Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,350)
- Faculty Publications (382)
- November 2010 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
La Fageda
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Joan Enric Ricart and Jordan Mitchell
La Fageda is a manufacturer of high-quality, naturally-made yogurts in northern Catalonia, Spain. La Fageda is substantially different from its main competitors such as multinational Danone in that it is a 270-person workers' cooperative with 60 percent of its... View Details
- October 2010 (Revised November 2010)
- Background Note
Plavix: Drugs in the Age of Personalized Medicine
By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Mara G. Aspinall and Rachel Gordon
PIavix, one of the world's best selling drugs in 2010, appears to have a limited future. Its patent was due to expire soon, and recently new data had been discovered that indicated that a small subset of the population would be at risk for stroke, heart attack, or even... View Details
- October 2010 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.
By: Sunil Gupta and Kerry Herman
In September 2010, faced with increasing threat from social game companies such as Zynga, Ben Feder, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software. Inc., had to decide the long-term strategy of his video-game company. As a publisher of traditional video games for Xbox 360,... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Mixed Source
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gaston Llanes
We study competitive interaction between a profit-maximizing firm that sells software and complementary services and a free open source competitor. We examine the firm's choice of business model between the proprietary model (where all software modules are... View Details
- September 2010 (Revised July 2013)
- Case
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals: Building Value from the IP Estate
By: Willy C. Shih and Sen Chai
The learning objective of this case is to help students recognize the interplay between intellectual property (IP) rights and corporate strategy. We do this by examining what is a fairly atypical circumstance today in which a single firm is able to secure what it... View Details
- Article
Creating Value in the Age of Distributed Capitalism
By: Shoshana Zuboff
Capitalism is a book of many chapters—and we are beginning a new one. Every century or so, fundamental changes in the nature of consumption create new demand patterns that existing enterprises can't meet. When a majority of people want things that remain priced at a... View Details
- July 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Case
Beohemija's Duel
By: Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman
Vladimir Joksic, Director of Marketing for Serbia's Beohemija, along with his marketing team has managed to grow Duel, the firm's soap powder offering from single digits to almost 40% of the Serbian market in just a few short years. He has used innovative and... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
Star Power: Colleague Quality and Turnover
By: Boris Groysberg and Linda Eling-Lee
In this article, we argue that the existence of greater organizational resources, in the form of higher quality colleagues, acts as a retention mechanism. We test our hypotheses using a panel data set of securities analysts in 24 securities firms over a 9-year period.... View Details
- March 2010
- Case
Target: Responding to the Recession
By: Ranjay Gulati, Rajiv Lal and Cathy Ross
Within 10 months of Gregg Steinhafel's taking over as CEO at Target, the U.S. was mired in the most significant economic downturn in 50 years. Top competitor Wal-Mart had positioned itself well for the crisis, while Target's same store sales began to slide. While... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised November 2012)
- Case
Indus Towers: Collaborating with Competitors on Infrastructure
By: Ranjay Gulati, Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, V.G. Narayanan and Rachna Tahilyani
The case describes the formation of Indus Towers, the largest telecom tower company in the world that has a joint venture created to build and manage the passive infrastructure of wireless telecom operators by bringing together three competitors in India's tough... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
When Open Architecture Beats Closed: The Entrepreneurial Use of Architectural Knowledge
This paper describes how entrepreneurial firms can use superior architectural knowledge to open up a technical system to gain strategic advantage. The strategy involves, first, identifying "bottlenecks" in the existing system, and then creating a new open architecture... View Details
- Article
Are Self-service Customers Satisfied or Stuck?
This paper investigates the impact of self-service technology (SST) usage on customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, we disentangle the distinct effects of satisfaction and switching costs as drivers of retention among self-service customers. Our empirical... View Details
- 2009
- Book
Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization
By: Ranjay Gulati
In an era of raging commoditization and eroding profit margins, survival depends on resilience: staying one step ahead of your customers. Sure, most companies say they're "customer focused," but they don't deliver solutions to customers' thorniest problems. Why?... View Details
- December 2009
- Case
Philips versus Matsushita: The Competitive Battle Continues
Describes the development of the global strategies and organizations of two major competitors in the consumer electronics industry. Over four decades, both companies adapt their strategic intent and organizational capability to match and counter the competitive... View Details
- October 2009
- Case
Medisys Corp.: The IntensCare Product Development Team
By: Anne Donnellon and Joshua D. Margolis
Key topics include designing teams, managing teams, managing conflict, group dynamics, project management, product development, interdepartmental relations, and organizational change. MediSys, a U.S.-based medical equipment maker, has been developing IntensCare, a new... View Details
Keywords: Project Management; Interdepartmental Relations; Organizational Change; Leadership; Conflict Management; Interpersonal Communication; Groups and Teams; Product Design; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Health Care and Treatment; Power and Influence; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States
- September 2009 (Revised May 2011)
- Supplement
Acumen Fund: Measurement in Impact Investing (B)
By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan
As Acumen Fund, a global venture philanthropy firm, moves forward with an investment portfolio exceeding $22 million, it runs into two critical measurement problems. First, how should it track the performance of each investment when its interest is not just the bottom... 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
- July 2009 (Revised May 2010)
- Case
Pfizer: Letter from the Chairman (A)
By: Robert L. Simons and Natalie Kindred
This case explores maximizing shareholder value as a goal in executive decision making. Over a period of nine years, three different Pfizer CEOs make critical decisions intended to increase shareholder value. But the results are disappointing. To allow students to... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Case
eReading: Amazon's Kindle
By: Bharat N. Anand, Peter W. Olson Esq. and Mary Tripsas
In November 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle, the first electronic reader with wireless functionality. The case describes the launch of the Kindle and provides information on representative players in the industry (or broader ecosystem) who are likely to be affected... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
A Chinese Start-up's Midlife Crisis: 99Sushe.com
By: William C. Kirby, F. Warren McFarlan and Tracy Manty
Now into their third year at the helm of an Internet start-up in China, Ken Pao and Bill Li were managing a totally different company (with a new name) from the one they first founded in 2006. Having changed their business model from a social networking site to an... View Details