Publications

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10 May 2015
Blog Post

Brand Strategist Turns Entrepreneur

Becoming an entrepreneur wasn’t part of Desiree Stolar’s plan. A brand strategy and market research consultant, Desiree (MBA 2015) expected to hone her skills at HBS and then return to the field she loved. That all changed when her... View Details

2015
Working Paper

The U.S. Experiment with Fair Trade Laws: State Police Powers, Federal Antitrust, and the Politics of 'Fairness,' 1890-1938

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

Prior to the Great Depression and President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs, considerable pressure for antitrust revision came from trade associations of independent proprietors. A perhaps unlikely leader, Edna Gleason, organized California's retail pharmacists... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Fairness; Laws and Statutes; Supply and Industry; Business and Government Relations

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March 1983 (Revised November 1988)
Case

Michael Bregman

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Richard O. von Werssowetz

Michael Bregman has successfully opened pilot installations of two different restaurant concepts. He now must develop a strategy for growth, including decisions about fast or slow growth, use of company-owned versus franchised units, and how to use the different... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Framework; Growth and Development Strategy; Franchise Ownership; Expansion

July 2020
Case

Amanda and Kristen: Mented Cosmetics

By: Steven Rogers, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Alterrell Mills

The co-founders (Black HBS alumnae) of an e-commerce beauty startup explore the unmet needs within the beauty industry. This case study examines the entrepreneurial opportunities that come from identifying an underserved market, specifically within the Black community... View Details

September 1994
Case

BayFunds

By: Alvin J. Silk, Lisa Klein Pearo and Jamie Harper

In June, 1994, the Senior Vice President of BayBank's Investment Management Group is preparing a strategic plan for her organization's line of mutual funds. Sixteen months earlier, BayBank, Massachusetts's leading retail bank, had entered the mutual fund business by... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Investment Funds; Product Marketing; Integration; Financial Services Industry

04 Mar 2024
What Do You Think?

Do People Want to Work Anymore?

published an article that laid out two human resource strategies that we labeled the “cycle of success” and the “cycle of failure.” Our late colleague at HBS, Christopher Lovelock, wisely suggested we later consider the term “cycle of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

February 2000 (Revised October 2000)
Case

E-commerce at Williams-Sonoma

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Daniel Galvin

Describes Williams-Sonoma's development of a third channel of business on the Internet. Describes the strategies for managing changes in the organizational, operational, and technological structure of the company. The new e-commerce division confronts challenges posed... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Internet and the Web; Trade; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Operations; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; California

March 1995 (Revised April 1995)
Background Note

Scope of the Corporation, The

By: David J. Collis

Describes analyses that determine the appropriate limit to the scope of the firm. Examines both the production cost justification for firm diversification--economies of scope and shared resources, and the governance cost justification for including transactions inside... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Agency Theory; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Expansion

March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
Teaching Note

OpenInvest

By: Boris Vallee and Caitlin Reimers Brumme

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolio to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapon manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ... View Details

Keywords: Socially Responsible Investing; Investing For Impact; Robo-advisors; Investment; Values and Beliefs; Customization and Personalization; Technology; Financial Services Industry

Career Coach

Ryan Kennedy

Fellowship. Ryan also worked at a social enterprise that offers mortgages and retail banking for low-income populations in the U.S. Ryan started his career at Bain & Company, which included an externship at the Bridgespan Group. He... View Details

30 Jul 2019
Blog Post

Leadership That Defines you – Reflecting on my Time at HBS

just give you the playbook to business. I think it's one thing to know that going in, and quite another to experience it firsthand. 2. "Make sure your actual strategy matches your intended strategy." I took a class called... View Details

15 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 15, 2008

that expansions abroad reduce a firm's domestic activity, instead suggesting the opposite. The Finance Function in a Global Corporation Author:Mihir A. Desai Publication:HBS Centennial Issue. Harvard Business Review 86, nos. 7/8 (July -... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 1984
Case

Henkel Corp.: International Sealants Brand SISTA (A)

By: Robert J. Dolan

Corporate headquarters wishes to expand sales of a sealant product currently sold only in the West German market. Regional affiliates, operating on a profit center basis, are not enthusiastic about taking on the new product. The case describes the company's... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Globalization; Expansion; Profit; Conflict Management; Consumer Products Industry; Construction Industry; Europe; West Germany

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Marketing - Faculty & Research

for the 2022 John D. C. Little Award. They study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Their empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm... View Details

August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
Supplement

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (B)

By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in February 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the... View Details

Keywords: Grocery; Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Turkey

13 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 13, 2007

Working PapersAdding Bricks to Clicks: The Effects of Store Openings on Sales through Direct Channels Authors:Jill Avery, Mary Caravella, John Deighton, and Thomas Steenburgh Abstract We assess the effect of opening physical retail... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

February 2008 (Revised April 2010)
Case

The Globalization of East Asian Pop Music

By: Jordan Siegel and Yi Kwan Chu

This case on the globalization of East Asian pop music is useful for teaching concepts of regional business strategy and also of cultural arbitrage. Music companies in the case must examine why certain markets are clearly more profitable than others. They must also... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Globalization; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Business Strategy; Expansion; Music Industry; East Asia