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- October 2022 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
Driving Decarbonization at BMW
The case describes BMW’s electrification and decarbonization strategy, and how the company measured carbon emissions throughout the life cycle of its vehicles and used tools like carbon abatement cost curves to evaluate decarbonization opportunities. In mid-2022,... View Details
Keywords: Decarbonization; Climate Change; Environment; Sustainability; Carbon Accounting; Carbon; Carbon Abatement; Electric Vehicles; Automobiles; Transportation; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Management; Environmental Sustainability; Accounting; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Supply Chain; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Transportation Industry; Auto Industry; Battery Industry; Germany; China; United States; Europe
- October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
mPharma: Scaling Access to Affordable Primary Care in Africa
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo
mPharma hopes to scale up to create the largest pan-African healthcare company ever to provide much-needed primary care in retail pharmacies; a reliable, fairly priced supply of drugs; and micro-insurance for drugs. They must prioritize launching a telemedicine... View Details
Keywords: Africa; Pharmaceutical Companies; Pharmacy Benefit Manager; Health Care; Health Care And Treatment; Health Care Costs; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Entrepreneurship; Telehealth; Health Equity; Corporate Strategy; Social Entrepreneurship; Equity; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Product Launch; Customer Value and Value Chain; Social Enterprise; Multinational Firms and Management; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; Africa
- June 2022
- Article
A New Initiative to Track HIV Resource Allocation and Costs
By: Ryan McBain, AK Nandakumar, Michael Ruffner, Carlyn Mann, Mai Hijazi, Susanna Baker, Linden Morrison, Kalipso Chalkidou, Shufang Zhang, Iris Semini, Fern Terris-Prestholt, Steven Forsythe, Sarah Byakika, Joshua Musinguzi and Robert S. Kaplan
In early 2020, several global health institutions – including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS); United States Agency for International Development; and Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator at... View Details
- October 2022
- Article
It’s Not Just the Prices: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing for Initiation of Veno-Venous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation at Three International Sites—A Case Review
By: Michael Nurok, Vin Pellegrino, Marc Pineton de Chambrun, Jonathan Warsh, Meredith Young, Erik Dong, Neil Parrish, Syed Shehab, Alain Combes and Robert S. Kaplan
The United States spends more for intensive care units (ICUs) than do other high-income countries. We used time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) to analyze ICU costs for initiation of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for respiratory failure to estimate... View Details
- October 2022
- Article
When Does Moral Engagement Risk Triggering a Hypocrite Penalty?
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers
Society suffers when people stay silent on moral issues. Yet people who engage morally may appear hypocritical if they behave imperfectly themselves. Research reveals that hypocrites can—but do not always—trigger a “hypocrisy penalty,” whereby they are evaluated... View Details
- September 2022
- Background Note
On CUE: The Quest for Optimal Customer Unit Economics
By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
Startups are often evaluated by how well they perform on unit economics, defined as the ratio of a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) to acquisition costs (CAC). A common target for unit economics, advocated by many VCs and analysts, is 3:1 (i.e., LTV/CAC=3). While there... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Cost of Cardiac Stereotactic Body Radioablation Therapy versus Catheter Ablation for Treatment of Ventricular Tachycardia
By: Chen Wei, Michelle Boeck, Pierre C. Qian, Todd Vivenzio, Zoe Elizee, Jeremy S. Bredfeldt, Robert S. Kaplan, Usha Tedrow, Raymond Mak and Paul C. Zei
Cardiac SBRT is a novel way of treating refractory ventricular tachycardia (VT) that may be less costly than catheter ablation, owing to its noninvasive, outpatient nature. We applied time-driven activity-based costing to both procedures. The direct and total... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Experimentation and Start-up Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing
By: Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji
Recent scholarship has argued that experimentation should be the organizing principle for entrepreneurial strategy. Experimentation leads to organizational learning, which drives improvements in firm performance. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Giving a Buck or Making a Buck? Donations by Pharmaceutical Manufacturers to Independent Patient Assistance Charities
By: Leemore Dafny, Christopher Ody and Teresa Rokos
The federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits biopharmaceutical manufacturers from directly covering Medicare enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending for the drugs they manufacture, but manufacturers may donate to independent patient assistance charities and earmark donations... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Atlanta Ransomware Attack (A)
By: Amit Goldenberg and Julian Zlatev
This case describes the March 2018 Ransomware attack on the information technology (IT) systems of the city of Atlanta and the response by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and her administration. The case includes a brief background on Bottoms and her young administration at... View Details
Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Government and Politics; Government Administration; Information Technology; Cybersecurity; Information Management; Leadership; Management; Crisis Management; Management Teams; Negotiation; Risk and Uncertainty; Social Psychology; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Perspective; Power and Influence; Society; Public Administration Industry; United States; Georgia (state, US); Atlanta
- August 2022
- Supplement
Atlanta Ransomware Attack (B)
By: Amit Goldenberg and Julian Zlatev
This case describes the March 2018 Ransomware attack on the information technology (IT) systems of the city of Atlanta and the response by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and her administration. The case includes a brief background on Bottoms and her young administration at... View Details
Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Government and Politics; Government Administration; Information Technology; Cybersecurity; Information Management; Leadership; Management; Crisis Management; Management Teams; Negotiation; Risk and Uncertainty; Social Psychology; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Perspective; Power and Influence; Society; Public Administration Industry; United States; Atlanta; Georgia (state, US)
- August 2022 (Revised June 2024)
- Exercise
How Should Netflix Add an Ad-Supported Tier?
By: Elie Ofek and Olivier Toubia
In the summer of 2022, it became clear that Netflix would introduce an ad-supported tier alongside its existing subscription plans in the near future. Speculation abounded as to the details of the new tier: How many minutes of advertising would it include? What picture... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry
By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... View Details
Keywords: Government Regulation; Deregulation; Change Management; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Business History; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Labor; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Industry Structures; Operations; Strategy; Adaptation; Competition; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- August, 2022
- Article
Billing and Insurance-Related Administrative Costs: A Cross-National Analysis
By: Barak D. Richman, Robert S. Kaplan, Japees Kohli, Dennis Purcell, Mahek Shah, Igna Bonfrer, Brian Golden, Rosemary Hannam, Will Mitchell, Daniel Cehic, Garry Crispin and Kevin A. Schulman
Billing and insurance-related costs are a significant source of wasteful health care spending in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, but these administrative burdens vary across national systems. We executed a microlevel accounting of these... View Details
- July–August 2022
- Article
How Do Disadvantaged Groups Seek Information about Public Services? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Communication Technologies
By: Katerina Linos, Melissa Carlson, Laura Jakli, Nadia Dalma, Isabelle Cohen, Afroditi Veloudaki and Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis
Governments and NGOs are switching to phone- and Internet-based communication technologies to reduce costs and broaden access to public services. However, these technological shifts can backfire if they exacerbate administrative burden in high-need communities. We... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Sian Flowers: Fresher by Sea?
By: Willy C. Shih, Michael W. Toffel and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The setting for this case is the Sian Flowers, a company headquartered in Kitengela, Kenya that exports roses to predominantly Europe. Because cut flowers have a limited shelf life and consumers want them to retain their appearance for as long as possible, Sian or its... View Details
- Article
The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market
By: Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni
We estimate a structural model of broker choice to quantitatively decompose the value that institutional investors attach to broker services. Studying over 300 million institutional equity trades, we find that investors are sensitive to both explicit and implicit... View Details
- Article
When Hiring CEOs, Focus on Character
By: Aiyesha Dey
The author, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, has studied the ways in which the lifestyle behaviors of CEOs—in particular, materialism and a propensity for rule breaking—may spell trouble for a company. Her research, which includes looking at... View Details
- July 1, 2022
- Editorial
New Transparency Rule Helps Rein in Health Care Costs
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Cynthia A. Fisher
Over the last year, consumer prices have grown 60% faster than wages. Employers can help their employees contend with this high inflation by addressing a long-running source: health care costs. View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Banking on Transparency for the Poor: Experimental Evidence from India
By: Erica M. Field, Natalia Rigol, Charity M. Troyer Moore, Rohini Pande and Simone G. Schaner
Do information frictions limit the benefits of financial inclusion drives for the rural poor? We evaluate an experimental intervention among recently banked poor Indian women receiving government cash transfers via direct deposit. Treated women were provided automated... View Details