Publications

April 2018 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Coco Chanel: From Fashion Icon to Nazi Agent

By: Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean

This case describes the career of the iconic French fashion designer Coco Chanel who created a transformational business during the first half of the 20th century. Beginning in her early adulthood, Chanel leveraged relationships with acquaintances, friends, and... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Biography; Entrepreneurship; Relationships; Brands and Branding; Ethics; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry

March 2018
Case

Lufax: FinTech and the Transformation of Wealth Management in China

By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo

This case examines the rise and competitive positioning of Lufax, an online marketplace headquartered in Shanghai, China, and a pioneer in the origination and trading of financial assets. The company had grown at a remarkable rate, and was awarded “Trading Platform of... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Internet and the Web; Competitive Strategy; Situation or Environment; Product Positioning; Financial Services Industry; China

February 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Haier: Incubating Entrepreneurs in a Chinese Giant

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Nancy Hua Dai

CEO Zhang Ruimin must plan how to accelerate the growth of self-managed microenterprises. Platforms were Haier’s business platforms operating in five major sectors: white goods transformation, investment and incubation, financial holdings, real estate, and cultural... View Details

Keywords: China; Microenterprise; Appliances; Platform; Change; Innovation; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; China

February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

By: Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, an inbound marketing, sales, and customer relationship management (CRM) software provider, announced that it had acquired Motion AI, a software platform that enabled companies to easily build and deploy chatbots, fueled by artificial intelligence, to interact... View Details

Article

The Interplay Between Sharing Behavior and Beliefs About Others in Children During Dictator Games

By: Hernando Santamaría-García, María Luz González-Gadea, Rafael Di Tella, Agustín Ibáñez and Mariano Sigman

Previous studies in adults demonstrated that beliefs and sharing decisions in social scenarios are closely related. However, to date, little is known about the development of this relationship in children. By using a modified dictator game, we assessed sharing behavior... View Details

Keywords: Dictator Game; Altruism; Generosity; Development; Conveniently Upset; Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Perception; Decision Making

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January 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen and Shirley Sun

ZBJ.com (ZBJ), an online platform that connects knowledge workers to small- and medium-sized enterprises, is China’s largest outsourcing platform. Founded by Mingyue Zhu in 2006, ZBJ had grown into a unicorn with 4,000 employees and a daily transaction volume of RMB15... View Details

Keywords: Outsourcing; Disintermediation; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Problems and Challenges; Global Strategy; Information Technology Industry; China

January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
Technical Note

Making Markets

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Scott Duke Kominers

Explains how to identify and capitalize on marketplace design opportunities. Defines markets and marketplaces and describes the basic functions of each. Discusses attributes (e.g., heterogeneity of participants' preferences and asymmetry in available information) that... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Two-Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Auctions

January 2018 (Revised March 2020)
Case

SAP: Branding in the Digital Age

By: Das Narayandas and Amram Migdal

By 2017, digital, social, and mobile technologies were rapidly changing the way many of SAP’s traditional customers did business over the last decade. In response to this trend, SAP had acquired companies with capabilities in e-commerce, human capital, workforce... View Details

Keywords: Brand Positioning; Marketing; Sales; Brands and Branding; Strategy; Technology Industry

January 2018
Article

Big Data and Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life

By: Edward L. Glaeser, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Luca and Nikhil Naik

New, "big" data sources allow measurement of city characteristics and outcome variables at higher frequencies and finer geographic scales than ever before. However, big data will not solve large urban social science questions on its own. Big data has the most value for... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Urban Scope; City

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January–February 2018
Article

Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality

By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat

More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details

Keywords: Inclusive Growth; Sustainability; Social Impact; Business Strategy; Shared Value; Impact Investing; Inequality; Corporate Governance; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Execution; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment

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November 2017 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Royal Philips: Designing Toward Profound Change

By: Srikant M. Datar, Rajiv Lal and Caitlin N. Bowler

This case explores Royal Philips CEO Frans van Houten's bold use of design research to inform a critical strategic decision: Should Philips leave its storied lighting business behind in favor of complete focus on health technology and consumer lifestyle products?... View Details

Keywords: Design Research; Health Technology; Innovation; Design; Research; Decision Choices and Conditions; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation

November 2017 (Revised September 2020)
Supplement

Miami's Tech Future (C): Reaching Another Miami

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The effects of Miami’s startup scene have not reached many “left-behind” lower-income Black communities, which are disproportionately affected by problems such as segregation and racial discrimination, lack of transportation access, crime, education quality, government... View Details

Article

The IT Transformation Health Care Needs

By: Nikhil R. Sahni, Robert S. Huckman, Anuraag Chigurupati and David M. Cutler

In recent years, health care organizations have made sizable investments in information technology. They’ve used their IT systems to replace paper records with electronic ones and to improve billing processes, thereby boosting revenue. But so far, IT has been of little... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Information Technology; Performance Improvement; Business Model

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October 2017
Case

The Transformation of Microsoft

By: C. Fritz Foley, E. Scott Mayfield and F. Katelynn Boland

In early 2015, Amy Hood, CFO of Microsoft, and the rest of the senior leadership team faced a set of fundamental choices. The firm had opportunities to serve customers in ways that would be associated with higher growth but lower margin. Some of these opportunities... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Corporate Finance; Valuation; Growth Management; Communication Strategy; Transformation; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

October 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Bitfury: Blockchain for Government

By: Mitchell Weiss and Elena Corsi

In the Republic of Georgia, legend had it their land was a precious gift from God he had intended to keep for his mother. But over time, the land had been under intermittent threat from without and within. In 2017, the Bitfury Group, which Valery Vavilov had... View Details

September 2017 (Revised December 2017)
Case

Hulu: Redefining the Way People Experience TV

By: Henry W. McGee and Christine Snively

In May 2017, Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced the launch of Hulu Live TV, a new offering that would "change the way people experience TV." The new service would allow consumers to bypass traditional cable and satellite delivery and use the Internet to access live... View Details

Keywords: Television Industry; Internet; Television Entertainment; Internet and the Web; Disruptive Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Price; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

September 2017 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Marriott International: The Next 90 Years

By: Chiara Farronato and Gary Pisano

The case examines how Marriott should respond to the potential threats from new home-sharing platforms and the rise of online travel agencies. In 2017 Marriott was the largest hotel chain, with more than one million rooms and 7% of worldwide room supply. In the... View Details

September 2017
Teaching Note

Marketing Transformation at Mastercard

By: Sunil Gupta and Srinivas K. Reddy

Teaching Note for HBS No. 517-040. View Details

Keywords: Mastercard; Financial Services; Ingredient Brand; B2B2C; Experiential Marketing; Digital Marketing; ROI; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Brands and Branding; Internet and the Web; Investment Return; Financial Services Industry

September 2017 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Goldman Sachs' Digital Journey

By: Sunil Gupta and Sara Simonds

Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, proclaimed, “We are a technology firm. We are a platform.” By 2017, he led a series of initiatives to translate this vision into reality. These included giving clients access to its proprietary database without... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Transformation; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation