Publications

December 1999 (Revised August 2001)
Case

Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Focuses on Millennium's strategy to grow and revolutionize drug development through the use of new technologies such as genomics. Describes how Millennium Pharmaceuticals--a fast-growing biotechnology firm in Cambridge, MA--has used strategic alliances to finance the... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Financing and Loans; Medical Specialties; Retention; Growth and Development Strategy; Time Management; Product Development; Problems and Challenges; Alliances; Technology; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Cambridge

September 1999 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Strategic Deal Making at Millennium Pharmaceuticals

A small start-up in 1993, Millennium Pharmaceuticals was a name-brand biotechnology company by the end of 1998, with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion. The Cambridge-based company's growth strategy had relied heavily on building alliances for early-stage drug... View Details

Keywords: Alliances; Negotiation Deal; Growth and Development Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; Cambridge

01 Apr 2012
News

Aligning the Goals of Development and Business

July 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

The Millennium Challenge Corporation and Ghana

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

A U.S. government agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), provides aid to developing countries, focusing on poverty reduction through economic growth. It measures results through an economic rate of return based on increases in farmer incomes anticipated... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Investment Return; Measurement and Metrics; Welfare; Ghana; United States

November 2017
Case

Passion and Strategy: Novozymes' Embrace of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

By: Andy Zelleke and Emilie Billaud

This case explores the sustainability efforts at Novozymes, the world's largest and oldest producer of industrial enzymes. In 2015, the Danish company became the world’s first company known to have crafted a new corporate strategy based on the United Nations... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Transformation; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business Strategy; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Biotechnology Industry; Europe; Denmark

2019
Working Paper

Golden Opportunity? Voluntary Sustainability Standards for Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

By: Kristin Sippl

While much is known about voluntary sustainability standards' contributions to certain issues in certain sectors, less is known about their contributions to the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper helps balance the... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability Standards; Gold; Certification; Eco-labeling; International Law; Extractive Industries; Fair Trade; United Nations; Sustainable Development; Environmental Sustainability; Standards; Adoption; Governance; Global Range; Luxury; Mining Industry

Read Now

February 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Organization and Strategy at Millennium (A)

By: Julie M. Wulf and Scott Waggoner

This case examines Millennium's strategic and organizational responses to the rapid evolution of the biopharmaceutical industry. In the early 2000s, as Millennium's competitive advantage in early-stage research slipped away and its losses mounted, founder and CEO Mark... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Leading Change; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

February 2010
Supplement

Organization and Strategy at Millennium (B)

By: Julie M. Wulf and Scott Waggoner

This case examines Millennium's strategic and organizational responses to the rapid evolution of the biopharmaceutical industry. In the early 2000s, as Millennium's competitive advantage in early-stage research slipped away and its losses mounted, founder CEO Mark... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Transformation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Crisis Management; Competitive Advantage; Commercialization; Selection and Staffing; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Pharmaceutical Industry

15 Nov 2010
News

Connecting Goals and Go-To-Market Initiatives

September 2003
Module Note

Managing the Competing Goals of Work and Life

By: Leslie A. Perlow

Outlines how instructors can facilitate discussion within the Managing the Competing Goals of Work and Life module to encourage students to begin a process of self-assessment that focuses on personal values, career development needs, and workplace culture. View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Culture; Work-Life Balance; Value

15 Nov 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Connecting Goals and Go-To-Market Initiatives

In some respects, developing strategy is the easy part. Executing that strategy in alignment with strategic priorities is where real mastery of management takes place. We asked Harvard Business School senior lecturer Frank V. Cespedes,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

At a recent Harvard Business School conference, dozens of CEOs committed to the idea of working toward "higher-ambition" goals that go beyond just short-term shareholder value. Inspired by the book Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

October 1999 (Revised May 2001)
Background Note

Japanese Financial System, The: From Postwar to the New Millennium

Describes the development of the Japanese financial system, from extensive regulation and fund allocation through administrative guidance in the 1950s to the banking crisis and legal and structural reorganization in the 1990s. Special emphasis is on the processes of... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Financial Markets; Banks and Banking; Japan

05 Mar 2021
Blog Post

Intensive Bootcamp Kicked my Entrepreneurship Goals Into Gear

When I started at HBS in the fall of 2020, I had one goal in mind: to challenge myself. I previously worked in communications at Cloudflare, a security, performance and reliability company founded in 2009 by two HBS alumni. Cloudflare had... View Details

01 Jul 2019
What Do You Think?

Are Super Stretch Goals Only for the Very Young?

Do Super Stretch Goals Require More Commitment Than a Large Organization Can Muster? Youth of an organization or its members is not the primary determinant of whether an organization successfully utilizes super stretch goals. The majority... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

22 Apr 2020
News

New committee to advise Bacow on sustainability goals

Person Page

Course Development

By: Debora L. Spar

Managing International Trade and Investment

Despite the ease with which it is often conducted, doing business across borders is not the same as doing it at home. Rather, it entails a whole new set of managerial challenges: re-assessing competitive... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Iterative Coordination and Innovation

By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu

Agile management practices from the software industry continue to transform the way organizations innovate across industries, yet they remain understudied in the organizations literature. We investigate the widespread Agile practice of iterative coordination: frequent... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Goals; Specialization; Coordination; Field Experiment; Software Development; Organizations; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Goals and Objectives; Integration; Software