management focus - Publications - Faculty & Research

23 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings

this work was published in the Harvard Business Review. My colleagues and I looked at a full range of financial services that were—and were not—available in South Central and communities like it, including payment services, savings, credit, and insurance. For a variety... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

May 2021
Simulation

Customer Compatibility Exercise Application

By: Ryan W. Buell

Customers impose considerable variability on the operating systems of service organizations. They show up when they wish (arrival variability), they ask for different things (request variability), they vary in their willingness and ability to help themselves (effort... View Details

Keywords: Customer Compatibility; Customer Relationship Management; Strategy; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Performance Efficiency; Analysis; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science

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January–February 2018
Article

Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye

By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Bruce G.S. Hardie

We investigate the increasingly common business setting in which companies face the possibility of both observed and unobserved customer attrition (i.e., “overt” and “silent” churn) in the same pool of customers. This is the case for many online-based services where... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Retention; Attrition; Customer Base Analysis; Hidden Markov Models; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior

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05 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 5

Publications August 2013 John Wiley & Sons International Strategy and Competition By: Collis, David Abstract—This book is designed for every student who will be involved in managing and advising companies that compete internationally... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 1, 2008

and inside sales force have been very successful in finding and bringing in new customers, in part because of a laser-like focus on increasing its marketing ROI. As ScriptLogic looks towards its next phase of growth, however, it is... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January – February 2012
Article

When One Business Model Isn't Enough

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Jorge Tarzijan

Trying to operate two business models at once often causes strategic failure. Yet LAN Airlines, a Chilean carrier, runs three models successfully. Casadesus-Masanell, of Harvard Business School, and Tarziján, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, explore how... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Failure; Business Model; Service Operations; Asset Management; Value; Complexity; Competency and Skills; Business Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Risk and Uncertainty; Customer Relationship Management; Air Transportation Industry

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February 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Supplement

Lincoln Financial Group (C)

LFG reorganizes its business in order to improve customer intimacy. However, to implement the strategy, they need to effect significant changes in the skills of their salespeople. This case series straddles human resource management, corporate strategy, and sales... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Salesforce Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Financial Services Industry

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20 Jan 2023
News

Free Spirits

concept over Summer Rock Fellowships, so by their second year, Royle and Wood were stealing every spare moment to focus on go-to-market strategy, raising almost $600,000 in seed funding and finalizing product development. Wood and Royle... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Food Services and Drinking Places; Hospitality

20 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

Gaps in the Historical Record: Development of the Electronics Industry

that moment of the microprocessor, and with it the personal computer. Here again IBM played the critical role. The personal computer had been initially commercialized by young hobbyists in the late 1970s. In 1980 IBM's managers set up a... View Details

Keywords: by Alfred D. Chandler Jr.; Consumer Products

26 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 26, 2019

attentional focus improves perceivers’ ability to judge group effectiveness. Finally, we find that perceivers with higher levels of social sensitivity are more accurate at judging group effectiveness. We discuss the implications of these... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

27 Sep 2010
Research & Ideas

Customer Experts Lose Influence When Teams are Pressured

puzzling and frustrating when I had the sense that our team failed to make the most of everyone's input. As a project manager I had made sure we held a kickoff meeting in the beginning of each new assignment to acknowledge all members'... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

28 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 28

enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways-yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors-keeping their focus on five strategic rules. Strategy Rules... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

31 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 31

various disciplines. Recent work has begun to focus on a previously overlooked factor predicting dishonest behavior: the beneficiary or victim of dishonest acts. In two laboratory experiments, we manipulate the level of resources... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Oct 2013
First Look

First Look: October 22

expenditures on teammates lead to better performance in both sports teams in Canada and pharmaceutical sales teams in Belgium. These results suggest that a minor adjustment to employee bonuses-shifting the focus from the self to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2008 (Revised July 2008)
Case

Kit Hinrichs at Pentagram (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker

This case focuses on Kit Hinrichs, a 65-year-old partner at Pentagram, a privately owned multidisciplinary design firm. One of the world's most prestigious design firms, Pentagram was founded by five designers from different disciplines in London in the 1970s. By 2008,... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Business Offices; Customer Relationship Management; Design; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Groups and Teams; Creativity; Service Industry; San Francisco

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23 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 23, 2008

mode of governance in the American economy: business schools became essential sites for the development of tools and methods for the management of the new large, diversified conglomerates (input-output approaches, linear programming,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

August 2021
Case

Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare

By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria

When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Industry; Scaling; Telehealth; Health Care and Treatment; Small Business; Internet and the Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; Growth and Development Strategy; Opportunities; Mergers and Acquisitions; Health Industry

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17 Dec 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

‘Ted Levitt Changed My Life’

president and CEO of Estée Lauder International Inc. "Ted's writings taught me that relationship management is particularly relevant in a global business," she adds. "I knew every single department store owner in every part... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education; Retail

07 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 7, 2009

Effects of Using Unverifiable Estimates in Financial Reporting Authors:Karthik Ramanna and Ross L. Watts Abstract SFAS 142 requires managers to estimate reporting unit values to determine goodwill write-offs. Those estimates often use... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Algramo

By: Michael Chu, Monica Silva and Mariana Cal

Founded in 2013 by José Manuel Moller in Chile, Algramo first became known for addressing the “poverty tax” (the surcharge paid by lower income families for staples sold in smaller sizes) through specially-designed dispensers in low-income neighborhood grocery stores... View Details