Publications

January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Blue Frontier: Disrupting Air Conditioning

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small

Serial entrepreneur Daniel Betts founded Blue Frontier in South Florida to offer a climate-friendly solution to increase air conditioning efficiency and dehumidify using new technology he developed. Backed by significant venture capital, Blue Frontier had to choose... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Performance Efficiency; Business Strategy; Florida

29 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

'Green Bonds' May Be Our Best Bet for Environmental Damage Control

Green Bonds, written with Daniel Bergstresser of Brandeis University and Jeffrey Wurgler of NYU’s Stern School of Business. While green bonds have been issued by banks and corporations as well, the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy; Utilities; Construction; Green Technology; Public Administration

11 Aug 2014
HBS Case

The Business of Behavioral Economics

economics and pop culture, particularly since the recent publication of popular books such as Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's Nudge, Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. Even so,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Health

12 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Facing the New World Order

competitiveness. We also include a number of special chapters focusing, among other things, on environmental regulations and competitiveness, a paper that was authored by Professor Porter and Professor View Details

Keywords: by Staff

18 Aug 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Business Plan Contest: 15 Years of Building Better Entrepreneurs

on what you need to achieve as a company, you're toast." Daniel Gulati and Vivian Weng (both MBA '11) were semifinalists in the 2010 contest with FashionStake, a "community-curated marketplace for independent fashion" that circumvents the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

01 May 2018
News

Elon Musk’s Unusual Compensation Plan Isn’t Really About Compensation at All

April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Price; Distribution; Supply Chain Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

06 Feb 2006
What Do You Think?

Should CEOs of Public Companies Offer Earnings Guidance?

article in Fortune magazine, Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, weighed in on the guidance issue: "The practice by which CEOs offer guidance about their expected quarterly earnings performance, analysts... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

08 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

The Return of the Salesman

mass marketing, they first focused on the more modern field, advertising. Daniel Pope, for instance, wrote The Making of Modern Advertising in 1983, and Roland Marchand wrote Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

02 Dec 2009
What Do You Think?

Should Immigration Policies Be More Welcoming to Low-Skilled Workers?

citizens. A study by Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute of several pieces of research concludes, for example, that in the U.S. immigration has not expanded the size of the "underclass," which he... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

18 Feb 2014
First Look

First Look: February 18

and by incorporating user innovation. We then examine how this ease of external engagement impacts the organization and its strategic activities. Specifically, we consider how this shift in information processing costs affects... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Jan 2001
What Do You Think?

Have We Extended the Boundaries of the Firm Too Far?

Summing Up "What we are looking at is a fundamental challenge to our assumptions about which corporate structures work," commented Daniel Hayes in response to the recent piece on the future bounds of the organization. Raman... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

31 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

The Faculty Reader: Who is Reading What This Summer?

eager to finally read Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown. Brown chronicles how nine boys from working-class families won... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Information; Publishing

19 Dec 2016
Research & Ideas

The 10 Most Popular Stories of 2016

offer “precise” bids for company shares yield better outcomes than those who offer round-number bids, according to research by Petri Hukkanen and Matti Keloharju. Bernie Madoff Explains Himself Eugene Soltes phoned convicted felon Bernie... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

August 2015 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Shareholder Activists and Corporate Strategy

By: David Collis and Ashley Hartman

By 2015, there had been an upsurge in activist shareholders arguing for radical changes in companies' corporate strategies. Personalities like Carl Icahn, Bill Ackman, and Daniel Loeb were feared and loathed in some quarters, celebrated in others. With nearly $120... View Details

Keywords: Scope; Activist Investors; Spin-offs; Synergy; Diversification; Consolidation; Hedge Fund; Corporate Strategy

16 Apr 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Chris Christensen: Legend of the Classroom

discussion from one point to the next—are remembered often by the legions of MBA students, doctoral candidates, and faculty members Christensen taught during an HBS career that spanned half a century, from the 1940s until his death in... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Education

March 2015 (Revised December 2016)
Case

Philips Healthcare Latin America

By: Sunil Gupta

On a beautiful sunny afternoon in October 2013, Daniel Mazon (GMP 15), decided to take some time out of his busy schedule of the General Management Program (GMP) at the Harvard Business School to reflect on his company's situation. Mazon was the Vice President and... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Latin America; Organizational Structure; Salesforce Management; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Health Industry; Latin America