Publications

Find at Harvard

June 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Case

AREVA T&D

By: Ananth Raman, Vincent Marie Dessain, Ane Damgaard Jensen and Gudrun Urfalino Kristinsdottir

The case explores the rapid and highly effective turnaround at AREVA's transmission and distribution (T and D) business by focusing on the division's operations. The division was struggling in 2004 when newly-appointed CEO Philippe Guillemot and his team improved... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Improvement; Environmental Sustainability

June 2010 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Scientific Glass Incorporated: Inventory Management

By: Steven C. Wheelwright and William Schmidt

Scientific Glassware is a fast-growing, privately held company that provides specialized glassware for laboratory and research facilities. Excess inventory is tying up extra capital needed to fund the company's expansion plans. The newly hired Manager of Inventory... View Details

Keywords: Inventory Control; Inventory Management; Materials Management; Order Processing; Warehousing; Salesforce Management; Logistics; Operations; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Finance; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry

May 2024
Case

Pernod Ricard: Uncorking Digital Transformation

By: Iavor Bojinov, Edward McFowland III, François Candelon, Nikolina Jonsson and Emer Moloney

This case study explores the opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation journey of French wine and spirits company Pernod Ricard. As part of the transformation, the company launched four key digital programs (KDPs) aimed at using data and artificial... View Details

Keywords: Business Organization; Business Divisions; Talent and Talent Management; Global Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Advertising; Sales; Organizational Culture; Product Development; Decision Making; Technology Adoption; Alignment; Expansion; Food and Beverage Industry; France; Europe

2017
Working Paper

Lessons Unlearned? Corporate Debt in Emerging Markets

By: Laura Alfaro, Gonzalo Asis, Anusha Chari and Ugo Panizza

This paper documents a set of new stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility for emerging market firms following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Debt; Financial Fragility; Firm-level Data; Large Firms; Emerging Markets; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Financial Condition

2021
Working Paper

CRM and AI in Time of Crisis

By: Michelle Y. Lu and Navid Mojir

A crisis can affect the incentives of various players within a firm’s multi-layered sales and marketing organization (e.g., headquarters and branches of a bank). Such shifts can result in sales decisions against the firm’s best interests. Motivated by the backlash to... View Details

Keywords: CRM; Artificial Intelligence; AI; B2B Marketing; Decision Authority; Crisis Marketing; Intra-organizational Conflict; COVID-19 Pandemic; Customer Relationship Management; Technological Innovation; Decision Making; Strategy; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; AI and Machine Learning

SSRN

25 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 25, 2008

person's view of the water privatization (relative to other privatizations) was 16% more negative if he/she was read a vignette with some of the negative statements about the water privatization that Argentina's President expressed during the nationalization process.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

11 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Adding Time to Activity-Based Costing

foundations of strategic costing systems. The breakthrough came by combining an idea I had while writing Cost & Effect with an innovation developed by Steve Anderson, an HBS MBA, who was a student in my second-year elective, Cost... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

16 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 16, 2018

DSMC holds as a consistent pattern in a dynamic equilibrium. Given DSMC, clusters of firms making different complementary goods, including open platforms with surrounding ecosystems, can survive and compete effectively against integrated... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2008
Working Paper

Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization

By: Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart and Michael L. Tushman

This is a descriptive study of the structure of communications in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with millions of electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for many thousands of employees of a single, multidivisional firm during a... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Interpersonal Communication; Organizational Structure; Social Issues; Boundaries

November 2024
Article

Leadership and Plumbing

By: Frank V. Cespedes

“Leadership” is a growth industry. Amazon lists over 60,000 books on the topic. Most focus on emotional intelligence, charisma, avoiding narcissism (usually someone else’s problem, according to these authors, not their problem) and other personality traits. But as... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development

September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Gong: Resonating Conversational Insights

By: Alison Wood Brooks and Trevor Spelman

In 2015, Amit Bendov was struck by a realization about a new technology that might be able to transcribe musical notation in real-time, which eventually became known as Gong. Gong’s business proposition was simple: provide software that automatically captures,... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Technological Innovation; Communication; Performance Effectiveness; Sales; Customer Satisfaction; Competitive Strategy

Research Summary

Managing the Manufacturer-Retailer Interface

By: Janice H. Hammond

Janice H. Hammond is studying the impact of coordination on the performance of manufacturing and retail channels. The focus of her research is on the supply "channel", the set of firms that undertakes the chain of activities that begins with acquisition of raw... View Details

Research Summary

Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization

This is a descriptive study of the structure of communications in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with millions of electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for many thousands of employees of a single, multidivisional firm during a... View Details

18 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 18, 2008

WOM that is most effective at driving sales is created by less loyal customers, not loyals, and occurs between acquaintances (not friends). We find support for this in the field test as well as in a lab... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

June 2001 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Spir-It, Inc. (B): Managing People

When Jack Sindler founded Spir-it, Inc. in 1934, he was the company's sole employee. By 1999, Sindler's firm more than survived its first 55 years. Employment was up to nearly 200, with facilities in two states and work done in three shifts. The product line--which had... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Production; Business Growth and Maturation; Interpersonal Communication; Logistics; Human Resources; Diversity Characteristics; Manufacturing Industry

Pietro Satriano is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. He sits on the boards of CarMax, the largest omni-channel used car retailer in the U.S. and Metro, a large regional grocery retailer in Canada. Pietro advises a number of food-tech startups and acts... View Details

July 2009 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Sotheby's & Christie's Inc.

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Catherine Jane Wise

The fine art auction business has remained a duopoly over its 250 year history. The industry is dominated by Sotheby's and Christie's Inc. Curiously, neither competitor has been able to overtake the other by a notable margin despite the clear network effects of this... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Business Model; Restructuring; Economics; Auctions; Market Entry and Exit; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Operations; Competition

November–December 2018
Article

Online Network Revenue Management Using Thompson Sampling

By: Kris J. Ferreira, David Simchi-Levi and He Wang

We consider a network revenue management problem where an online retailer aims to maximize revenue from multiple products with limited inventory constraints. As common in practice, the retailer does not know the consumer's purchase probability at each price and must... View Details

Keywords: Online Marketing; Revenue Management; Revenue; Management; Marketing; Internet and the Web; Price; Mathematical Methods

Find at Harvard