Publications

Find at Harvard

27 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

How One Late Employee Can Hurt Your Business: Data from 25 Million Timecards

School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania to focus on retail operations, many considered the topic an "oxymoron." “The right labor needs to be available at the right time and store to match customers with products more... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Retail

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

competing in current or new markets (i.e., new customers and/or new geographies). [div class=infogram-embed data-id=_/ugHI2ETiABnZVxAuNYu9][/div] First Quadrant: Firms stay in the status quo or pre-COVID situation. As discussed earlier,... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

Is Performance-Based Pricing the Right Price for You?

Because pricing is such a difficult and complex arena, it has confounded sales and marketing executives and scholars for centuries. In no other marketing element is the two-sided conflict and cooperation... View Details

Keywords: by Benson Shapiro; Manufacturing

January 2003 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Endeavor-Determining A Growth Strategy

By: William A. Sahlman and Michael J. Roberts

Describes the progress of a nonprofit organization, Endeavor, focused on nurturing entrepreneurship in emerging markets. At the time of the case, it has successfully expanded to five Latin American countries and is contemplating the next phase in its growth.... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Nonprofit Organizations; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Policy; Growth and Development Strategy

07 Jul 2015
First Look

First Look: July 7, 2015

Successful Products for Emerging Markets By: Winter, Amos, and Vijay Govindarajan Abstract—Multinationals are starting to catch on to the logic of reverse innovation, in which products are designed first for consumers in low-income... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Leadership - Faculty & Research

Research This case explores Google leadership's decision to pursue its cloud gaming innovation, Google Stadia, following disappointing early uptake by premium videogamers, the segment of the market that Google had targeted. Google had... View Details

13 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Picture This: Why Online Image Searches Drive Purchases

Professor of Business at HBS, who is a coauthor of the new research. “Companies are finally coming to this realization and adjusting online search tools accordingly.” The market for AI technology in retail—and the promise of a more... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology; Consumer Products; Retail

November 1999 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Financing the Mozal Project

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Fuaad Qureshi

It is June 1997, and a team from the International Finance Corp. (IFC) is recommending that the board approve a $120 million investment in a $1.4 billion aluminum smelter in Mozambique, known as the Mozal project. Four factors make the investment controversial: it... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Capital Markets; Emerging Markets; Projects; Financial Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Developing Countries and Economies; Metals and Minerals; Financial Strategy; Government and Politics; International Finance; Infrastructure; Mozambique

November 2007
Article

If Private Equity Sized Up Your Business

By: Robert C. Pozen

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. As the dust settles on the recent frenzy of private equity deals (including... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Capital Structure; Private Equity; Investment Return; Governing and Advisory Boards; Executive Compensation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry

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Web

Human Behavior & Decision-Making - Faculty & Research

examines a way to offset such potentially deleterious effects—by focusing on time, a resource that tends to receive less attention than money but is equally ubiquitous in our daily lives. Across four experiments, we examine whether shifting focus onto View Details

January 1992 (Revised March 2006)
Case

The DAG Group

Chris Hackett and Val Rayzman have spent six months after graduating from business school exploring the possibility of building a chain of upscale drycleaners. This fragmented industry looked ripe for an innovative new entrant. Chris and Val have researched the... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Market Entry and Exit; Entrepreneurship; Acquisition; Service Industry

February 2013
Case

18 Months in a Startup: Zaggora.com

By: Tom Nicholas

The founders of Zaggora reflected back on a tumultuous year-and-a-half in which they had generated, from just $40,000 in personal savings, a multi-million dollar sportswear enterprise selling Hotpants to women. These were hotpants not of the 1960s hipster variety, but... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Brands and Branding; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Finance; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry

16 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Understanding the ‘Want’ vs. ’Should’ Decision

with Milkman and Rogers, they discuss their working paper "I'll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: Decreasing Impatience over Time in Online Grocery Orders," which looks at our tendency as consumers to choose... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Retail; Entertainment & Recreation

05 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

workers lack a college degree. Combining that data from Lightcast, a labor market analytics company, with approximately 20 million self-reported salary records on Glassdoor, the authors tracked how workers in these roles fared over five... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

17 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 17

style, and thus set prices that limit market penetration. The winning strategy diverges from this approach in almost every respect. When innovators develop products that people want to pull into their lives, they create View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2022
Case

GrowSari (A): Design for the Last Mile Customer

By: Brian Trelstad, Cam Carag and Michi Ferreol

Reymund (ER) Rollan and Shivapratim (Shiv) Choudhury, founders of the digital technology platform GrowSari, were at a crossroads. The feedback from their initial product roll-out were not what they had expected, and they needed to decide how to proceed. The pair,... View Details

Keywords: Fast Moving Consumer Goods; Product Launch; Information Technology; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Platforms; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Philippines