Publications

26 Jun 2007
First Look

lead their facilities to prioritize different external pressures and thus adopt different management practices. Specifically, we argue that external constituents who interact with particularly influential corporate departments are more... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January 2013 (Revised June 2017)
Case

The Perfect Storm: What Happens When the Market Moves Four Standard Deviations?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz

Adam Carter was the portfolio manager for Tate Modern Finance III, L.P. (“Tate” or the “Fund”), the third in a series of U.S. commercial real estate debt funds sponsored by the London-based Tate Partners. The Fund was capitalized with $700 million of equity... View Details

Keywords: CMBS; CLO; Repo Financing; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans

May 2007 (Revised November 2019)
Case

Dollar General (A)

By: Willy Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman and Rebecca McKillican

Dollar General Corporation (DG) operates one of the leading chains of extreme value retailers in the United States. 2006 revenues reached $9.2 billion, making DG the 6th largest mass retailer in the country. With revenues growing at 9% annually over the five-year... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Family Business; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Retail Industry; United States

Teaching Interest

Short Intensive Program (SIP): Agile at Scale: From OKR's and Agile to Execution Excellence

What do you want to get out of your remaining time at HBS, your career and life-plan to make an impact, starting from Day 1 post-HBS? By developing tools to drive your personal success and strategy at HBS, in this interactive immersion, we will dive into how the... View Details

April 2005 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Change at Whirlpool Corporation (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin, Dorothy A. Leonard and Gary Hamel

In 1998, the CEO of Whirlpool Corp. decides to change the company's strategy significantly to escape an increasingly unattractive "stalemate" in the appliance industry. The change he proposes involves a fundamental shift in the company's focus--from manufacturing to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Competitive Advantage; Strategic Planning; Production; Brands and Branding; Management Teams; Consumer Products Industry; United States

June 2001
Case

AtomFilms

By: Bharat N. Anand and Taslim Pirmohamed

Examines the evolution of AtomFilms--one of the few companies that survived the spate of failures in digital entertainment in 2000--from the time of its founding in 1998 to its merger with Shockwave in December 2000. Within a short period of time, AtomFilms had built... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Resource Allocation; Brands and Branding; Organizational Structure; Problems and Challenges; Alliances; Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

Find at Harvard

January 2014 (Revised June 2015)
Case

Amgen Inc.: Pursuing Innovation and Imitation? (A)

By: Ian W. Mackenzie

Set in 2009, the (A) case explores whether Amgen, a leading innovator of biotech-based drugs, should enter the emerging business of biosimilars (BS), which are essentially 'me-too' products. There appear to be sound reasons to explore this related diversification:... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States

June 2020
Case

Breakthroughs at Blueprint Medicines

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy Giusti and Susie L. Ma

Precision medicine company Blueprint Medicines was building a successful track record for bringing drug therapies to market 40% faster than average. The company had spent $40 million dollars and two years building a compound library that became its drug development... View Details

Keywords: Precision Medicine; Cancer; Biotechnology; Drug Development; Strategy; Expansion; Science; Genetics; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Culture; Management; Growth and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Cambridge; Massachusetts

May 2011
Article

The Best Way to Name Your Product 2.0

By: Marco Bertini, John Gourville and Elie Ofek

Although there's ample research to guide marketers in naming new products, little of it has addressed follow-on offerings, even though these make up the bulk of new products in many industries. Companies have two basic strategies to choose from. They can stick with a... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Management; Brands and Branding; Strategy

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

December 2014
Case

Louis Dreyfus Commodities

By: David E. Bell

Louis Dreyfus Commodities (LDC or Dreyfus) is the D of the ABCD grain-trading giants. The case describes how their business works and details the strategy by which management turned the company around in recent years. The case presents a number of issues facing the... View Details

Keywords: Commodities; Commodity Trading; Agriculture; Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Goods and Commodities; Financial Markets; Business Strategy; Product Marketing

November–December 2014
Article

Fairness and Efficiency in Multiportfolio Optimization

By: Dan A. Iancu and Nikolaos Trichakis

We deal with the problem faced by a portfolio manager in charge of multiple accounts. We argue that because of market impact costs, this setting differs in several subtle ways from the classical (single account) case, with the key distinction being that the performance... View Details

Find at Harvard

Read Now

Program

Competing in the Age of AI—Virtual

transformation strategy Business and technology leaders and contributors who want to understand how they can deploy the latest AI tools to unlock new sources of strategic and operating value Individuals in strategy-related roles including... View Details

James K. Sebenius

JAMES K. (“Jim”) SEBENIUS, is the Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he founded the Negotiation unit and teaches advanced... View Details

February 2018
Supplement

Qualtrics (C)

By: Doug J. Chung and James M. Lattin

Qualtrics was an online survey research platform and since the beginning, the company had relied entirely on an inside sales model—sales done remotely without face-to-face contact with clients. The low-cost inside sales model, along with an emphasis on a strong sales... View Details

Keywords: Inside Sales Model; Sales; Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation

November 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Votorantim: Uniting Family and Business Across Generations

By: Christina R. Wing, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo

Over a 105-year span, the Ermírio de Moraes family built Votorantim, one of Latin America’s largest industrial conglomerates, and among Brazil’s topmost businesses, also credited for helping “build” the country over decades. By early 2023, Votorantim included... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Family Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Family and Family Relationships; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Chemical Industry; Mining Industry; Financial Services Industry; Latin America

Rajiv Lal, is the Stanley Roth, Sr. Professor of Retailing at Harvard Business School. He is currently teaching an elective MBA course on the Business of Smart Connected Products/IOT. He has been responsible for the retailing curriculum and has served as the course... View Details

October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries

By: Shai Bernstein, Ramana Nanda and Allison Ciechanover

While still a general partner at Silicon Valley–based New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Ravi Viswanathan considered the challenges presented by evolving market dynamics in the venture capital space. Startups were staying private longer, which led to limited partners... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Strategy

Teaching Interest

Driving Organizational Agility - Virtual

By: Ranjay Gulati

Today's businesses must be alert to changes in the external environment, develop competitive strategies quickly—and adapt the organization to execute. In this virtual program, you'll explore organizational structures and processes that have enabled businesses to... View Details

October 2001 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Anagene, Inc.

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Christina L. Darwall

An entrepreneurial, publicly traded biotech company has begun production and sales of its core product--cartridges that permit DNA samples to be analyzed on a microchip. In the early quarters, sales are difficult to forecast and the company has experienced fluctuating... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Production; Performance Capacity; Risk and Uncertainty; Genetics; Governing and Advisory Boards; Biotechnology Industry; California