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January 2018
Case

Kids & Company: Entering the U.S.

By: Boris Groysberg, Matthew G. Preble and Katherine Connolly Baden

In April 2017, Victoria Sopik and Jennifer Nashmi, CEO and CFO (respectively) of Kids & Company, a Canadian childcare provider that they had co-founded in the early 2000s and developed into a nearly 100-unit enterprise, are discussing how the company should proceed... View Details

03 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 3

PublicationsLords of the Harvest: Symbolic Signaling and Regulatory Approval of Genetically Modified Organisms Authors:Shon R. Hiatt and Sangchan Park Publication:Best Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management (2010) Abstract Firms... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

27 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

Want a Happy Customer? Coordinate Sales and Marketing

The sales force can no longer passively accept and execute plans from marketing. Account managers, product managers, and advertising managers need to work together to protect profits and enhance volume in the harsh world of View Details

Keywords: by Benson Shapiro

21 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Free Isn’t Always Better: How Slack Holds Its Own Against Microsoft Teams

co-authors include 2021 graduates Kriti Gupta, Mehek Punatar, Poonam Sacheti, and Poorvi Vijay. Microsoft’s scale vs. Slack’s customer engagement On paper, Microsoft appears to have the upper hand. During the two-year period the case... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Information Technology; Technology

June 2004 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Zara: IT for Fast Fashion

In 2003, Zara's CIO must decide whether to upgrade the retailer's IT infrastructure and capabilities. At the time of the case, the company relies on an out-of-date operating system for its store terminals and has no full-time network in place across stores. Despite... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customer Value and Value Chain; Information Management; Infrastructure; Supply Chain Management; Information Technology; Retail Industry

26 Apr 2022
Book

What Does Your Business Stand For? Why Building Trust Starts with Purpose

that empowerment and collaboration are not just aspirations but achieved reality. Purpose goes from being a slogan to a set of lived principles. In the video below, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson explains the enormous challenge he faced in 2018 when a View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati

09 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 9, 2008

being born globally—chasing opportunities created by distance, learning to manage faraway operations, and hunting for the planet's best manufacturing locations, brightest talent, most willing investors, and most profitable View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

counterproductive. Companies should save the benchmarking surveys for commoditized processes or services. Benchmarking became popular several decades ago as part of the total quality management movement. An IBM executive defined it as... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

May 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

Willa Seldon at Tides Center (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker

Willa Seldon, an African-American woman with 16 years of for-profit experience, was hired as executive director of Tides Center, a nonprofit in San Francisco, CA. Tides Center was a fiscal sponsor dedicated to supporting individuals and groups working toward social... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Nonprofit Organizations; Transition; Change Management; Leadership Style; Performance; Customer Satisfaction; San Francisco

12 Apr 2016
First Look

April 12, 2016

member to discover how and whether his employees can speed up cleaning, checking, restocking, and refueling. Expert commentary comes from Atilla Korkmazoglu, president of ground handling and cargo operations at Celebi Aviation Holding, and Vikram Oberoi, View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: December 21

the period from 1996 to 2005 to test the hypothesized relationships. How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power and Timing in Redundant Communication Authors:P.M. Leonardi, T.B. Neeley, and E.M. Gerber... View Details

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

for tailgate redesigns—a response Honda executives and engineers hadn’t anticipated. 5. Keep it simple For McDonald and Bingham, simple practices are key to helping companies manage complexities. Chick-fil-A servers say “My pleasure!”... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

04 Apr 2011
HBS Case

Reinventing the National Geographic Society

emerging. Various units operated as independent fiefdoms. In 1998, Fahey was named CEO, and the task was clear: build an organization to thrive for the next 100 years. To do so, he "assembled a management team of diverse backgrounds... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

2011
Case

How Fast and Flexible Do You Want Your Information, Really?

By: Thomas H. Davenport and Jim Snabe

Almost all executives want more and faster information, and almost all companies are racing to provide it. What many of them are overlooking is that the real aim should not be faster information but faster decision making, and those aren't the same things. Executives... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Information; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Crisis Management

12 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 12, 2019

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55597 2019 Academy of Management Annals Turning Lead into Gold: How Do Entrepreneurs Mobilize Resources to Exploit Opportunities? By: Clough, David R., Tommy Pan Fang, Balagopal Vissa, and... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

21 Jan 2014
First Look

First Look: January 21

associated with the program rollout, we use both population based morbidity measures from the Demographic and Health Surveys and health facility based mortality data as reported in the national Health Management Information System. While... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2018
Case

First Utility Ltd.

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

At the end of 2017 First Utility Ltd. was the largest of the middle-tier domestic energy suppliers in the United Kingdom, serving 808,000 of the country’s 27 million households with electricity and gas. In Q1 2017 First Utility captured 3% market share. The company had... View Details

Keywords: Rapid Growth Stage; Power/Energy; Energy Efficiency Standards; Energy; Competition; Diversification; Acquisition; Expansion; Growth Management; Energy Industry; United Kingdom

November 2019
Case

DeepMap: Charting the Road Ahead for Autonomous Vehicles

By: Shane Greenstein and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2016, DeepMap developed high definition (HD) mapping software and localization services for Level 4+ autonomous vehicles. Traditional navigational maps were accurate to a few meters, which was sufficient for drivers but not for machine-driven vehicles that... View Details

Keywords: Mapping Software; Autonomous Vehicles; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Service Delivery; Global Range; Resource Allocation; Strategic Planning; Technology Industry; Auto Industry

Fall 2014
Article

How to Win in an Omnichannel World

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

The omnichannel environment presents new challenges and opportunities for both information and product fulfillment. While all retailers need to effectively and efficiently manage fulfillment and information provision, there are important nuances to how this happens,... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; United States