Publications

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April 2021
Case

Coca-Cola: Preparing for the Next 100 Years

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery and James Weber

In early 2020, James Quincey, the 14th chair of the 133-year old The Coca-Cola Company, was in the midst of a years-long transformation of Coca-Cola from being the leading carbonated soft drink (CSD) beverage company into a total beverage company. The company’s... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Diversification; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Environmental Sustainability; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

11 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

Is Amazon a Retailer, a Tech Firm, or a Media Company? How AI Can Help Investors Decide

industry lines as companies increasingly bring seemingly unrelated business lines together in unconventional ways. New research by Awada, Harvard Business School Professor Suraj Srinivasan, and doctoral student Paul J. Hamilton harnesses... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Real Estate; Financial Services; Retail

22 May 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Componential Theory of Creativity

Keywords: by Teresa M. Amabile

October 2012
Case

Designing a Culture of Collaboration at Lake Nona Medical City

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Sydney Ribot and Tiona Zuzul

Describes Lake Nona, a 7,000-acre residential and research cluster in central Florida, and its process and innovation culture, and Lake Nona Institute, the organization behind the planning and governance of this new eco-friendly community. Emphasis is placed on the... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Innovation; Health Care; Real Estate; Entrepreneurship; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Governance; Real Estate Industry; Florida

January 2014
Case

Tesco Group Food

By: Jose B. Alvarez, Damien P. McLoughlin and Mary Shelman

In 2010, the world's third largest retailer created a new centralized sourcing department for fresh food and store-brand grocery products in response to changes in global supply and to better meet the needs of a new multi-channel retail environment. The case, set in... View Details

Keywords: Food Retailing; Multichannel Retailing; Sustainable Supply Chains; Agribusiness; Food Marketing; Supply Chain Management; Marketing; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; United Kingdom

July 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

elBulli: The Taste of Innovation

By: Michael I. Norton, Julian Villanueva and Luc Wathieu

Ferran Adrià, chef at elBulli, the highest-ranked restaurant in the world for two consecutive years, faces two related decisions. First, Adrià and his team must continue to develop new and different dishes for the ground-breaking cuisine at elBulli to guarantee a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Creativity; Food and Beverage Industry; Spain

August 2005 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Polyphonic HMI: Mixing Music and Math

By: Anita Elberse, Jehoshua Eliashberg and Julian Villanueva

In 2003, Mike McCready, CEO of Barcelona-based Polyphonic HMI, was preparing to launch an artificial intelligence tool that could create significant value for music businesses. The technology, referred to as Hit Song Science (HSS), analyzed the mathematical... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Music Entertainment; Business History; Leadership; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Mathematical Methods; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

Deborah Winshel is a member of the Faculty of the Harvard Business School where she teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability to first year MBAs and executives.

Most recently, Deborah was a Managing Director and Global Head of Social Impact at... View Details

March 2020
Case

Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander... View Details

February 1992 (Revised January 2002)
Case

BMW: The 7-Series Project (A)

By: Gary P. Pisano

Explores BMW's decision about how to manufacture prototype vehicles. Historically, BMW's prototypes were handcrafted by highly skilled artisans in the company's shop. A proposal has been made to alter the process so that prototypes are made in a way that can better... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Research and Development; Design; Production; Strategy; Quality; Decision Making; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Germany

March 2001 (Revised August 2001)
Exercise

Ginny's Restaurant: An Introduction to Capital Investment Valuation

An individual is considering the development of a new restaurant. To make the decision, she uses NPV analysis to determine whether she should undertake the investment, and, if so, the optimal size of the investment. View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Decision Making; Business Startups

July 1999
Case

Restructuring General Motors North America (A): Pay-for-Performance

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Presents the new pay-for-performance scheme adopted by General Motors (GM) in its 1999 reorganization of its sales and marketing organization. Once in operation, many administrative problems developed requiring a reconsideration of the scheme's basic architecture. View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Compensation and Benefits; Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Auto Industry; North America

12 Nov 2019
Video

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, India’s largest biopharmaceutical company, explains how her firm developed over four years a new technology for making insulin, an essential... View Details

June 2023
Case

Launching Egypt’s First Digital Banking Platform: QNB Bebasata

By: Mark Egan, Billy Chan and Ahmed Dahawy

The leadership team at QNB Alahli, Egypt's second biggest private bank, looked back on their efforts to create a brand-new, fully digital banking platform since 2019. A digital-only banking service was unprecedented in Egypt, a country where over 90% of financial... View Details

Keywords: Digital Transformation; Banks and Banking; Innovation and Invention; Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Product Launch; Finance; Banking Industry; Egypt

March 1999 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Xerox: Book-In-Time

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Book-In-Time, developed at Xerox, can dramatically reduce the cost of printing "one" book. Combined with the possibilities of digital content storage and transmittal, the new technology has vast opportunities. Xerox needs a commercial plan. The case describes the state... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Distribution; Planning; Opportunities; Commercialization; Technology Adoption; Publishing Industry

December 1996 (Revised June 2003)
Case

Cynthia Hogan and the Birth of Novartis

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

An American woman heads an integration office for merger transition activities between two giant Swiss pharmaceutical companies. She needed to develop an implementation plan to shape the new global powerhouse. View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Organizational Design; Strategic Planning; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland; United States

July 1990 (Revised September 1995)
Case

Singapore TradeNet: A Tale of One City

Describes the development of a new information technology-based trade document administration environment for the city-state of Singapore. A considerable effort, involving many governmental and private sector organizations, results in a new set of practices and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Information Technology; Emerging Markets; Policy; Public Administration Industry; Singapore

Ananth Raman is a professor in the Technology and Operations Management area where he has taught courses on various aspects of Operational Excellence—supply chain management, technology and operations management, and service operations—to MBA students... View Details

Keywords: apparel; retailing; software

September 2021
Article

Trials and Terminations: Learning from Competitors' R&D Failures

By: Joshua L. Krieger

I analyze project continuation decisions where firms may resolve uncertainty through news about competitors' research and development (R&D) failures, as well as through their own results. I examine the trade-offs and interactions between product-market competition and... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Projects; Failure; Decision Making; Learning