

29 Jul 2019
News

Finding (and Keeping) Your Company’s Soul

September 2003 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Direvo Biotech AG

Describes the financing and growth decisions facing Direvo, a young German biotech firm with a customer/partner that wants to become an investor. Also discusses the business model for Direvo's directed evolution technology, with applications in both industrial enzymes... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Decisions; Business Exit or Shutdown; Value; Business Startups; Biotechnology Industry; Germany

September 2021
Case

TAV Airports: Acquiring Almaty International

By: Juan Alcácer and Esel Çekin

The case opens in April 2020 with Sani Şener, CEO of TAV Airports, a vertically integrated regional airport operator headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, and his team discussing the pending acquisition of the Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan. The company had... View Details

Keywords: Airports; COVID-19 Pandemic; Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Bids and Bidding; Air Transportation Industry; Central Asia; Turkey

September 2010 (Revised April 2012)
Case

Better World Books

By: Michael I. Norton, Fiona Wilson, Jill Avery and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Better World Books, a young start-up, provides a socially conscious alternative to Amazon, collecting and selling used books to keep them out of the waste stream, while donating a portion of their profits to support global literacy efforts. The case presents an... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Online Technology; Retail Industry

10 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Commodity Busters: Be a Price Maker, Not a Price Taker

Insurance built a wonderful business by selecting relatively low-risk customers from among generally high-risk motorcyclists. Step 4: Keep it simple. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by mismanaging your own product View Details

Keywords: by Benson P. Shapiro

Article

Are You Suited for a Start-up?

By: Jeffrey Bussgang

Relative to established organizations, start-ups can be hard to figure out. What are the jobs to be done? The best entry points? How can you tell whether a company has potential for success and is the right fit for you? The author advises that you first assess... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Personal Characteristics; Job Search

Find at Harvard

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The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that... View Details

2010
Chapter

When Does Leadership Matter? A Contingent Opportunities View of CEO Leadership

By: Noam Wasserman, Nitin Nohria and Bharat Anand

There is by now a long-standing debate on the impact that CEOs have on company performance. Studies of leadership describe how CEOs can significantly impact company performance, while the "constraints" perspective argues that leaders are sufficiently constrained by... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Leadership; Performance Improvement; Research; Opportunities

June 2003
Case

In-N-Out Burger

By: Youngme E. Moon, Lucy Cummings, Sonali Sampat, Sam Thakarar and Kerry Herman

In-N-Out Burger is a fast-food chain with 171 company-owned locations in three states--California, Nevada, and Arizona. It has an extremely hardcore customer base and the company appears to be in good financial health. The primary issue in this case concerns expansion:... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Profit; Leadership Development; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Distribution; Expansion; Food and Beverage Industry; Arizona; California; Nevada

December 2014 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Susie Mulder at NIC+ZOE

By: David Fubini, Joshua Margolis and Kerry Herman

Susie Mulder must decide how to lead NIC+ZOE—the women's apparel brand she had recently joined as CEO—from its start-up phase into a disciplined growth phase. With growing revenues, a successful product line, and savvy private equity investors, NIC+ZOE seems perfectly... View Details

Keywords: Clothing; Fashion; Fashion Design; Leadership; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Private Equity; Decision Making; Apparel and Accessories Industry

19 Sep 2018
News

How To End Procrastination And Finish That Big Project

02 Sep 2014
News

Contextual Intelligence

January 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

ProfitLogic

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Michael J. Roberts and Taslim Pirmohamed

Describes an "application software" company that has been through several evolutions--from consulting firm to applications service provider (ASP). The firm has received significant venture funding to pursue the ASP model but this has not worked, at least at the time... View Details

Keywords: History; Business Model; Venture Capital; Cash Flow; Decision Choices and Conditions; Balanced Scorecard; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry

14 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing

Updated to clarify a failure rate figure included in an earlier version. When planning new products, companies often start by segmenting their markets and positioning their merchandise accordingly. This segmentation involves either... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Service; Consumer Products; Food & Beverage

01 Feb 2016
News

The Incredible Shrinking HQ

August 2002
Case

Trilogy University

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Paley

In early 2001, Trilogy Software faced a slowdown in its business, a large number of unsuccessful customer deployments, and an overall weakening in the enterprise software market. In response, the company revamped its business model and restructured the organization.... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Alignment; Restructuring; Organizational Structure; Change Management; Business Strategy; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Information Technology Industry

Richard Hamermesh was the MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. While at HBS Richard served as co-chair of the HBS Healthcare... View Details

Keywords: health care

August 2021
Case

Yummy: Delivering Value to Venezuela

By: Ayelet Israeli, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Carla Larangeira

By June 2021, Yummy had become Venezuela’s first and largest food delivery app and last-mile logistics company. In Caracas, the nation’s capital, Yummy held a 55% market share, while operations in other cities had already started to take place, including in three of... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Health Pandemics; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion