Publications

21 Feb 2018
News

Investing in Tech That’s Worth the Wait

Teaching Interest

Demystifying the Family Enterprise

By: Christina R. Wing

This course is primarily designed for students who are pursuing a career in family run businesses, family owned businesses, investment roles in family offices, or students that might invest in or wholly purchase a family owned business through a private equity firm,... View Details

March 2011 (Revised October 2011)
Case

If We Ran the World

By: Hanna Halaburda, Radka Dohnalova and Aldo Sesia

Cindy Gallop launched IfWeRanTheWorld (IWRTW) in February 2010, as what the tech world called minimum viable product, in order to real-world test Gallop's "business of the future" concept while development was ongoing. IWRTW was conceived to bring together human good... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Outcome or Result; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Network Effects

August 2002
Case

Trilogy University

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Paley

In early 2001, Trilogy Software faced a slowdown in its business, a large number of unsuccessful customer deployments, and an overall weakening in the enterprise software market. In response, the company revamped its business model and restructured the organization.... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Alignment; Restructuring; Organizational Structure; Change Management; Business Strategy; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Information Technology Industry

28 Jul 2009
First Look

First Look: July 28

they cannot spend on marketing the way their competitors do. The case invites students to explore an unusual business model in both concept and execution. Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2012 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Credit Unions: The Future of the Cooperative Financial Institution

By: Robert C. Pozen and Grace Hou

Credit unions are a specialized type of depository institution with a cooperative, non-profit structure and a federal tax exemption. They originated as small, cooperative institutions with an emphasis on uncollateralized consumer lending to the unbanked... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Credit Unions; Banks and Banking

Program

The Women's Leadership Forum

successfully, you will emerge reenergized about your career and empowered with a realistic agenda for change in your company—and in your own approach to leadership. Details Help your organization achieve key business goals Improve your... View Details

September 2009 (Revised November 2010)
Case

Endeavor: Creating a Global Movement for High-Impact Entrepreneurship

By: William A. Sahlman

This case describes a critical inflection point in the growth of an international development "mentor capitalist" nonprofit, Endeavor. As Endeavor aims to scale its high-impact entrepreneurship model globally, founder Linda Rottenberg must determine what success looks... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Social Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Nonprofit Organizations; Jordan

May 2017 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies: Building Breakthrough Innovations in Crowd-Powered Ecosystems

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Terri L. Griffith and Ann Majchrzak

Dirk Ahlborn, co-founder and CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. (HTT) looks back at the evolving organizational design and community that allows HTT to be crowd-powered. Since the founding in 2013, HTT has dealt with building an organization with less... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Crowdsourcing; Entrepreneurial Finance; Innovation; Organizational Design; Startups; Business Startups; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Product Development

Program

Managing Turbulence

Summary Even before the global pandemic, businesses and their leaders struggled with the extraordinary challenges of technological change, rapidly evolving consumer tastes, and a reconfiguration of the... View Details

18 Oct 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Venture Capital’s Disconnect with Clean Tech

MBA students often fall into one of two categories—those hungry to rush into careers as venture capitalists, and those eager to found a venture-funded start-up. For all of them, Harvard Business School professor Joseph Lassiter has some... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities; Financial Services

April 2015 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Instacart and the New Wave of Grocery Startups

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Instacart is testing an Uber-style solution to the challenge of building a home-delivered grocery business. It is backed by $220 million of venture funding. Will this model succeed where businessses like Webvan failed? What are the questions that this exploratory... View Details

Keywords: Food Retailing; Outsourced Grocery Delivery; Online Ordering; Dynamic Pricing; Data Analytics; Marketing Strategy; Food; Distribution Channels; Business Startups; Food and Beverage Industry; California

Web

10 Things I Learned During My First Month in the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program - MBA

Blog Blog MBA Voices Filter Results Arrow Down Arrow Up Read posts from Author Alumni Author Career and Professional Development Staff Author HBS Community Author HBS Faculty Author MBA Admissions Author MBA Students Topics Topics 1st Year (RC) 2+2 Program 2nd Year... View Details

September 2022 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Navya: Steering toward a Driverless Future

By: Julian De Freitas, Elie Ofek, Shaun Ingledew and Tonia Labruyere

In 2022, Sophie Desormière arrived at French roboshuttle producer Navya, tasked with charting a new course in a challenging sector. The company, which had recently listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, was burning through cash reserves and needed to transform the promise... View Details

Keywords: Autonomous Vehicles; Market Entry and Exit; Opportunities; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Consumer Behavior; Business Model; Auto Industry; Transportation Industry; France; United States

April 2010
Case

A Giant Among Women

By: Willy C. Shih, Ethan S Bernstein, Maly Hout Bernstein, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Yi-Ling Wei

Few CEOs successfully manage the evolution of their companies from OEM outsourcer to branded manufacturer to expert consumer marketer as well as Tony Lo, CEO of Giant Manufacturing Co. Ltd., now the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world. In the mid-1980s, Giant... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Customer Focus and Relationships; Global Strategy; Gender; Customer Satisfaction; Product Development; Bicycle Industry; Taiwan

11 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

10 Rules Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Adopting AI

for neural networks increase, as does accessibility to off-the-shelf APIs from big tech and academic institutions that help speed up innovation. Entrepreneurs have also learned the wisdom of targeting AI applications toward specific, well-defined View Details

Keywords: by Rocio Wu

19 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

The History of Beauty

According to author Geoffrey Jones, the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at HBS, the fragmented, secretive, often family-owned businesses that have constituted the industry have been difficult for... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics

spring 1987
Article

Second-Sourcing and the Experience Curve: Price Competition in Defense Procurement

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

We examine a dynamic model of price competition in defense procurement that incorporates the experience curve, asymmetric cost information, and the availability of a higher cost alternative system. We model acquisition as a two-stage process in which initial production... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Government and Politics; Price; Competition; Mathematical Methods

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