Publications

December 2012 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Olam: On a New Course

By: David E. Bell, Forest Reinhardt and Mary Shelman

From modest beginnings as a cashew trader in Nigeria, Olam, founded by Indian nationals in 1989, has grown into a leading global agricultural trading company, with annual revenues of $14 billion. The company recently has begun investing in farms and in the production... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Leadership; Customer Value and Value Chain; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Environmental Sustainability; Expansion; Competitive Advantage; Agribusiness; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Nigeria

December 2009 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Monsanto: Helping Farmers Feed the World

By: David E. Bell, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Mary Shelman

Monsanto has led the effort to bring biotechnology to bear on food production. Through some management missteps and consumer resistance the company had difficulties in its early years. But since Hugh Grant became CEO the picture has brightened with widespread adoption... View Details

Keywords: Food; Global Strategy; Leadership; Production; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States

Article

Brand Values and Capital Market Valuation

By: Mary Barth, Michael B. Clement, George Foster and Ron Kasznik

Brand value estimates are significantly positively related to prices and returns, incremental to accounting variables. Questionable brand value estimate reliability underlies lack of financial statement recognition for brands. Findings suggest estimates are relevant... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Valuation

Find at Harvard

May 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Dell--New Horizons

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Marie Bell

Founded in 1984, Dell Corp. has achieved phenomenal growth, and by 2000 had topped $25 billion in sales and over $2 billion in net income. In the 4th quarter of 2000, however, the PC industry's average 30-year growth rate crashed to a negative 10%. Dell must make... View Details

Keywords: History; Decisions; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Framework; Globalization; Brands and Branding; Computer Industry; Technology Industry; United States

January 2009 (Revised October 2009)
Case

GLOBALGAP: Food Safety and Private Standards

By: David E. Bell and Mary Louise Shelman

In response to new laws governing liability and several food safety scares in the 1990s, European retailers drove the creation of a universal production standard based on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) for fresh fruit and vegetables and a third-party certification... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Food; Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; Safety; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe

2008
Other Unpublished Work

The Paranoid Style in the Study of American Politics

By: David Moss and Mary Oey

The conventional view is that political actors, like economic actors, pursue their self interest, and that special interest groups dominate the policy making process by satisfying policy makers' need for money and other forms of political support. Indeed, many... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Government Legislation; Media; Interests; Power and Influence; Public Opinion; United States

December 2008 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Arcadia Biosciences: Seeds of Change

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich, Forest L. Reinhardt and Mary Louise Shelman

Arcadia Biosciences is an entrepreneurial California agricultural biotech company seeking to earn carbon credits by modifying commodity crops for use in China and India. Eric Rey, Arcadia's CEO, faced a strategic inflection point in early September 2008. The company... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Science-Based Business; Climate Change; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Biotechnology Industry; China; India; California

February 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

The Climate Corporation

By: David E. Bell, Forest Reinhardt and Mary Shelman

Climate Corporation is a San Francisco–based data analytics company focused on agricultural applications. It was acquired by Monsanto in 2013. In 2015, Climate's decision support platform was used on 75 million acres of farmland in the U.S.; however, most of those... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness Industry; Farming; Big Data; Data Analytics; Agriculture; Agribusiness; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

April 2022
Article

Consumers Value Effort over Ease When Caring for Close Others

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Mary Steffel, Elanor F. Williams and Michael I. Norton

Many products and services are designed to make caregiving easier, from premade meals for feeding families to robo-cribs that automatically rock babies to sleep. Yet, using these products may come with a cost: consumers may feel they have not exerted enough effort.... View Details

Keywords: Effor; Caregiving; Close Relationships; Symbolic Meaning; Signaling; Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Perception