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Article

Milestones in Marketing

By: John A. Quelch and Katherine Jocz

Marketing flourished in U.S. business schools in the prosperous years following World War II. Students preparing for assistant-product-manager positions at the likes of Procter & Gamble, Lever, and General Foods enrolled in courses in marketing management, management... View Details

Keywords: Education; Business History; Marketing; Practice

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November 2005 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Beijing Hualian

By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman

China's fifth largest domestic retailer faced intensifying competition from Wal-Mart and Carrefour with the opening of China's fast-growing retail market in January 2005. In response, Beijing Hualian developed a new "Family Store" format targeted at the nation's... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; China

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August 2000 (Revised November 2000)
Case

Building Brand Community on the Harley-Davidson Posse Ride

The second Harley-Davidson Posse Ride, a grueling 2,300 mile, 10-day trek from South Padre Island, Tex., to the Canadian Border is billed "for serious riders only." Harley Owner's Group (H.O.G.) Director Mike Keefe must decide whether this rolling rally deserves a... View Details

Keywords: Relationships; Customer Focus and Relationships; Brands and Branding; Motorcycle Industry; United States

27 Jun 2019
News

Long-Term Investing, Short-Term Thinking

July 2020
Case

Driving Transformation at the Majid Al Futtaim Group

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin

The case opens with Alain Bejjani, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) Holding, anticipating on the Group’s next phase in the multi-year transformation journey and reflecting on the initiatives he implemented to create the Group’s growth-oriented culture. Founded in 1995,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry; United Arab Emirates; Middle East; Dubai

November 2001
Case

Korea-Tender

By: Das Narayandas and Kate Attea

Korea-Tender is a closed-bidding auction company trying to break even and must select the best opportunity to increase membership and revenue. It can continue its current model with heavy advertising, try to modify its costs, or develop an additional business model... View Details

Keywords: Auctions; Business Model; Advertising; Business Startups; Problems and Challenges; Marketing Strategy; Revenue; Growth and Development Strategy

May 2022 (Revised June 2024)
Case

LOOP: Driving Change in Auto Insurance Pricing

By: Elie Ofek and Alicia Dadlani

John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Insurance Industry; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

Research Summary

Strategic Human Capital

My research focuses on the links between managerial background, job attributes, organizational/firm characteristics, and firm performance. Broadly speaking, I am interested in how a manager's skills, knowledge, connections, experiences, and other attributes... View Details

02 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Is 'Gut Feel' a Good Reason to Invest in a Startup?

investor how he chose investments, he rubbed his belly over and over, saying “I do that.” A blend of both Gut feel in investing may not be as random or capricious as it sounds, as Huang describes in the new research paper The Role of Investor Gut Feel in View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

November 1995
Background Note

Reengineering a Business Process

By: Richard L. Nolan and Thomas H. Davenport

Describes the six steps included in most reengineering initiatives: selecting the processes for reengineering; identifying change enablers; developing a business vision of process objectives; understanding and measuring existing processes; designing and prototyping the... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Change Management; Measurement and Metrics

Profile

Brittani Rettig

Your Twitter bio reads like that of a superhero ("Management consultant by day, fitness instructor & wellness blogger by night"). Can you tell us about your day and evening jobs? "By day I'm a manager at Deloitte... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Services; Health Care

Career Coach

Vanessa Wu

Vanessa is happy to support fellow students in exploring and navigating career options in management consulting and energy & sustainability space. Vanessa started her career as a consultant at BCG after graduating with a degree in... View Details

November 2019 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Indigo Agriculture: Harnessing Nature

By: Marco Iansiti, Michael W. Toffel and James Barnett

Indigo Agriculture used a digital-enabled research and development (R&D) process to launch its initial product, microbial coatings for agricultural seeds, which increase crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers. In doing so, the company developed direct... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Sequestration; Operations; Supply Chain; Social Enterprise; Product Development; Distribution Channels; Business Strategy; Digital Platforms; Environmental Sustainability; Science-Based Business; Climate Change; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States; Massachusetts

Web

2023 Reunion Presentations - Alumni

Recording Leveraging HBS Online for Social Impact in the Education Sector Senior Lecturer Monique Burns Thompson (MBA 1993) + More Info – Less Info HBS and the Harvard Graduate School of Education have partnered to develop a multi-course... View Details

26 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Tap into Top Talent with the HBS Leadership Fellows Program

around the country, and he credits the HBS Leadership Fellows Program as the springboard that launched his career. Now he is back at Harvard Business School as the Director of the Social Enterprise Initiative helping develop more leaders... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise

Profile

Fatima Albassam

In 2017, when Fatima Albassam was working in her home country of Saudi Arabia as a business development analyst for Saudi Aramco, she began making volunteer service trips to Jordan to support Syrian refugees. “While there,” Fatima says,... View Details

2012
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Shelly London and Ethics Education—'Strengthening Our Moral Compass'

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Anne Arlinghaus

Shelly London and Ethics Education — 'Strengthening Our Moral Compass' 2009 AL Fellow
Following a successful career as a Senior Vice President, Vice President, and Chief Communications Officer at two large corporate companies, Shelly London set out to promote... View Details

January 2000 (Revised February 2000)
Case

The HBS California Research Center

By: Ashish Nanda, Thomas J. DeLong and Scott D Landry

Harvard Business School's (HBS) California Research Center, a three-year experiment initiated in July 1997 to facilitate research, case-writing, and course development centered in the Silicon Valley Region, has been a "phenomenal success." In June 1999, HBS Dean Kim... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Success; Education Industry; San Francisco