Publications

October 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Brightview Senior Living

By: Lynda M. Applegate and James Weber

Marilynn Duker, CEO, was exploring how to grow the company while maintaining the culture that made it a leader in the field of senior housing. Brightview constructed and operated senior living apartment communities that offered independent living, assisted living, and... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Employee Relationship Management; Real Estate Industry; United States

02 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Food Stamp Entrepreneurs: How Public Assistance Enables Business Bootstrapping

"Delivering phone books is the worst way to spend a Sunday when you're a kid," says Olds, now an assistant professor in the Entrepreneurship Management unit at Harvard Business School. The family View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

October 2014 (Revised June 2021)
Teaching Note

Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living

By: Charles F. Wu and Ben Eppler

Tom Alperin's firm National Development is an experienced multifamily and commercial developer in the Northeast. It has a strong track record for working on challenging projects, delivering high quality products and generating strong returns for his investors. The firm... View Details

Keywords: Housing; Age; Investment Return; Construction Industry; Real Estate Industry; Massachusetts

February 2017 (Revised February 2021)
Case

Hebrew SeniorLife: Next Steps

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Olivia Hull

The CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife is contemplating how to scale his highly successful but asset-intensive continuing care retirement community for elders. Among the strategies he is considering is an expansion to China; virtual web-based care; providing continuing care in... View Details

Keywords: Continuing Care; Nursing Home; Rehabilitation; Assisted Living; Elder Care; Entrepreneurial Management; Health Care and Treatment; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; United States

15 Aug 2005
HBS Case

Classic Cases Live On at HBS

was still a low-cost producer. HBS professor emeritus Norm Berg, who developed the case along with research assistant Norman Fast (HBS DBA '77), was at the time course head of Business Policy, the School's required general management... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

July 2016
Article

Economic Implications of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology Embryo Transfer Guidelines: Healthcare Dollars Saved by Reducing Iatrogenic Triplets

By: Malinda S. Lee, Brady T. Evans, Ariel Dora Stern and Mark D. Hornstein

Objective: To estimate the national cost savings resulting from reductions in higher-order multiple (HOM) live births (defined as three or more fetuses), following the initial publication of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) guidelines on ET in... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Cost Management; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

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July 2014
Case

BMVSS: Changing Lives through Innovation One Jaipur Limb at a Time (Abridged)

By: Srikant Datar, Saloni Chaturvedi and Caitlin Bowler

Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) is an Indian not-for-profit organization engaged in assisting differently-abled persons by providing them with the legendary low-cost prosthesis, the Jaipur Foot, and other mobility-assisting devices, free of cost. Known... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Financial Condition; Health Care and Treatment; Diversity; Growth and Development Strategy; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Health Industry; India

20 Aug 2020
Book

From the Plow to the Pill: How Technology Shapes Our Lives

Gerdeman: You say the invention of the birth control pill, and later, technologies for assisted reproduction, revolutionized the makeup of families by giving people greater control over their reproductive lives. Spar: We forget the extent... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

15 Aug 2023
HBS Case

(Virtual) Reality Check: How Long Before We Live in the 'Metaverse'?

industries, such as construction and medicine, are already extensively using virtual-reality technology. And, of course, “young people today are already living in a 3D virtual world,” via Roblox, Minecraft, and other gaming platforms, Wu... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Technology; Computer; Information Technology

26 Jul 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Can Bombas Reach New Customers while Maintaining Its Social Mission?

Keywords: Consumer Products; Fashion

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

Keywords: Decisions; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Marketing Strategy; Sales; Technology Industry; United States

21 Oct 2014
First Look

First Look: October 21

Senior Living Tom Alperin's National Development has purchased a building site in affluent Wellesley, MA, and is in the process of deciding whether to build apartments, a combination of independent living... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Unpacking That Icky Feeling of 'Shopping' for Diverse Job Candidates

from historically marginalized groups—even when the real goal is to create a more diverse workplace, because it’s both the right thing to do and good for business. New research by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Summer Jackson... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

January 1995 (Revised April 1996)
Case

Wildfire

The company Wildfire offers a product that is a virtual secretary--embedded in the phone system. Students can call 1-800-WILDFIRE and hear a product demonstration. All the commands, from calling, to setting up meetings, to providing reminders, are verbal--told to the... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Market Entry and Exit; Product Marketing; Communications Industry; Service Industry

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29 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Do Disasters Rally Support for Climate Action? It's Complicated.

Environmental disasters like wildfires can ignite awareness of climate change and boost eco-friendly politicians’ careers. But do voters perceive a tradeoff between environmental policies and local economic growth? In Brazil, home to a majority of the Amazon tropical... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

24 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Get People Addicted to a Good Habit

water dispensers,” says Hussam, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School whose research lies at the intersection of development, behavioral, and health economics. “Which means that when these initiatives don’t work, nobody can... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

25 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

Hiding From Managers Can Increase Your Productivity

control so no problems are hidden." But recent research proves the virtue of letting employees do at least some work unobserved. In a series of studies, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ethan S. Bernstein shows that... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Manufacturing

Article

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management