Publications

September 2016
Case

Financial Services at Falabella (A)

By: C. Fritz Foley and Agustin M. Hurtado

In 2010, the board and senior management team of Falabella, a leading retailer with operations throughout Latin America, faced choices about what to do with its financial services division. More than 4.5 million customers had CMR credit cards that could be used in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Credit; Financial Institutions; Personal Finance; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Banking Industry; Retail Industry; Latin America; Chile; Argentina; Colombia; Peru

2010
Working Paper

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Balanced Scorecard; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Strategy

Read Now

November – December 2007
Article

Fundamentally Flawed Indexing

By: Andre F. Perold

A new theory of finance is being advanced as providing definitive proof that holding stocks in proportion to their market capitalizations is an inferior investment strategy. The claim is that capitalization weighting necessarily invests more in overvalued stocks and... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Capital Markets; Financial Strategy; Stocks; Financial Management; Valuation

March 1997 (Revised October 1999)
Case

Stone Container in Honduras (A)

By: James K. Sebenius and Hannah Bowles

Chicago-based Stone Container Corp., a leading producer of cardboard containers and paper bags, proposes a large-scale pine forest management and utilization program in the La Mosquitia region of Honduras. A framework agreement with the government is strongly endorsed... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Preparation; Negotiation Types; Environmental Sustainability; Conflict of Interests; Globalized Firms and Management; Developing Countries and Economies; Government and Politics; Manufacturing Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Honduras; Chicago

September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
Case

On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb

Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details

October 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems?

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Kelly McNamara

As the case opens in 1999, several key leaders at BlackRock, Inc., then a relatively small asset management firm, are trying to convince CEO Larry Fink and others that the firm should begin to offer Aladdin—its proprietary analytics and trading platform—to other asset... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States

19 Feb 2014
News

Choosing the Right Customer

02 Jun 2020
News

Great Leaders Use Tough Love to Improve Performance

Research Summary

Leveraging Knowledge for Performance

Morten Hansen is involved in research which examines how knowledge residing in different units in a company can be leveraged to improve performance in a specific unit. He has conducted several large studies of the use of knowledge in creating competitive performance,... View Details

February 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Huazhu: A Chinese Hotel Giant's Journey of Digital Transformation

By: Feng Zhu, Yulin Fang, Bonnie Yining Cao and Duan Yang

Based in Shanghai, China, Huazhu Group, the world’s third-largest hotel operator, was known for its standardized IT system. It helped the company boost efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Digital Officer Xinxin Liu also faced some longer-term challenges:... View Details

Keywords: Hotel Industry; COVID-19 Pandemic; Labor; Business or Company Management; Emerging Markets; Information Technology; Operations; Strategy; Digital Transformation; Accommodations Industry; China; United States; Singapore; Germany; Hong Kong

14 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

what that spending achieved. Yet there has been little agreement on a set of hard-and-fast metrics to measure social performance. How should a nonprofit manager respond when a significant donor asks for proof of his or her contribution's... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

September 1985 (Revised July 2007)
Case

Population Services International: The Social Marketing Project in Bangladesh

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Population Services International (PSI) was a not-for-profit agency founded to disseminate family planning information and to market birth control products, primarily in less developed countries seeking to curb their population explosions. In 1976, PSI concluded an... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Business and Government Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Bangladesh

March 2018
Article

Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster

By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Rebecca Henderson and Nelson P. Repenning

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details

Keywords: Capability; Short-termism; System Dynamics; Tipping Point; Business or Company Management; Earnings Management; Resource Allocation

26 Sep 2011
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Lady Gaga

important for managers in the music industry to understand how to effectively manage touring." As is the way of HBS cases, Lady Gaga(A) ends with a cliff-hanger, laying out the manager's choices without... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Entertainment & Recreation; Music

Kym Lew Nelson

Kym Lew Nelson joined the NOM unit of the Harvard Business School as a Visiting Lecturer in January of 2020. In July of 2020, she became a Senior Lecturer in the Negotiations unit. Prior to joining the faculty, Kym was a guest lecturer in the Negotiations class at... View Details

September 2021
Case

Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance

By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

The two vignettes within “Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance” (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms (“PSFs”). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to... View Details

October 2013 (Revised November 2013)
Case

Blackstone and the Sale of Citigroup's Loan Portfolio

By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein

The credit boom that preceded the 2007-2009 financial crisis led to several lending practices that exposed banks to large risks. In particular, when the financial crisis unraveled, there were several billion dollars' worth of leveraged buyout (LBO) loans that were... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Private Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Financial Markets; Investment; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

April 2001 (Revised September 2001)
Case

Merloni Elettrodomestici: Building for a New Century

By: Joseph L. Bower

In 2001 a young new CEO has to develop a strategy to move his company beyond the hyper-competitive conditions of Western Europe. A major acquisition in Russia and a new Web-based service business provide interesting new directions. This case traces the development of... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Multinational Firms and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Web; Russia

July 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Background Note

Staging Two-Sided Platforms

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Andrei Hagiu

Firms that aspire to develop two-sided platforms face a formidable challenge. Prospective users on each side will not invest in the platform until they are confident there will be enough users on the other side. Traditional strategies for dealing with this... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Risk Management; Two-Sided Platforms; Supply Chain; Strategy; Retail Industry