Publications

Find at Harvard

2023
Working Paper

Saving and Consumption Responses to Student Loan Forbearance

By: Justin Katz

How do households adjust savings and consumption in response to liquidity from debt relief? I study this question using policy variation induced by federal student loan forbearance in the 2020 CARES Act and an individual-level panel of daily financial transactions for... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Consumer Behavior; Borrowing and Debt; Interest Rates; Financial Liquidity; Personal Finance; Government Legislation

SSRN

June 2021
Case

uBiome

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Olivia Graham

uBiome provided clinical tests that sequenced the DNA of human microbiome samples, providing data on health conditions directly to consumers or to prescribing physicians. Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based startup raised $105 million from top-tier venture capital... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Crime and Corruption; Insolvency and Bankruptcy

July 2007 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Berkshire Partners: Purchase of Rival Company (A)

Berkshire Partners, a private equity firm in Boston, was pleased with their recent investment in the Holmes Group, a home comfort consumer electronics company. The portfolio company was exceeding key financial targets and Berkshire Partners was confident that it would... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Capital Structure; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Acquisition; Financial Services Industry; Boston

November 2000 (Revised October 2005)
Case

TiVo

TiVo is a digital video recorder that allows viewers to watch what they want, when they want to watch it. Fourteen months into the launch, sales are very disappointing. Brodie Keast, VP of marketing and sales, wants to combine a catchy communications campaign, product... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Communications; Product Launch; Television Entertainment; Innovation and Invention; Electronics Industry

December 1997
Case

American Cyanamid (A) & (B) (Combined)

American Home Products' (AHP) $9 billion hostile takeover of American Cyanamid (Cyanamid) was the largest merger-and-acquistion transaction in 1994, and made AHP the fourth largest pharmaceutical firm in the United States. At the time of AHP's offer, Cyanamid had... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Conflict and Resolution; Pharmaceutical Industry

January 1998 (Revised February 2002)
Case

Funai Consulting Company, Ltd. (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Tomoya Nakamura

In the summer of 1997, a consultant at Japan's Funai Consulting Co. Ltd., must decide how to respond to a client's proposal to offer "open pricing" (based on willingness to pay) to customers unable to pay the standard price for the client's product. The client, Akita... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Price; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Decisions; Agribusiness; Management Practices and Processes; Business Ventures; Consulting Industry; Japan

Find at Harvard

24 Jun 2016
News

Is It Safe for CEOs to Voice Strong Political Opinions?

26 Sep 2023
Book

Digital Strategy: A Handbook for Managing a Moving Target

operating in a traditional physical infrastructure. For instance, the China-based firm Alibaba has spawned a massive shift from wholesale to consumer markets, as well as in financial services by operating its gigantic financial arm,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Information Technology; Technology

Web

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets - Faculty & Research

Compensation and Benefits ; Well-being ; Behavior ; Investment Funds ; Employees ; United Kingdom Citation Read Now Related Berk, Sarah Holmes, John Beshears, Jay Garg, James J. Choi, and David Laibson. "Employer-Based Short-Term Savings Accounts." Chap. 21 in The... View Details

22 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

When Does Impact Investing Make the Biggest Impact?

regions and emerging industries, allow for longer time horizons, and take more risk than traditional investors. Impact funds tend to prioritize consumer staples, energy, financials, industrials, materials, real estate, and utilities.... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

March 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Demand Media

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Google search had helped Demand Media grow to be a $1.9 billion online publisher. Then, social media and smartphone apps began to change the way people navigated the Internet. How should Demand Media respond? The business ran on a radically new model in which a stable... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Publishing; Consumer Behavior; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Publishing Industry

27 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?

Western technology extensively to face globalization and succeed. Very much Western-centric in approach yet Asian in practice, the Fungs of Li & Fung have mastered techniques of getting maximum efficiency out of the supply chain, taking raw materials and making... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

2021
Working Paper

The Origins of CE Marking: Standards, Business, and the European Market in the 1980s–1990s

By: Grace Ballor

Many products—from consumer electronics to machinery to children’s toys—bear the CE Mark, the symbol of conformity to the ‘essential requirements’ of European standards governed by the process of CE Marking. This working paper traces the development of the system of... View Details

Keywords: Business And Government; Market Liberalization; Standards; Markets; Trade; Integration; Business History; Globalization; Business and Government Relations; Europe; European Union

Read Now

Article

Employee Selection as a Control System

By: Dennis Campbell

Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details

Keywords: Management Systems; Governance Controls; Employees; Selection and Staffing; Motivation and Incentives; Decision Making; Business Model

Find at Harvard

December 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Blockbuster Inc. & Technological Substitution (C): The Internet Changes the Game

Investigates how the rise of the Internet as a vehicle for renting and buying movies has disrupted the video rental industry and how market leader Blockbuster Inc. can and should respond to these developments. Explores how the emergence of e-commerce affects the degree... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Risk and Uncertainty; Decisions; Technological Innovation; Competition; Change Management; Service Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

09 Feb 2024
HBS Case

Slim Chance: Drugs Will Reshape the Weight Loss Industry, But Habit Change Might Be Elusive

a part of US health care is the consumer weight loss industry? Herzlinger: First of all, the main problem is morbid obesity, not just being overweight. It’s the threat of death. Forty to 60 percent of illnesses—cardiovascular, diabetes,... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Health; Pharmaceutical

October 2022
Supplement

The SAH Group: The Time is Right, Instructor Spreadsheet

By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar

In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019, it expanded... View Details

Keywords: Growth Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Investment Decisions; Growth Management; Vertical Integration; Distribution; Competition; Strategy; Supply Chain; Presentations; Product Positioning; Market Entry and Exit; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Tunisia

22 Feb 2021
Blog Post

I Found My Future at HBS and You Can Too

community’s lifeblood sat dormant along the banks of the Ohio River. Consumed by poverty, the soft bigotry of low expectations had crept into the social construct, sentencing families in underserved communities like mine to a lifetime of... View Details

September 2011
Module Note

Orientation to Leadership Intelligence Days, 2011

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Anthony J. Mayo

Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Borrowing and Debt; Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Online Technology; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry