Publications

11 Oct 2016
First Look

October 11, 2016

director Tommy Kail, and producer Jeffrey Seller met to discuss how to launch Hamilton, a new musical based on the life of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, Alexander Hamilton. With a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2015
Teaching Note

Clef Company: Turnover

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Clef Company sells keys and other products to retail outlets, which then sell these products to consumers. The case concerns turnover in Clef's sales force in the context of company strategy, financial performance, and a day in the life of a Clef salesperson. Among... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Marketing; Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Performance Evaluation; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

March 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Samsung Electronics: TV in an Era of Convergence

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Kerry Herman

From the late 1990s to 2006/2007, Samsung Electronics moved from one of 170 TV manufacturers to gain dominant TV market share year over year from 2007-2013. As digital technologies increasingly converged in 2013-2014, the industry faced new questions: What was the... View Details

Keywords: Digital Innovation; Technology; Technology Management; Digital Convergence; Digital Technology; Innovation; Korea; Samsung; Television; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Product Design; Electronics Industry; Korean Peninsula; Asia

August 1984 (Revised June 1986)
Case

Cray Research, Inc.

By: Francis Aguilar

Cray Research faces several management problems as a result of rapid growth and the need for continued growth. Issues to be discussed include 1) whether Cray should be a marketing or a technology company; 2) new and powerful competition; 3) products to offer as Cray... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Growth Management; Product Marketing

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

frequently invoke—is that everything can look like a failure in the middle. Leaders can’t just launch a project or a venture and assume it will all go according to plan. Especially if it’s new and different,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

05 Oct 2022
Video

About Face: Pivoting from Science to Entrepreneurship

2016
Book

The Three Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation

By: Vijay Govindarajan

How to Innovate and Execute. Leaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approaches. And it is well understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Innovation Leadership

Find at Harvard

26 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Tap into Top Talent with the HBS Leadership Fellows Program

around the country, and he credits the HBS Leadership Fellows Program as the springboard that launched his career. Now he is back at Harvard Business School as the Director of the Social Enterprise Initiative helping develop more leaders... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise

July 2020
Case

Driving Transformation at the Majid Al Futtaim Group

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin

The case opens with Alain Bejjani, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) Holding, anticipating on the Group’s next phase in the multi-year transformation journey and reflecting on the initiatives he implemented to create the Group’s growth-oriented culture. Founded in 1995,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry; United Arab Emirates; Middle East; Dubai

January 2011
Article

Does Intellectual Property Rights Reform Spur Industrial Development?

By: Lee G. Branstetter, Ray Fisman, C. Fritz Foley and Kamal Saggi

An extensive theoretical literature generates ambiguous predictions concerning the effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) reform on industrial development. The impact depends on whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) expand production in reforming countries... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Foreign Direct Investment; Multinational Firms and Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Intellectual Property; Rights; Production; Expansion; United States

Find at Harvard

Read Now

April 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Unilever's Response to the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

In February 2020, Nick Dalton, executive vice president HR business transformation at Unilever, reflected on the changing nature of work marked by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation. Launched in 2016, Unilever’s Future of Work... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Human Capital; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Transformation; Human Resources; Consumer Products Industry; Europe

August 1998 (Revised June 2000)
Case

FairMarket, Inc.: Where Buyers and Sellers Connect

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Jack Wieland and Chad M. M Raube

On February 20, 1997, FairMarket, an Internet-based business-to-business auction site, was launched. CEO, founder Scott Randall, drew on his experience building Internet businesses at NECX Direct, Yahoo, and Internet Shopping Network to build his business. This case,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Debates; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Growth Management; Management Style; Product Launch; Multi-Sided Platforms; Problems and Challenges; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

Find at Harvard

22 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Want Hybrid Work to Succeed? Trust, Don’t Track, Employees

diverge from the typical nine-to-five. Contrary to some expectations—but consistent with years of research—that flexibility has actually spurred worker productivity to improve. In polls that Neeley has taken at companies in a variety of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

25 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 25

consumers' technological skills and openness to new experiences, and that consumers' beliefs about the social utility of feature-rich products are predictive of their choices of such products. Further, we... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2003 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Model N Inc.

By: Marco Iansiti and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

The CEO of a Silicon Valley start-up needed to make organizational and product changes to deliver a new software solution to a Fortune 500 customer. He was wondering how he should structure the company to best meet the requirements for this particular customer, while... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Trends; Communication; Customer Focus and Relationships; Selection and Staffing; Time Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Strategy; Software; Computer Industry

February 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Extend Fertility: Conceiving the Market for Egg Preservation (A)

By: Debora L. Spar and Olivia Hull

In April 2003, entrepreneur and MBA student Christy Jones was planning a new venture to help women preserve their fertility. Her company, Extend Fertility, would commercialize a technique known as egg freezing, in which a woman’s eggs were extracted and stored at low... View Details

Keywords: Assisted Reproduction; Entrepreneur; Health And Wellness; Fertility; Infertility; Women's Health; Creating Markets; Egg Freezing; Fertility Clinic; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Marketing Strategy

2011
Teaching Note

UFIDA (E) (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donghong Li and Lijuan Liu

In 2004, China's largest management software provider UFIDA began internationalization. In the subsequent 6 years, UFIDA entered Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and other overseas Asian markets. Nonetheless, UFIDA's overseas business footprint was still... View Details

Keywords: Computer Software; Corporate Strategy; Emerging Markets; Globalization; China; Applications and Software; China