Publications

January 2023
Module Note

In business and strategy contexts, network effects are often accompanied by bandwagon (or herding) effects, positive feedback loops (or accumulated advantage effects), and market tipping (or winner-take-all dynamics). Though these phenomena are often grouped together... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Network Effects

23 Sep 2011
News

Environmental policy globalisation means better reporting

February 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Case

Caijing Magazine (A)

By: Karthik Ramanna and G.A. Donovan

In late 2009, Wang Boming, publisher of Caijing Magazine, widely regarded as China's most independent newsmagazine, gathered his core team for an urgent meeting. His pioneering editor Hu Shuli, described for her fiercely independent journalism as "the most dangerous... View Details

Keywords: Journals and Magazines; Publishing Industry; China

Emily Tedards is a Doctoral Student in the Organizational Behavior program at Harvard Business School and a Doctoral Fellow for the Reimagining the Economy Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. Emily is interested in interorganizational networks, alliances, and the... View Details

February 1992 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation (A-1)

By: Lynn S. Paine

The CEO of Beech-Nut Nutrition Corp. must decide what to do when he receives information that the company's supply of apple juice concentrate may be adulterated. The concentrate is used in many of the company's juice products. It appears that others in the company may... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Law; Ethics; Nutrition; Management Teams; Decisions; Business or Company Management; Communication; Governance Compliance; Information Management; Corporate Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

September–October 2016
Article

What Senior Executives Should Know About Sales

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Business is more complex, data more abundant, and more specialists are needed to stay up-to-date with functional best practices. As a senior executive, you can worry all you want about disruption, but you need a salesforce aligned with strategy to do something about... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Management Teams

Register to Read

28 Dec 2018
News

This Was a Great Year to Be a Math Geek

24–26 Aug 2016
Reunion

HBS Executive Education Global Alumni Leadership Summit

This special two-day summit is designed exclusively for members of our HBS alumni community. We hope that you will take part in the global conversation, and look forward to welcoming you back on campus for the celebration. View Details

Robin J. Ely

Robin Ely is the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She conducts research on race and gender relations in organizations with a focus on leadership, identity, and organizational culture change.... View Details

March 2023
Case

Interior Collab

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

After venture capital-funded online interior design agency Homepolish collapsed, its former freelance designers met to discuss next steps. The bitter experience led some of them to create a workers’ collaborative called Interior Collab. The founding members needed to... View Details

Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Human Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Cooperative Ownership; Employee Ownership; Trust; Service Industry; Technology Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)

June 1991 (Revised October 1991)
Case

General Electric: Reg Jones and Jack Welch

By: Francis Aguilar and Christopher A. Bartlett

When GE's retiring Reginald Jones turned the job of CEO over to Jack Welch on April 1, 1981, the Wall Street Journal reported that GE had "decided to replace a legend with a live wire." Some wondered if the young dynamo could fill the elder statesman's very large... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Business or Company Management; Change Management; Leading Change; Restructuring; Investment; Strategic Planning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Succession

March 2021
Article

Experimenting During the Shift to Virtual Team Work: Learnings from How Teams Adapted Their Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Ashley V. Whillans, Leslie Perlow and Aurora Turek

Past research has focused on understanding the characteristics of work that are fully virtual or fully collocated. The present study seeks to expand our understanding of team work by studying knowledge workers' experiences as they were suddenly forced to transition to... View Details

Keywords: Team Work; Activities; Virtual Work; Digital Technologies; Groups and Teams; Health Pandemics; Internet and the Web; Adaptation

Read Now

February 1981 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Harris Seafoods, Inc.

By: William E. Fruhan Jr. and William A. Sahlman

Presents data relevant to a major capital expenditure--the construction of a shrimp plant. Designed to test student's ability to identify relevant cash flows, to estimate the cost of capital, and to decide whether or not to invest. View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Cash Flow; Cost of Capital; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

October 2022 (Revised December 2022)
Case

SMART: AI and Machine Learning for Wildlife Conservation

By: Brian Trelstad and Bonnie Yining Cao

Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), a set of software and analytical tools designed for the purpose of wildlife conservation, had demonstrated significant improvements in patrol coverage, with some observed reductions in poaching and contributing to wildlife... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Emerging Markets; Technology Adoption; Strategy; Management; Ethics; Social Enterprise; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Natural Environment; Technology Industry; Cambodia; United States; Africa

2022
Working Paper

Stories, Statistics and Memory

By: Thomas Graeber, Christopher Roth and Florian Zimmermann

For most decisions, we rely on information encountered over the course of days, months or years. We consume this information in various forms, including abstract summaries of multiple data points – statistics – and contextualized anecdotes about individual instances... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Types; Media; Cognition and Thinking

Read Now

03 Feb 2017
News

Case Study in Chaos: How Management Experts Grade a Trump White House

November 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Liz Claiborne and the New Working Woman

By: Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson

At age 47, with two decades of experience as a lead designer for a Fortune 500 fashion company, Liz Claiborne put her life savings on the line to form Liz Claiborne, Inc., a partnership that included her husband. A decade later, in 1986, Claiborne was CEO of her own... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Entrepreneurship; Business History; Leadership; Gender; Brands and Branding; Personal Development and Career; Apparel and Accessories Industry

July–August 2014
Article

How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived

By: Ranjay Gulati, Charles Casto and Charlotte Krontiris

In March 2011, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was devastated by three reactor explosions and two core meltdowns in the days following a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami that produced waves as high as 17 meters. The world is familiar with Daiichi's fate; less... View Details