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Publications
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- Faculty Publications (984)
- 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
- October 2020
- Case
LifeBank Nigeria
By: Brian Trelstad, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal
The aspiration of addressing maternal deaths in Nigeria, which were mostly caused by blood shortages, led Temie Giwa-Tubosun to found LifeBank in 2015. LifeBank developed an online platform that enabled hospitals to connect and purchase blood from local blood banks and... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Persevere, Pivot or Perish
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a pivot, investor relations,... View Details
- September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Supplement
Eaton Corporation: Portfolio Transformation and The Cost of Capital
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher
In 2000, Eaton Corporation was a broadly diversified industrial conglomerate. But its strategy was evolving and its focus was narrowing around “power management” and more recently on “intelligent power,” the use of digitally enabled products and services designed to... View Details
- September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Eaton Corporation: Portfolio Transformation and The Cost of Capital
By: Benjamin C. Esty, E. Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher
In 2000, Eaton Corporation was a broadly diversified industrial conglomerate. But its strategy was evolving and its focus was narrowing around “power management” and more recently on “intelligent power,” the use of digitally enabled products and services designed to... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Uber at a Crossroads (2017)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Model; Customer Satisfaction; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Price; Profit; Revenue; Investment; Government Legislation; Business History; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Employment; Wages; Lawfulness; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management Style; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Design; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Attitudes; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Transportation Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Valuation; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- Article
Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patents
By: David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu
Manufacturing accounts for more than three-quarters of U.S. corporate patents. The competitive shock to this sector emanating from China's economic ascent could in theory either augment or stifle U.S. innovation. Using three decades of U.S. patents matched to corporate... View Details
- September 3, 2020
- Article
How to Measure a Company's Real Impact
By: Ronald Cohen and George Serafeim
Impact transparency will reshape capitalism. By shifting the pursuit of profit away from negligently creating problems to purposefully creating valuable solutions for the world, it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we... View Details
Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Impact Investment; Impact Investment Funds; Accountability; Accounting Information; Corporate Performance; Sustainability; Social Impact; Capitalism; Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Social Enterprise; Society
- September–October 2020
- Article
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (A)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in November 2019 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 contemplating what the best fulfillment format and... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (B)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in February 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 looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
PayPal: The Next Chapter
By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb
Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Luckin Coffee (A): Caffeine-fueled Growth?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the founding of Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee in 2017 and its path to surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China (by number of stores) in 2019. Unlike Starbucks stores, which were designed to be welcoming “third places” for... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Earnings; Cost; Cost Management; Financial Statements; Financial Condition; Financial Management; Stocks; Profit; Revenue; Price; Food; Business History; Employment; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; China
- August 2020
- Supplement
Luckin Coffee (B): Revelations of Fraud
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes revelations of fraud at Luckin Coffee, beginning with an anonymous report in January 2020 and continuing with the company’s admission in April 2020 that it had inflated its revenues by 2.2 billion RMB ($310 million), almost half its reported... View Details
- July 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Property Finder's Strategy for Online Classifieds in the MENA Region
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais
The case opens in 2020 as Michael Lahyani, founder and CEO of Property Finder, Dubai’s leading online real estate classifieds portal, contemplates the company’s five-year growth strategy.
Since its founding in 2005 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Property... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
What IKEA Do We Want?
By: Juan Alcácer, Cynthia A. Montgomery, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Dessain
In 2018, Swedish furniture maker IKEA was undergoing a significant transformation. Challenged by the rise of online shopping and changing consumer behavior, and mourning the death of its founder, the Company's top executives knew they had to step out of their comfort... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
Frenemies in Platform Markets: Heterogeneous Profit Foci as Drivers of Compatibility Decisions
By: Ron Adner, Jianqing Chen and Feng Zhu
We study compatibility decisions of two competing platform owners that generate profits through both hardware sales and royalties from content sales. We consider a game-theoretic model in which two platforms offer different standalone utilities to users. We find that... View Details
- May 2020
- Teaching Note
Talismark
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 211-097. Talismark negotiated waste hauling contracts for small and medium size companies. Its owners, Charles Muszynski and Marshall Staiman, were able to grow the business by more than 30% per year since it was founded, but believed... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Justice-as-a-Service at RightNow
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as minimal viable product, defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a... View Details
- May–June 2020
- Article
Interfirm Ties Between Ventures and Limited Partners of Venture Capital Funds: Performance Effects in Financial Markets
By: Umit Ozmel, M. Deniz Yavuz, Timothy E. Trombley and Ranjay Gulati
We argue that strong indirect ties are conducive to the transfer of private information, which provides an advantage in identifying profitable investment opportunities. In our context, a strong indirect tie is generated between an investor and a focal firm if the... View Details