Publications

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January 2004 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Raymond James Financial

Raymond James Financial (RJF) currently sells financial services through two channels. It is considering adding a third in the "middle" of the other two. The current strategy has one channel with employees and another with independent contractors. These attract very... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Salesforce Management; Marketing; Distribution Channels; Human Resources; Financial Services Industry; Service Industry

21 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: Feb. 21

creation of altogether new product markets and even industries. We illustrate our model with examples from the field of consumer sporting goods. The significance of user entrepreneurship and the implications... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Frances X. Frei

Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders accelerate performance and design for excellence in leadership, strategy, and operations. She regularly advises senior executives... View Details

Keywords: airline; banking; fast food; financial services; health care; hotels ＆ motels; management consulting; media; nonprofit industry; professional services; retail financial services; service industry; sports; telecommunications; tourism; travel

November 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Rent the Runway

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Laura Winig

Two months after a successful launch in November 2009, the cofounders of Rent the Runway (RTR), a website that rented designer dresses, are debating whether to grow their startup at a measured pace and focus on improving operational effectiveness, or raise a new round... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Electronic Commerce; Fashion; Expansion; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Fashion Industry

August 2006
Article

Global Integration ≠ Global Concentration

There is a widespread belief that increases in the cross-border integration of markets are associated with increases in global concentration along various dimensions. This article reviews the available evidence and presents new data, indicating that increasing global... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Markets and Industries

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11 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won’t

Call it corporate alchemy. New research finds that multinational companies can spin gender bias into gold by recruiting and hiring well-educated female managers in countries that traditionally discriminate against women. Employing women... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

12 Jul 2016
First Look

July 12, 2016

framework is their degree of fungibility: capabilities span a continuum ranging from highly general purpose (e.g., quality management) to highly market specific (e.g., knowing how to manufacture an airplane wing). To illustrate the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Aug 2013
Working Paper Summaries

X-CAPM: An Extrapolative Capital Asset Pricing Model

Keywords: by Nicholas Barberis, Robin Greenwood, Lawrence Jin & Andrei Shleifer

February 2020
Article

Why Prosocial Referral Incentives Work: The Interplay of Reputational Benefits and Action Costs

By: Rachel Gershon, Cynthia Cryder and Leslie K. John

While selfish incentives typically outperform prosocial incentives, in the context of customer referral rewards, prosocial incentives can be more effective. Companies frequently offer “selfish” (i.e., sender-benefiting) referral incentives, offering customers financial... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Prosocial Behavior; Judgment And Decision-making; Referral Rewards; Motivation and Incentives; Consumer Behavior; Decision Making

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03 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 3

Publications August 2013 The Accounting Review (forthcoming) Do Analysts Follow Managers Who Switch Companies? An Analysis of Relationships in the Capital Markets By: Brochet, Francois, Gregory S. Miller, and Suraj Srinivasan... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

Indulgence vs. Regret: Investing in Future Memories

passing through town for one evening and hopes you can have dinner. What to do? If you're more grasshopper than ant, research by Assistant Professor Anat Keinan is sure to please. In a series of papers coauthored with Ran Kivetz, a View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

07 Apr 2022
Blog Post

Product Management at HBS: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Learn by Doing

the ethos of the characters I played in video games, to deciding that compassionate leadership would be the way I worked to motivate my platoon. Now I’ve found that empathy once again drives me to my new mission: to become someone that... View Details

October 1988 (Revised May 1989)
Case

General Electric: Consumer Electronics Group

By: David J. Collis and Nancy Donohue

Highlights the General Electric takeover of RCA and the consolidation of the two companies' consumer electronic groups. Starting first with a history of the television industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and then a brief discussion of the main competitors... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Markets; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry

20 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Solving the Riddle of How Companies Grow Over Time

benchmarks? Defining what growth means Pisano and colleagues fill that gap in a new paper, Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959—2015, published in the journal Industrial and Corporate Change, the first... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

February 2000 (Revised October 2000)
Case

Open Market, Inc.: The E-Commerce Wars

By: James I. Cash Jr., Janis Lee Gogan, Michael Haselkorn and Mani Subramani

Continues the story of Open Market, Inc., a company founded in 1994 to support electronic commerce on the Internet. Despite a very successful initial public offering, the firm had reached a growth plateau, and the management team was considering several strategic... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Product Development; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

October 1990 (Revised April 1991)
Case

RU 486 (A)

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

Describes the factors faced by Roussel UCLAF, a French drug company, in deciding whether and how to market a controversial new drug, RU 486, which is often called "the French abortion pill." Roussel's decision involved its relations with the French government, its... View Details

Keywords: Judgments; Ethics; Product Launch; Negotiation; Outcome or Result; Performance; Business and Government Relations; Health Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; France; Germany; United States

18 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

Where Morals and Profits Meet: The Corporate Value Shift

Harvard Business School professor Lynn S. Paine's new book, Value Shift, argues that companies can't consider themselves amoral or apart from society anymore—that the relationship between companies and society at large necessitates... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

18 Feb 2025
HBS Seminar

Andrey Simonov, Columbia University

June 2019
Case

ClearLife: From Prospect to Platform

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren Cohen, Mauro Elvedi and Jiahua Xu

ClearLife’s first product was a trading and analytics platform for participants in the U.S. life settlement market, the secondary market for life insurance. ClearLife played a key role in facilitating transactions and devising a common language for expressing value and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Insurance; Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Diversification; Strategy