Publications

Sandra Sucher, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, is an internationally recognized trust researcher. The Power of Trust, her third book, is based on two decades of global research on how companies build stakeholder trust and how,... View Details

Keywords: apparel; banking; brokerage; clothing; fashion; financial services; furniture; hotels ＆ motels; retail financial services; retailing; service industry

April 2021 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Kitopi: The Brave New World of Cloud Kitchens

By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in February 2021 as Mohamad Ballout, co-founder and CEO of Kitopi, a Dubai-based managed cloud kitchen platform, is looking over the company’s 2020 results. Propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, delivery orders had been on the rise globally and dine-in... View Details

Keywords: Cloud Kitchens; Food; Operations; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Food and Beverage Industry; Middle East; North Africa

May 1994 (Revised January 1995)
Case

Warner Cable (A) and (B) (Condensed)

The new general manager of Warner Cable's Medford, Massachusetts complex faces a number of turnaround challenges in 1985, including service deficiencies, customer complaints, high turnover, and low employee morale. By 1988 he has turned the situation around, but some... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Style; Change Management; Performance Improvement; Telecommunications Industry; Massachusetts

Alan MacCormack is the MBA Class of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, a member of The Digital, Data, and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, and a core faculty member... View Details

Keywords: automotive; communications; computer; e-commerce industry; electronics; high technology; information technology industry; internet; semiconductor; software; telecommunications; venture capital industry

February 2022
Case

Toraya

By: Lauren Cohen and Akiko Kanno

Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was... View Details

Keywords: Branding; Luxury Brand; Succession; Family Business; Management Succession; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Marketing; Expansion; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Customer Satisfaction; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; Japan

September 2005
Case

IBM Network Technology (A) (Abridged)

By: Michael L. Tushman

An unconventional manager within IBM leads the creation of a business unit with multibillion-dollar potential, winning over customers and nudging the organization to make the changes needed to achieve dramatic growth. Exemplifies how organizational design and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Management Teams; Leadership Style; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Employees; Information Technology Industry

December 2003 (Revised May 2004)
Case

Grove Street Advisors

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner, Ann Leamon and Frank Angella

Grove Street Advisors, a manager of customized private equity investment products, has been very successful in its first five years. To grow, the group must decide whether to target smaller organizations, revive its coinvestment efforts, or enter the highly competitive... View Details

Keywords: Business Organization; Decision Choices and Conditions; Private Equity; Investment; Market Entry and Exit; Competitive Strategy

04 Nov 2015
News

How to use Facebook to maximize your business presence

Design-Driven Innovation

How to create innovations that customers do not expect, but that they eventually love? How to create products and services, that are so distinct from those that dominate the market and so inevitable that make people passionate?

In a context where everyone is... View Details

March 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Purolator Courier Ltd.

By: Rajiv Lal and Catherine Ross

On a fall day in September 2003, Robert Swanborough made his way down a thickly carpeted hallway in Purolator's headquarters in Toronto, Canada, toward a meeting with his two deputies. Several months earlier, Swanborough, then vice-president of Marketing, had been... View Details

Keywords: Conferences; Customer Focus and Relationships; Leading Change; Marketing Strategy; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Research; Segmentation; Canada

Research Summary

Overview

By: Ayelet Israeli

Professor Israeli utilizes econometric methods and field experiments to study data driven decision making in marketing context. Her research focuses on data-driven marketing, with an emphasis on how businesses can leverage their own data, customer data, and market data... View Details

Keywords: Channel Management; Pricing; Pricing Policies; Online Marketing; E-commerce; Analytics; Econometrics; Field Experiments; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; Value Of Data

Anthony Mayo

Tony Mayo is the Thomas S. Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator in the Organizational Behavior Unit of Harvard Business School (HBS). He currently teaches and serves as the course head for... View Details

Keywords: advertising; airline; education industry; nonprofit industry; publishing industry; service industry

Article

Elevate Employees, Don't Eliminate Them

By: Ryan W. Buell

The last major global shock—the 2008 recession—led to what economists call a “jobless recovery” as companies found they could get by with fewer employees. But post-pandemic, the author writes, managers should focus on changing employees’ roles instead. He has five key... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Customer Relationship Management; Interpersonal Communication; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

18 Feb 2019
Book

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

non-committal prices. That is, until Birchbox came along in 2010 with an innovative offer: Pay a monthly fee and receive a curated box of beauty samples by mail. “They said, ‘We're going to start off doing this one part of the customer... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Beauty & Cosmetics; Insurance; Service; Retail

May 1993 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Connor Formed Metal Products

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Donna B. Stoddard and Melinda Conrad

Connor Formed Metal Products was a small, privately owned manufacturer of custom metal springs and stampings. Since becoming president in 1984, Bob Sloss had implemented many changes to the company's organizational structure, management control systems, and information... View Details

Keywords: Private Ownership; Organizational Structure; Production; Change; Governance Controls; Information Technology; Manufacturing Industry

May 2007 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Netflix

By: Willy C. Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman and David Spinola

Reed Hastings founded Netflix with a vision to provide a home movie service that would do a better job satisfying customers than the traditional retail rental model. But as it encouraged challenges it underwent several major strategy shifts, ultimately developing a... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Film Entertainment; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Distribution Channels; Service Delivery; Renting or Rental; Competitive Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

September 1998 (Revised March 1999)
Case

Sun Microsystems and the N-tier Architecture

By: Richard L. Nolan and Kelley Porter

Sun Microsystems is a pioneer in networking computing. Sun's servers maintain a large market share and are considered highly scaleable. The case describes the n-tier architecture for building and managing large networks in which thousands of workers and customers are... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Business Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Information Technology Industry