Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,416)
- Faculty Publications (642)
- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jamie Merkrebs
AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120 billion furniture market, despite its... View Details
Keywords: E-Commerce Strategy; Mobile; Word-of-Mouth; Word-of-mouth Marketing; Word Of Mouth; Internet Marketing; Growth Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Two Sided Markets; Two-sided Market; Two-sided Marketplace; Two-Sided Markets; Two-sided Network; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; African Americans; Circular; Peer-to-peer Markets; Furniture Industry; Furniture; Growth Hacking; Monetization Strategy; African-American Protagonist; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; North America; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- February 2021
- Article
How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice
By: Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci
Amid growing calls for transparency and social and environmental responsibility, companies are employing different strategies to improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Some pursue internal initiatives that reduce their negative social or environmental impacts... View Details
- January 2021
- Supplement
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California
- January 2021
- Case
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California
- Editorial
Why ESG Funds Fail to Scale
By: Gabriel Karageorgiou and George Serafeim
You’ve seen the headlines about the growth in environmental, social, and governance funds. Many investment professionals might read these and believe that launching a new ESG investment firm or ESG offering will be an automatic success. Our analysis of the data shows... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Investment Management; Investment Strategy; Investments; Investment Fund; Sustainability; Sustainable Finance; Sustainable Investing; Investment; Management; Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Finance; Growth and Development; Failure
- January 2021
- Case
Rio Tinto Aluminum: Can Purpose Lead to Profit?
By: David Fubini and Agastya Muthanna
This case describes the tradeoffs Rio Tinto faces as it considers investments to ensure environmentally friendly, sustainability produced aluminum with the potential risks of competitive pricing and profit loses. View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Jumia's Path to Profitability
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Business Models; Business Model; Business Startups; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Africa
- December 2020
- Case
Urban Company
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
- December 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Kerry Group: Inspiring Food, Nourishing Life
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez, Damien McLoughlin, Tonia Labruyere and Tonia Junker
The Irish company Kerry Group, one of the leading global players in the taste and nutrition industry, wants to ensure its future growth in developing and developed markets. Founded in 1972 as a dairy cooperative, it had grown into a provider of taste and nutrition... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Arcos Dorados: A QSR Recovery Plan
By: Forest Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal
Arcos Dorados—McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, covering Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)—faced a pandemic that was disrupting the entire consumer foodservice business in 2020. With the exclusive right to own, operate, and sub-franchise McDonald’s... View Details
Keywords: Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Customer Value and Value Chain; Income; Macroeconomics; Environmental Management; Environmental Sustainability; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Food; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Logistics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategic Planning; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Retail Industry; Latin America; Aruba; Guadeloupe; Martinique; Mexico; Panama; Costa Rica; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Colombia; Ecuador; French Guiana; Peru; Uruguay; Venezuela; Puerto Rico; Trinidad and Tobago
- 2021
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Airlines Industry
By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the airlines industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates of fare... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Corporate Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility; Social Impact; Aviation; Product Design; Product Positioning; Society; Product; Environmental Sustainability; Measurement and Metrics; Framework; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry
- October 2020 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Divesting Harvard's Endowment
By: Daniel Green, Luis M. Viceira and Holly Fetter
By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated—$21 trillion of... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations During COVID-19 (C)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in August 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are navigating Migros through COVID-19 and the unprecedented... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Crisis Management; Health Pandemics; Strategic Planning; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey
- October 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Wilderness Safaris: Impact Investing and Ecotourism Conservation in Africa
By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard
In 2018 the majority ownership of publicly owned Wilderness Safaris, the leading high-end ecotourism company in Africa with safari operations in eight countries, was acquired by The Rise Fund, one of the world’s largest private social impact investing funds, and by FS... View Details
Keywords: Investing; Investing For Impact; Ecotourism; COVID-19; Equity Financing; Strategy Formulation; Profitability; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Sustainability; Conservation Planning; Corporate Social Responsibility; Investment; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Financing and Loans; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Health Pandemics; Tourism Industry; Africa; Rwanda; Angola
- 2021
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer-Packaged Foods Industry
By: Amanda Rischbieth, George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the consumer-packaged goods industry. We design a methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates on customer... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Corporate Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility; Social Impact; Nutrition Database; Nutritional Information; CPG; Consumer Packaged Goods; IWAI; Product Design; Product Positioning; Society; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Nutrition; Product; Safety; Consumer Products Industry
- October 2020
- Article
Collusion in Markets with Syndication
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Richard Lowery and Jordan M. Barry
Markets for IPOs and debt issuances are syndicated, in the sense that a bidder who wins a contract may invite losing bidders to join a syndicate that together fulfills the contract. We show that in markets with syndication, standard intuitions from industrial... View Details
Keywords: Collusion; Antitrust; IPO Underwriting; Syndication; ＂Repeated Games＂; Markets; Game Theory
- October 2020
- Case
Israelis, Palestinians and the Technology Bridge Between Them: A Work in Progress
By: Elie Ofek and Lia Weiner
In Israel of 2020 the demand for software engineers was endless. Meanwhile just miles away, Palestinian universities were graduating 3,000 engineers a year, and many of them could not find jobs in the still nascent Palestinian tech sector. Could these dots be... View Details
- September 2020
- Teaching Note
TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 720-422. TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increase ten times,... View Details
Keywords: Value Capturing; Pricing Strategy; Supplier Power; Buyer Power; Porter's Five Forces; Bargaining Power; Monopoly; Aerospace; Acquisition Strategy; Value Drivers; Ethical Behavior; Regulation; Growth Strategy; Business Ethics; Defense; Procurement; Sustainability; Value-Based Business Strategy; Acquisition; Ethics; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Growth Management; Performance Evaluation; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Horizontal Integration; Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- September 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
d.light
By: Michael Chu, Krishna G. Palepu and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha
Kenyan off-grid-solar pioneer d.light can power entire homes in rural Africa but must now decide how to fund the growth of its asset-heavy business model. Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded d.light in 2006 to transform lives through solar solutions enabling access to... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research
By: Jody Grewal and George Serafeim
We review the literature on corporate sustainability and provide directions for future research. Our review focuses on three actions: measuring, managing and communicating corporate sustainability performance. Measurement is the least developed of the three and... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; Sustainability Management; Nonfinancial Disclosure; Nonfinancial Information; Nonfinancial Performance; Materiality; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility; Accounting; Finance; Management; Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Diversity; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Disclosure; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact