Publications

March 1987 (Revised January 1988)
Case

Paul Revere Insurance Co. (B)

Describes a program of value-analysis workshops undertaken by this company as part of its massive effort to regain the number one position in its industry. The value-analysis workshops are the second half of the company's two-part Quality Has Value process. The focus... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Valuation; Competitive Strategy; Insurance Industry; United States

12 Mar 2024
HBS Case

How Used Products Can Unlock New Markets: Lessons from Apple's Refurbished iPhones

Some of Apple’s most loyal customers think nothing of upgrading to the latest iPhone every time one comes out. But what about consumers who can’t splurge on a $1,000 iPhone 15 Pro? And what about the electronic waste that would accrue if people threw away functional... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Electronics; Information Technology

Web

Class Profile - Doctoral

Education 89 Undergraduate Institutions GMAT & GRE All applicants are required to take either the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) or the General Test of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). The admissions committee does not... View Details

2011
Working Paper

The Impact of Horizontal Mergers and Acquisitions in Price Competition Models

The question of what impact mergers and acquisitions have on key equilibrium performance measures is fundamental to our understanding of competitive dynamics in an oligopolistic industry. We address these questions in the context of price competition models with... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost; Price; Profit; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Performance Efficiency; Mathematical Methods; Competition

February 2014
Case

BGI: Data-driven Research

By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai

BGI has the largest installed gene-sequencing capacity in the world, and to Zhang Gengyun, general manager of the Life Sciences Division, this represented an opportunity to apply his training as a plant breeder and his early career work as a biochemist to improving... View Details

20 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Creating a Positive Professional Image

stereotypes while also demonstrating competence, character, and commitment, there is promising news for creating your professional image! Impression management strategies enable you to explain predicaments, counter devaluation, and... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark

June 2001
Teaching Note

Coordinating + Managing Supply Chains: Course Overview Note TN

By: Ananth Raman

Describes the MBA elective course on supply chain management at HBS. Coordinating and Managing Supply Chains focuses on the managerial aspects of supply chains. Acquaints students with practical issues in a variety of supply chains and then identifies barriers to, and... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Framework; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Management Practices and Processes; Managerial Roles; Marketing; Supply Chain Management; Performance Improvement; Planning; Behavior; Integration

April 1994 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Frito-Lay, Inc.: A Strategic Transition (1990-1992)

By: Lynda M. Applegate

Describes the changes in structure, management systems, people, and processes instituted by the company. Provides students with an opportunity to explore the nature of "IT-enabled" organizational change and the process through which it is implemented. Also enables a... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology; Business Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry

February 2010
Supplement

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Market Size and Market Share Analysis (CW)

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery

This Excel worksheet contains sample problems, prebuilt Excel models to run market sizing and market share analyses, and charts and graphs which help visualize the results. It is designed to accompany Marketing Analysis Tookit: Market Size and Market Share Analysis.... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Marketing Strategy; Decisions; Strategic Planning; Market Participation; Sales; Forecasting and Prediction; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

November 2022
Case

The Battle Among Channels for Marketing Pharmaceuticals: UpScript, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, and Direct-to-Consumer Sales

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Tiffany Farrell

Can an online, direct-to-consumer pharmacy both improve the quality and speed of care for patients who need branded drugs and stabilize profits for pharmaceutical manufacturers? UpScript, after years spent achieving legal and regulatory compliance and simultaneous... View Details

Keywords: DTC; Internet and the Web; Marketing Channels; Customer Value and Value Chain; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Strategy; Service Delivery; Growth and Development Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; Retail Industry

Dorothy Leonard*, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita, joined the Harvard faculty in 1983 after teaching for three years at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has taught MBA courses in... View Details

Keywords: computer; consulting; education industry; electronics; federal government; high technology; information technology industry; software; venture capital industry

September – October 2011
Article

The Rise and Consequences of Corporate Sustainability Reporting

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

For many decades the cornerstone of corporate reporting has been financial information that is presented in a company's annual, semi-annual, and quarterly reports. These comprehensive financial reports—required by law for public companies in most countries... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; ESG Reporting; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Annual Reports; Operations; Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Performance; Business Model; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Disclosure

2012
Article

Organization Design for Business Ecosystems

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The modern corporation has long been the central focus of the field of organization design. Such firms can be likened to nation-states: they have boundaries that circumscribe citizen-employees, and they engage in production and trade. But individual corporations are... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Business Ecosystems; Distributed Innovation; Problem Solving; Property Rights; Organization Design; Networks; Integration; Competition; Organizational Design; Innovation and Management

Web

Organizational Behavior - Faculty & Research

building the right team, mobilizing resources and capabilities, and making big-bet decisions. Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy ; Leadership ; Innovation Strategy ; Consumer Products Industry... View Details

January 2009 (Revised January 2010)
Case

Responding to the Wii?

By: Andrei Hagiu and Hanna Halaburda

After years of gaming console industry leadership, how should Sony respond to the overwhelming success of competitor Nintendo's user-friendly Wii over Sony's high-tech PlayStation 3? It was August 2008 and Kazuo Hirai, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment... View Details

Keywords: Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Two-Sided Platforms; Industry Structures; Competitive Strategy; Electronics Industry; Video Game Industry

2024
Working Paper

Incrementality Representation Learning: Synergizing Past Experiments for Intervention Personalization

By: Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

This paper introduces Incrementality Representation Learning (IRL), a novel multitask representation learning framework that predicts heterogeneous causal effects of marketing interventions. By leveraging past experiments, IRL efficiently designs and targets... View Details

Keywords: Heterogeneous Treatment Effect; Multi-task Learning; Representation Learning; Personalization; Promotion; Deep Learning; Field Experiments; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customization and Personalization

SSRN

July–August 2020
Article

Price Bargaining and Competition in Online Platforms: An Empirical Analysis of the Daily Deal Market

By: Lingling Zhang and Doug J. Chung

The prevalence of online platforms opens new doors to traditional businesses for customer reach and revenue growth. This research investigates platform choice in a setting where prices are determined by negotiations between platforms and businesses. We compile a unique... View Details

Keywords: Business-to-business Marketing; Platform Competition; Two-Sided Markets; Price Bargaining; Daily Deals; Structural Model; Digital Platforms; Competition; Price; Negotiation

Find at Harvard

04 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 4

undermined enforcement. Then we show how, in each of these dimensions, regulation and enforcement are becoming realigned or recoupled over time. We show how this results from (a) a change in national development strategy to focus more on... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2002 (Revised July 2004)
Case

RWE and the Proposal for a German Electricity Regulator

In April 2001, Dietmar Kuhnt, CEO of the German energy giant RWE, had to make a decision that would affect his company's future. Profits in the electricity sector depended heavily on regulatory rules that influenced industry structure and pricing. RWE had emerged... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Governance Compliance; Business Strategy; Energy Industry; Germany