Publications

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October 2014 (Revised May 2015)
Case

HandsOn Bay Area: Scaling Up Community Service

By: James Heskett

HandsOn Bay Area, an organization devoted to the performance of (and development of leaders for) community service, is undergoing a significant (and internally controversial) shift in its business model from "retail" projects involving individual volunteers to... View Details

October 2011
Case

Raleigh & Rosse: Measures to Motivate Exceptional Service

By: Robert Simons and Michael Mahoney

In January 2010, U.S. luxury goods retailer Raleigh & Rosse is being sued by its employees for encouraging "off the clock" hours. At the center of the class action lawsuit is the famous Raleigh & Rosse performance measurement system previously thought to be the core of... View Details

Keywords: Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Goal Setting; Compensation; Incentives; Motivation; Sales Compensation; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Growth Management; Lawsuits and Litigation; Organizational Culture; Management Systems; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Retail Industry; United States

16 Jul 2016
News

Angie’s List Introduces 'Freemium' Model

Angie’s List CEO Scott Durchslag (MBA 1991) has made many changes to the venerable home-service review website since taking the helm in September 2015, including the creation of a new technology platform for the site. He announced the biggest shift to date last week:... View Details

Keywords: News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services

April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Supplement

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (B)

By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin

Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details

Keywords: Laundry; O2O; Online-to-offline; Service Operations; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Service Industry; China

June 2013
Supplement

Multiasistencia: Redefining the Relationship with its Service Professionals. Spreadsheet Supplement

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Multiasistencia, a major Spanish BPO of insurance repairs, is changing the relational contract with its service profesionals from a referral model to a guaranteed workload one. View Details

Keywords: Outsourcing; Incentives; Relational Contracts; Business Model; Motivation and Incentives; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Contracts; Insurance Industry; Spain

January 2009 (Revised February 2009)
Case

F-Secure Corporation: Software as a Service (SaaS) in the Security Solutions Market

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Robert D. Austin, Kalle Lyytinen, Esko Penttinen and Timo Saarinen

Describes the development of a business model based on "software as a service" (SaaS) for security solution distributed through Internet Service Providers (ISPs). F-Secure disruptively entered a mature business with dominant players by executing an innovative new... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Service Delivery; Internet; Information Technology Industry

24 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Entrepreneurial Hospital Pioneers New Model

roll out a similar model beyond India—maybe even into Europe and the U.S. What's the secret? According to HBS professor Tarun Khanna, the success of the hospital, called Narayana Hrudayalaya, is due to the vision and tireless work of a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Case

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin

Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details

Keywords: Laundry; O2O; Online-to-offline; Business Model; Service Operations; Ownership Type; Digital Platforms; Transformation; China

Article

DEA Model with Shared Resources and Efficiency Decomposition

By: Yao Chen, Juan Du, H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has proved to be an excellent approach for measuring performance of decision making units (DMUs) that use multiple inputs to generate multiple outputs. In many real world scenarios, DMUs have a two-stage network process with shared input... View Details

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Efficiency; Intermediate Measure; Performance Efficiency

April 2021
Article

Today's Surgeon Compensation Models Fall Short: Aligning Incentives to Create More Equitable and Value-based Compensation Models

By: Susanna Gallani, Mary Witkowski, Lauren Haskins, Haley Jeffcoat, Vinita Mujumdar and Frank Opelka

Modern medicine is undergoing a transformation that involves innovative surgical approaches, increased medical treatment options, clinical care pathways that require collaboration beyond hospital walls, and health data captured by electronic health records and other... View Details

Keywords: Physician Compensation; Surgeons; Health Care and Treatment; Business Model; Compensation and Benefits

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16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

School. A book excerpt follows. Sarah Jane Gilbert: Your book focuses on how companies can profit, regardless of market conditions, by immersing themselves in the lives of their customers. Please describe the business model of looking... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

15 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

A New Model for Business: The Museum

by the bevy of choices and model numbers like "XPS 15x" and "VPCSB190X." But at Apple, they have only two aptly named laptop choices: the MacBook Air, which is lightweight and geared toward consumers, and the MacBook Pro, which is... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

April 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Ping An: Pioneering the New Model of ‘Technology-driven Finance’

By: Feng Zhu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai

In mid-December 2018, Peter Ma, Chairman and CEO of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. was considering whether the company should grow a fifth ecosystem of Smart City Services. Established in 1988, Ping An was one of the top 10 global financial... View Details

Keywords: Business Ecosystems; Fintech; Finance; Information Technology; Business Model; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

2008
Working Paper

Economic Factors Underlying the Unbundling of Advertising Agency Services

By: Mohammad Arzaghi, Ernst R. Berndt, James C. Davis and Alvin J. Silk

This paper addresses a longstanding puzzle involving the unbundling of services that has occurredover more than two decades in the U.S. advertising agency industry: How can the shift from the bundling to the unbundling of services be explained and what accounts for the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Framework; Service Operations; Decisions; Relationships; Price; Diversification; Geography; Cost; Advertising Industry; United States

Read Now

06 Jan 2015
News

Digital Business Models Should Have to Follow the Law, Too

December 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Managing Diversity at Cityside Financial Services

By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas

Cityside Financial Services, a disguised consumer bank, serves both a largely African-American urban community and a more affluent, predominantly white clientele. To match the gender and racial makeup of its staff to that of its customers, Cityside's sales division... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Situation or Environment; Race; Employees; Gender; Customer Satisfaction; Diversity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

Web

About Us - Research Computing Services

About Us Research Computing Services (RCS) is a centralized service that supports HBS faculty research with a staff of statisticians, data scientists, and experts in research computing. Read more about our... View Details

Fall 2016
Article

The Impact of Supplier Inventory Service Level on Retailer Demand

By: Nathan Craig, Nicole DeHoratius and Ananth Raman

To set inventory service levels, suppliers must understand how changes in inventory service level affect demand. We build on prior research, which uses analytical models and laboratory experiments to study the impact of a supplier’s service level on demand from... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Retail Industry