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- October 2023
- Case
To Fizzle Out or Heat Up? PepsiCo and Coca-Cola’s SodaStream and Costa Coffee Acquisitions
By: David Collis and Haisley Wert
U.S. beverage giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola shared many similarities by August 2018—both were founded by pharmacists in the 1890s, grew to offer hundreds of drink brands, and championed rival flagship products that drove loyalists into taste-testing wars. That month,... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing
By: George Serafeim, Siko Sikochi and Namrata Arora
The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an estimated 700,000... View Details
Keywords: Clean Tech; Digital; Carbon Credits; Carbon Offsetting; Climate Change; Entrepreneurship; Energy Sources; Environmental Sustainability; Health; Market Design; Business Startups; Transition; Environmental Regulation; Policy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Africa; Kenya; Rwanda
- October 2023
- Case
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: A Curriculum Provider Puts Itself on the Hook for Student Outcomes
By: John J-H Kim, Derek C. M. van Bever, Michael Norris and Max Hancock
Jack Lynch, CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) since 2017, was leading the company’s transformation from a legacy textbook publisher to a digital-first student outcomes provider, which earned subscription revenue from digital products and curriculum. In 2023, HMH... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Why Do Index Funds Have Market Power? Quantifying Frictions in the Index Fund Market
By: Zach Y. Brown, Mark Egan, Jihye Jeon, Chuqing Jin and Alex A. Wu
Index funds are one of the most common ways investors access financial markets and are perceived to be a transparent and low-cost alternative to active investment management. Despite these purported virtues of index fund investing and the introduction of new products... View Details
- October 2023
- Case
Leading Transformation at IHCL
By: Krishna G. Palepu, V.G. Narayanan and Malini Sen
In November 2017, Puneet Chhatwal, took charge as MD and CEO of IHCL, popularly referred to as the Taj Hotels. Despite being India’s largest hospitality company by market capitalization and respected for its values and service, IHCL had made losses for the last seven... View Details
- October 2023
- Case
Shredder Setups or Straightlining into Risk?: Investing in What You Love
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Bob Hall, President of Green Gables Partners, evaluated whether to angel invest into an up-and-coming ski brand. As the son-in-law of the founder of Vera Bradley and having retired from a lengthy career on Wall Street, Hall was well-versed in both direct investing and... View Details
Keywords: Family Office; Angel Investors; Direct Investment; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Small Business; Financial Strategy; Personal Finance; Investment Portfolio; Private Equity; Decision Choices and Conditions; Risk and Uncertainty; Consumer Products Industry; Montana; United States
- October 2023 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Thermo Fisher Scientific: Foray into Contract Research
By: Satish Tadikonda, William Marks and Kevin Emancipator
After publicly declaring that they would not enter the contract research organization (CRO) business in 2017, Thermo Fisher purchased Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD), one of the biggest players in the CRO space, in 2021. Much had changed in the intervening... View Details
- October 2023
- Case
Fixie and Conversational AI Sidekicks
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In March 2023, Fixie Co-Founder and Chief Architect Matt Welsh and co-founders had the kind of meeting no founders want to have. The president of leading artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment firm OpenAI, which had catapulted into fame with its ChatGPT... View Details
- October 2023
- Case
Vida Health: Transforming Chronic Disease Treatment
By: William Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller
San Francisco based Vida Health, founded by Stephanie Tilenius, former vice president of Commerce and Payments at Google, was a B2B digital health startup focused on the treatment of cardiometabolic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity. Its innovative digital... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Loris
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Das Narayandas, Stacy Straaberg and David Lane
In December 2022, Loris’s executive team considered their go-to-market strategy. Loris was an artificial intelligence (AI) software startup for the customer service industry with two products on the market: 1) Agent Assist which provided customer service agents (CSAs)... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
FARM Rio: Bringing a Brazilian Fashion Brand to the World
By: Isamar Troncoso and Jill Avery
FARM Rio, a twenty-six year old Brazilian fashion brand, had recently put down roots in the U.S. The brand, known for its bold, colorful, nature-inspired tropical prints, was testing the waters in Europe to assess if and how the brand should further expand globally.... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
JSW Steel: Balancing Growth While Decarbonizing
By: Vikram S Gandhi and Radhika Kak
Sajjan Jindal, Chairman & Managing Director of JSW Steel, India's largest steel producer by market capitalization, was facing a dilemma. Steel demand in India was expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. However, given its traditional reliance on carbon,... View Details
- October–December 2023
- Article
A Practical Guide to Conversation Research: How to Study What People Say to Each Other
By: Michael Yeomans, Katelynn Boland, Hanne K. Collins, Nicole Abi-Esber and Alison Wood Brooks
Conversation—a verbal interaction between two or more people—is a complex, pervasive, and consequential human behavior. Conversations have been studied across many academic disciplines. However, advances in recording and analysis techniques over the last decade have... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Causal Interpretation of Structural IV Estimands
By: Isaiah Andrews, Nano Barahona, Matthew Gentzkow, Ashesh Rambachan and Jesse M. Shapiro
We study the causal interpretation of instrumental variables (IV) estimands of nonlinear, multivariate structural models with respect to rich forms of model misspecification. We focus on guaranteeing that the researcher's estimator is sharp zero consistent, meaning... View Details
Keywords: Mathematical Methods
- October 2023
- Article
Improving Regulatory Effectiveness Through Better Targeting: Evidence from OSHA
By: Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
We study how a regulator can best target inspections. Our case study is a U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program that randomly allocated some inspections. On average, each inspection averted 2.4 serious injuries (9%) over the next five years.... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Innovation on Wings: When Do Nonstop Flights Matter for Global Innovation?
By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Do Yoon Kim and Wesley Koo
We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Product Variety, the Cost of Living, and Welfare Across Countries
By: Alberto Cavallo, Robert C. Feenstra and Robert Inklaar
We use the structure of the Melitz (2003) model to compute the cost of living and welfare across 47 countries, and compare these to conventional measures of prices and real consumption from the International Comparisons Project (ICP). The cost of living is inferred... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Speedy Activists: Firm Response Time to Sociopolitical Events Influences Consumer Behavior
By: Jimin Nam, Maya Balakrishnan, Julian De Freitas and Alison Wood Brooks
Organizations face growing pressure from their consumers and stakeholders to take public stances on sociopolitical issues. However, many are hesitant to do so lest they make missteps, promises they cannot keep, appear inauthentic, or alienate consumers, employees, or... View Details
- September 29, 2023
- Article
Eliminating Algorithmic Bias Is Just the Beginning of Equitable AI
By: Simon Friis and James Riley
When it comes to artificial intelligence and inequality, algorithmic bias rightly receives a lot of attention. But it’s just one way that AI can lead to inequitable outcomes. To truly create equitable AI, we need to consider three forces through which it might make... View Details
- September 2023
- Teaching Note
Esquel Group
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 307-076 and 322-058. These cases focus on the experience of China's largest shirt manufacturer, Esquel Group, and how it manages various aspects of government relations in China and abroad. The A case identifies a wide variety of social... View Details