Publications

December 2016
Case

SEAS in 2016

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Kerry Herman

The case explores opportunities and challenges facing the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as it 1) grapples with rapid undergraduate enrollment growth and its smaller scale relative to other top engineering schools and 2) prepares to move two-thirds... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Engineering; Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Change Management; Education Industry; United States

December 2016 (Revised April 2017)
Case

BASF: Co-Creating Innovation (A)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Dessain

In 2016, BASF's chief executive officer and chief technology officer reflected on the co-creation innovation program started almost 18 months ago as part of BASF's 150th anniversary celebration. Five hundred project ideas had been created, of which 100 had already... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Knowledge Sharing; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Chemicals; Environmental Sustainability; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Consumer Products Industry; Europe

November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

IguanaFix

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Laura Urdapilleta

IguanaFix is a rapidly scaling Latin American startup that provides an online platform connecting consumers with home improvement contractors. The founders have acquired customers through both B2C and B2B methods. But in seeking to grow and scale the business, they now... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Marketing; Home Improvement Services; Marketing Management; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Sales; Online Advertising; Latin America

November 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Mark43

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Mitch Weiss and Halah AlQahtani

The founders of Mark43, an early-stage startup that provides software for law enforcement agencies, must decide whether to bid on a request for proposals (RFP) from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). On the one hand, LAPD would be a second large and influential... View Details

Keywords: Start-up; Software Applications; Government Markets; Rapid Growth Stage; Public Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; United States; New York (city, NY)

November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Formlabs: Selling a New 3D Printer

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Olivia Hull and Amram Migdal

Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, Formlabs manufactures 3D printers used to print everything from prototypes and models to jewelry, dental, and sculpture molds. As Formlabs prepares to ship its latest model, the Form 2, Head of Customer Development and... View Details

September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (A)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a federally funded research institution within NASA, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has played a large role in many space and planetary explorations, particularly to the planet Mars. As a project-based... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Aerospace Industry; United States

August 2016
Case

CSI Ingenieros

By: Jay Lorsch and Emily McTague

CSI's business unit managers gathered around the downstairs conference room for the company's weekly meeting to discuss project bids. Cristina WaldAshley Hartman, who was in charge of finding projects for the engineering firm to work on, read through several she had... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Board; Board Committees; Board Dynamics; Organization; Organization Alignment; Dynamic Capabilities; Organization Design; Organizational Prototyping; Organizational Silence; Organizational Learning; Organization Behavior; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Manufacturing Industry; South America; Uruguay

June 2016 (Revised August 2019)
Case

Numenta: Inventing and (or) Commercializing AI

By: David B. Yoffie, Liz Kind and David Ben Shimol

In March 2016, Donna Dubinsky (co-founder and CEO) and Jeff Hawkins (co-founder) were struggling with a key question: Could Numenta be successful in both creating fundamental technology and building a commercial business? Located in Redwood City, CA, Numenta was... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Machine Intelligence; Machine Learning; Strategy; Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Information; Technological Innovation; Research; Research and Development; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Commercialization; AI and Machine Learning

June 24, 2016
Other Article

Why Brexit Is a Big Deal

By: John A. Quelch

The consequences of yesterday's vote by the British people to leave the European Union will be far-reaching, but there is no reason for global markets to panic.
Brexit is a vote against the European Union. Once heralded as the engine of a one-for-all and... View Details

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May 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens

By: Willy Shih

This case describes the motivation for and the development of Siemens' digital manufacturing enterprise vision, which became the foundation for its implementation of Industrie 4.0. While the effort started with a purely defensive move by Anton Huber, head of the... View Details

May 2016 (Revised June 2016)
Case

A Succession as the Engine for Success

By: Jay Lorsch, Emily McTague and Rosa Maria Fite

Francisco J. Riberas sat in his office reflecting on his first summer working at the family business, in 1989. Growing up, Francisco Riberas had learned about the company through conversations with his father, Francisco Riberas Pampliega, over the dinner table and in... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Alignment; Organizational Behavior; Corporate Governance; Family Business; Family-owned Business; Succession; CEO Mentoring; Spain; Family and Family Relationships; Management; Leadership; Auto Industry; Europe; Spain

2016
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Mahendra Bapna and Technology Education in India

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Pamela Yatsko

Article

The Radical Flank Effect and Cross-occupational Collaboration for Technology Development during a Power Shift

By: Emily Truelove and Katherine C. Kellogg

This 12-month ethnographic study of an early entrant into the U.S. car-sharing industry demonstrates that when an organization shifts its focus from developing radical new technology to incrementally improving this technology, the shift may spark an internal power... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Conflict and Resolution; Power and Influence; Perception; Behavior; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

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February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Astroscale, Space Debris, and Earth's Orbital Commons

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Angela Acocella and Mayuka Yamazaki

An engineer and technology entrepreneur, Nobu Okada, had turned a mid-life crisis into a bold—some would say quixotic—quest to prevent a tragedy of the commons at the global scale. Namely, Okada believed the accumulation of debris in near-Earth orbital space posed a... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Global Range; Entrepreneurship; Crisis Management; Wastes and Waste Processing; Economics; Aerospace Industry

February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space (A)

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella

Jeff Bezos, six years after starting a revolution in retailing with Amazon.com, turned his life-long passion for space into a start-up, Blue Origin. Blue (as it was called) was a part of the New Space industry, a collection of startup aerospace engineering companies... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Partners and Partnerships; Transportation; Business Startups; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations; Aerospace Industry

February 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Labor, Capital, and Government: The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902

By: David Moss and Marc Campasano

In late October 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt felt relieved after months of anxiety and uncertainty. Workers in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal industry had been on strike for five months, threatening to leave eastern cities in the cold without enough heating fuel... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Government Relations; Labor; Law; Policy; Mining; History; Mining Industry; Pennsylvania

January 2016 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Saudi Aramco and Corporate Venture Capital

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Nathaniel Burbank

Saudi Aramco launched an internal venture capital arm in 2011, which promptly became the world's largest investor in energy related startups. In choosing to proceed, the company's New Business Development unit (NPD) wrestled with a number of challenges. How should the... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Energy Industry; Saudi Arabia

November 2015
Article

Cannibalization and Option Value Effects of Secondary Markets: Evidence from the U.S. Concert Industry

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu

We examine how reducing search frictions in secondary markets affects the value appropriated by firms in primary markets. We characterize two effects on primary market firms caused by intermediaries entering secondary markets: the "cannibalization" and "option value"... View Details

Keywords: Cannibalization Effect; Option Value Effect; Secondary Markets; Concert Industry; Craigslist; Competition; Distribution Channels; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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October 2015 (Revised September 2016)
Case

Peru: Economic Miracle or Just a Mirage?

By: Richard H.K. Vietor, Fernando A. D'Alessio and Ricardo M. Pino

After years of rapid growth, Peru's economy had recently slowed. Mineral prices were down and the current President, Humala, had only a year remaining in office before the next election. And he could not run again. While the country had many strengths, especially in... View Details

Keywords: Resources; Internal Security; Politics; Natural Environment; Metals and Minerals; Country; Political Elections; Social Issues; Economic Growth; Tourism Industry; Peru