Publications

09 Feb 2016
First Look

February 9, 2016

strategy and its product line strategy? Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/316085-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 616-007 Streaming Over Broadband: Why Doesn't My Netflix Work? In late 2013 and early 2014, Netflix View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2024
Teaching Note

'The Wheels on the Bus' Go Electric: Highland Electric Fleets and Partners

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 324-107. Founder Duncan McIntyre developed an innovative service-based business to electrify transportation fleets for school districts and scale through public-private partnerships while contributing to climate change solutions. The case... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Leadership; Growth Management; Supply Chain; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Innovation Leadership; Transportation Industry; United States; Canada

October 2018
Case

Shield AI

By: Mitchell Weiss and A.J. Steinlage

Shield AI’s quadcopter – with no pilot and no flight plan – could clear a building and outpace human warfighters by almost five minutes. This was not to say that it was better than the warfighters or would replace their jobs, but it was evidence that autonomous robots... View Details

2015
Working Paper

How Should We Pay for Health Care?

By: Michael E. Porter and Robert S. Kaplan

Improving the way we pay for health care must be a central component in health care reform. Payment reform must link provider reimbursement and accountability to improving patient value: better health outcomes delivered at lower cost. Today’s deeply flawed... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Value; Health Industry

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March 2024 (Revised April 2024)
Case

“The Wheels on the Bus” Go Electric: Highland Electric Fleets and Partners

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Jacob A. Small

Founder Duncan McIntyre developed an innovative service-based business to electrify transportation fleets for school districts and scale through public-private partnerships while contributing to climate change solutions. The case covers the rationale for electric... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Leadership; Growth Management; Supply Chain; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Innovation Leadership; Transportation Industry; United States; Canada

January 1999 (Revised November 1999)
Case

Metapath Software: September 1997

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Bill Wasik

In September 1997, John Hansen called together his board to debate an interesting choice that his company had to make. Hansen--the CEO of Metapath Software, a provider of software and services to wireless carriers--had two offers to describe. The first was an offer to... View Details

Keywords: Private Ownership; Mergers and Acquisitions; Private Equity; Decision Choices and Conditions; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Teams; Stocks; Public Ownership; Negotiation Deal; Telecommunications Industry; Telecommunications Industry

September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

Twiddy & Company: Trust in a Chaotic Environment

By: Sandra J. Sucher, Shalene Gupta and Tom Quinn

Twiddy & Company, known for Southern hospitality rooted in personal interactions, needed to adjust to contactless remote customer service as fear of the contagious virus prevented person-to-person contact. Local elected officials, in a bid to stop tourists from... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Health Pandemics; Organizational Culture; Disruption; Government Legislation; Transportation; Tourism Industry; North Carolina; United States

January 2020 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines

January 2019 (Revised January 2021)
Case

The Louvre

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Francois-Lucien Vulliermet and Daniela Beyersdorfer

Once a royal residence and today one of the most photographed Parisian landmarks, the Louvre, home of iconic masterpieces, was the world’s largest and most visited museum in 2017. Its President Director Jean-Luc Martinez had since 2013 spearheaded its development and... View Details

Keywords: Customer-centricity; Cultural Organizations; Museum; Brand; Customer Focus and Relationships; Mission and Purpose; Culture; Education; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Fine Arts Industry

13 Feb 2012
Research & Ideas

The Case Against Racial Colorblindness

openly discriminatory practices, contemporary legal arguments for colorblindness have become increasingly geared toward combating race-conscious policies," they write. "If racial minority status confers an advantage in hiring and school... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

by the government, we had to furlough 90% of our team. They still receive benefits but no wages. We plan on bringing them all back as soon as we are allowed to reopen, but for now they have no income from the company. Many in our industry... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

2009
Chapter

Nonlinear Pricing

By: Raghuram Iyengar and Sunil Gupta

A nonlinear pricing schedule refers to any pricing structure where the total charges payable by customers are not proportional to the quantity of their consumed services. We begin the chapter with a discussion of the broad applicability of nonlinear pricing schemes. We... View Details

Keywords: Price; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Monopoly; Service Operations; Research

January 2021
Supplement

Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; California

January 2007 (Revised October 2007)
Case

The Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund: Striving to Reshape the Social Enterprise Capital Markets

By: Michael Chu and Jean Hazell

Seeking to impact global poverty and philanthropy, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar donates $100 million to Tufts University for a trust restricted to investment in microfinance. Explores the origins of the initiative, the perspectives and objectives of the various parties... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Microfinance; Investment Funds; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Emerging Markets; Social Enterprise; Financial Services Industry

March 2009
Case

Barbara Norris: Leading Change in the General Surgery Unit

By: Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria and Deborah Bell

Barbara Norris struggles to address the many problems facing her as a recently promoted nurse manager in the General Surgery Unit (GSU) at Eastern Massachusetts University Hospital (EMU). She has inherited a unit with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and highest... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Leading Change; Service Delivery; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Groups and Teams; Motivation and Incentives; Satisfaction; Health Industry

March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Winning Business at Russell Reynolds (A)

By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco

In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting–and... View Details