General Business - Publications - Faculty & Research

March 2025
Case

YouTube: Bidding for NFL Sunday Ticket

By: Anita Elberse and Crystal Yao

In December 2022, Erin Teague, a senior director and the global head of sports, movies and shows at YouTube, technology giant Alphabet Inc.’s video- sharing platform, received the news that Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Alphabet and its subsidiary... View Details

Keywords: General Management; Entertainment; Media; Sports; Marketing; Management; Business Strategy; Bids and Bidding; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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06 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Updating a Classic: Writing a Great Business Plan

Sean Silverthorne: "How to Write a Great Business Plan" has been one of the most downloaded articles on Harvard Business Publishing since you wrote it in 1997. Why do you think you hit a nerve?... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

29 Sep 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Medium Term Business Cycles in Developing Countries

Keywords: by Diego Comin, Norman Loayza, Farooq Pasha & Luis Serven

03 May 2004
Research & Ideas

Business History around the World

structures of large manufacturing corporations remains important, but a new generation of researchers has explored business networks, the family firm, knowledge creation and transfer, public policy and... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

April 2006
Case

Finance Leadership in Novartis Consumer Health Businesses

By: Boris Groysberg and Ingrid Vargas

Describes and contrasts the roles and challenges of three high-performing finance heads at Novartis Consumer Health businesses in Australia, Japan, and Venezuela. All three faced tremendous pressures in terms of managing time and limited resources, but the particular... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Financial Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Leadership Style; Health Industry; Japan; Australia; Venezuela

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14 Nov 2011
Research & Ideas

Creating a Global Business Code

of an organization than the people in the middle and on the front lines."—Lynn Paine The team noticed key differences according to who authored each code: Those written by business practitioners View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

04 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business of Global Poverty

or sell. Payatas and the orderly, verdant Harvard Business School campus—nearly equals, as it happens, in terms of the acreage they occupy—are separated by a gulf far greater than any measure of miles or statistics. Yet as HBS professor... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

05 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Business and the Global Poor

necessary to reduce cost structures and generate the incentives for business involvement. Companies that have productive relationships with NGOs and nonprofits can find it very useful as well. Through... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

21 Feb 2005
Op-Ed

Is Business Management a Profession?

employers. It is not that no attempts were made, in the meantime, to discover an underlying general theory that would inform the tasks of a manager. But the search for a theoretical model capable of explaining effective View Details

Keywords: by Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria & Daniel Penrice

June 2024
Module Note

Value Creation Potential of New Business Models

By: David J. Collis

A business model is composed of three elements. These describe a generic way of creating value and identify the maximum potential value of that model for customers. The elements of a business model are the “job to be done” for the customer, the asset configuration, or... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Corporate Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

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10 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

John Kotter’s Plan to Accelerate Your Business

To succeed in today's fast-moving economy, traditional corporate structures are holding back companies, even great companies, from being creative enough and speedy enough to compete effectively. What's needed, argues Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

January 1999
Exercise

Seneca Systems (B): General and Confidential Instructions for R. Thompson, Vice President, Marketing

Seneca is a three-party negotiation-mediation simulation. The context is a product failure crisis in a manufacturing company with highly autonomous units. The heads of two divisions are in a dispute over who has responsibility for failures in a key product. The head of... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Participants; Business Divisions; Power and Influence; Manufacturing Industry

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11 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

The Business of Saving the Planet

2018: Implications for Business This background note provides general information about climate change and its implications for business. Working Knowledge Stories on the View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Energy; Green Technology

17 Jan 2020
In Practice

6 Traits That Set Top Business Leaders Apart

With CEO turnover climbing, many business leaders are trying to hone skills that will keep them at the helm longer. We asked professors from Harvard Business School’s General... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Article

Digital Ubiquity: How Connections, Sensors, and Data Are Revolutionizing Business

By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

When Google bought Nest, a maker of digital thermostats, for $3.2 billion just a few months ago, it was a clear indication that digital transformation and connection are spreading across even the most traditional industrial segments and creating a staggering array of... View Details

Keywords: Digital Innovation; Digitization; Industrial Internet; Technological Innovation; Production; Competitive Strategy; Engineering; Aerospace Industry

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January 1999
Exercise

Seneca Systems (A): General and Confidential Instructions for C. Stevens, Vice President, Assembly Division

Seneca is a three-party negotiation-mediation simulation. The context is a product failure crisis in a manufacturing company with highly autonomous units. The heads of two divisions are in a dispute over who has responsibility for failures in a key product. The head of... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Participants; Business Divisions; Power and Influence; Manufacturing Industry

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10 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

What Happens When Business Owners Turn to ChatBots for Advice

of the study. "Already we’re seeing how generative AI can change people's lives." Businesses that were already financially stable used the AI-generated advice to produce measurable improvements, while... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

January 1999
Exercise

Seneca Systems (B): General and Confidential Instructions for C. Stevens, Vice President, Assembly Division

Seneca is a three-party negotiation-mediation simulation. The context is a product failure crisis in a manufacturing company with highly autonomous units. The heads of two divisions are in a dispute over who has responsibility for failures in a key product. The head of... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Participants; Business Divisions; Power and Influence; Manufacturing Industry

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07 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

The Business of Biotech

cancer and AIDS. Those working in the biotech trenches, however, point out that the real work has only just begun. Dr. Robert Tepper, chief scientific officer for Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., put it this way in a Business Week... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Biotechnology; Health; Technology

July 2022
Case

Bringing Ideas to Life: The Story of Paul English

By: Youngme Moon, Frances X. Frei and F. Katelynn Boland

Paul English is one of the most imaginative innovators of his generation. This case explores his process of creative idea generation. The case includes an exercise for students to generate value-creating ideas from scratch. View Details