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Lindsay is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the Entrepreneurial Management unit. She teaches Avoiding Startup Failure, Launching Technology Ventures, and Startup Bootcamp. Lindsay also serves as the HBS Faculty co-chair of the View Details

Eva Ascarza

Eva Ascarza is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit. She is the co-founder of the Customer Intelligence Lab at the D^3 institute at Harvard Business School. She teaches the Marketing core in the MBA required... View Details

Keywords: telecommunications; e-commerce industry; entertainment; financial services; retailing

30 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Racial Bias Might Be Infecting Patient Portals. Can AI Help?

Patients and physicians increasingly turned to digital platforms, like patient portal messaging, when COVID-19 made contact risky, but a new study of how providers managed the messaging surge suggests an uncomfortable downside: What if... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Health

Web

Blasting bodies to a base - The Human Factor – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

HBS Home HBS Index Contact Us Harvard Business School Baker Library Historical Collections The Human Factor Introducing the Industrial Life Photograph Collection at the Baker Library Introduction The Exhibition The Request The Response... View Details

02 Sep 2015
What Do You Think?

What's Wrong With Amazon’s Low-Retention HR Strategy?

service for customers and long-term profits to patient investors but disappointment for some people who have gone to work there. (In parlance that my co-authors and I used in... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Web Services; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Consumer Products; Fashion

February 2005
Article

Managing the Ecosystem

By: Marco Iansiti

The days of the corporate lone wolf are over. In our increasingly interconnected world, standing alone is no longer a viable business model. Instead, smart companies rely heavily on networks of partners, suppliers, and customers to achieve market success and sustain... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Corporate Reporting; Partners and Partnerships; Industry Clusters; Customers; Markets; Situation or Environment; Banks and Banking; Insurance; Software

Find at Harvard

September 1991 (Revised January 1997)
Case

Manzana Insurance: Fruitvale Branch (Abridged)

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Deals with performance assessment and improvement of a service operation in the insurance industry, a market that is highly sensitive to response time. Two branch offices in direct competition are described, and the impact of response time on performance is suggested.... View Details

Keywords: Business Offices; Decision Choices and Conditions; Time Management; Service Operations; Performance Evaluation; Competition; Insurance Industry

Web

Speeding to the marketcoiling - The Human Factor – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

HBS Home HBS Index Contact Us Harvard Business School Baker Library Historical Collections The Human Factor Introducing the Industrial Life Photograph Collection at the Baker Library Introduction The Exhibition The Request The Response... View Details

30 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Can AI Predict Whether Shoppers Would Pick Crest or Colgate?

commercially available version of GPT-3 to elicit thousands of simulated customer responses and found that AI can produce demand patterns that resemble those of human studies.... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

September 2020 (Revised July 2022)
Technical Note

Algorithmic Bias in Marketing

By: Ayelet Israeli and Eva Ascarza

This note focuses on algorithmic bias in marketing. First, it presents a variety of marketing examples in which algorithmic bias may occur. The examples are organized around the 4 P’s of marketing – promotion, price, place and product—characterizing the marketing... View Details

November 1997 (Revised February 1998)
Case

WESCO Distribution, Inc.

By: Das Narayandas

In 1996, WESCO, a national distributor of electrical equipment and supplies, charted out a growth of 6 to 8 percent in sales, and 12 to 16 percent in profitability over the next five years. The centerpiece of this growth strategy is the National Accounts (NA) program... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Customer Satisfaction; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Distribution; Sales; Balance and Stability; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry

December 2020
Case

Urban Company

By: Krishna G. Palepu

Urban Company is an India-based market platform that helps customers book home services and at home beauty services. The company differentiated itself by investing heavily in building customer trust. Rather than merely positioning itself as a lead generating... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Emerging Markets; Strategy; Service Delivery; Trust; Technology Industry; Service Industry; India

12 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

COVID Tested Global Supply Chains. Here’s How They’ve Adapted

Global supply chains took some heat during the COVID-19 pandemic, with consumers waiting months for goods and politicians wringing their hands over trade policy. “Reshoring” is one of the hottest new corporate buzzwords, as many companies look View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

November 2014 (Revised February 2016)
Case

DoubleDutch

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Matthew G. Preble

Lawrence Coburn and Pankaj Prasad, co-founders of the event solution startup DoubleDutch, have to make a significant decision about their young company's sales function. DoubleDutch's key product was a mobile application (app) and event management platform that... View Details

Keywords: Sales Management; Selling; Marketing Management; Strategy Implementation; Business Marketing; Sales Force Management; Salesforce Management; Marketing; Sales; Marketing Strategy; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Technology Industry; United States; Europe; Asia

2023
Book

Beyond AI: ChatGPT, Web3, and the Business Landscape of Tomorrow

By: Ken Huang, Yang Wang, Feng Zhu, Xi Chen and Chunxiao Xing

This book explores the transformative potential of ChatGPT, Web3, and their impact on productivity and various industries. It delves into Generative AI (GenAI) and its representative platform ChatGPT, their synergy with Web3, and how they can revolutionize business... View Details

Keywords: Generative Ai; AI and Machine Learning; Ethics; Technology Adoption

15 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Kids Benefit From Having a Working Mom

©iStockphoto Here's some heartening news for working mothers worried about the future of their children. Women whose moms worked outside the home are more likely to have jobs themselves, are more likely to... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

April 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Mercadona

This case presents the predicament of a company trying to do right by its customers and its employees as the economic crisis of 2008 hits home. Fifteen years earlier, this Spanish supermarket chain had adopted its own version of total quality management, called the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Service Operations; Business Processes; Retail Industry; Spain

November 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Rent the Runway

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Laura Winig

Two months after a successful launch in November 2009, the cofounders of Rent the Runway (RTR), a website that rented designer dresses, are debating whether to grow their startup at a measured pace and focus on improving operational effectiveness, or raise a new round... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Electronic Commerce; Fashion; Expansion; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Fashion Industry

January 2010 (Revised March 2013)
Case

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: F. Asis Martinez Jerez, Thomas Steenburgh, Jill Avery and Lisa Brem

HubSpot, a web marketing startup is under pressure from VCs to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. In the case, students explore the drivers of customer churn and uncover opportunities to increase customer retention across the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Consumer Behavior; Happiness; Consulting Industry