Publications

May 2025
Case

stc Group: DARE to Transform

By: Sunil Gupta and Sadika El Hariri

Established as a government-owned entity in 1998, stc Group was the sole telecommunications operator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Soon after it was privatized in 2003, regional players started entering the Saudi market. To deal with the competition and to... View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Diversification; Digital Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Telecommunications Industry; Saudi Arabia

August 2019
Case

Twiggle: E-Commerce with Semantic Search

By: Shane Greenstein and Danielle Golan

Four years after being founded, in 2014, by former Google executives Amir Konigsberg (CEO) and Adi Avidor (CTO), Twiggle had developed a search enhancement that plugged into an online merchant’s existing framework. The company utilized advanced structuring and... View Details

Keywords: Search Technology; Customer Acquisition; Internet and the Web; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Technology Industry; Israel

Lynda M. Applegate is a Baker Foundation Professor at HBS and is Chair of the Advisory Committee for Harvard University’s Masters Degree of Liberal Arts in Finance and Management at the Harvard University Extension School. She has also played a... View Details

2015
Working Paper

The Challenges and Enhancing Opportunities of Global Project Management: Evidence from Chinese and Dutch Cross-Cultural Project Management

By: Ying Zhang, Christopher Marquis, Sergey Filippov, Henk-Jan Haasnoot and Martijn van der Steen

This study investigates the role of national and organisational culture in day-to-day activities of multinational project teams, specifically focusing on differences between Chinese and Dutch project managers. We rely on fieldwork observation and interviews with... View Details

Keywords: Management; Organizational Culture; Projects; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; China; Netherlands

SSRN

Read Now

15 Aug 2019
Blog Post

Stan Chang: “A Guided Experience into the World of Entrepreneurship”

An engineer by training, Stan Chang, MS/MBA 2020 candidate in the SEAS/HBS joint degree program, came to Harvard to “balance a business curriculum with an advanced engineering education. When I saw the curriculum here and the focus on... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Entrepreneurship

05 Aug 2008
First Look

First Look: August 5, 2008

Prior to 1992, college football teams were matched for post-season play up to several weeks before the end of the regular season. Since 1992, the market has reorganized to postpone this matching. We show that the matching of View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Career Coach

Sarah Sikowitz

Sarah (Kellogg '06) is the Director of Career Education and Coaching in the HBS Career and Professional Development office. Her team manages all the student and alumni programming, along with the career coaching program. Sarah also... View Details

January 2021
Case

Anodot: Autonomous Business Monitoring

By: Antonio Moreno and Danielle Golan

Autonomous business monitoring platform Anodot leveraged machine learning to provide real-time alerts regarding business anomalies. Anodot’s solution was used in various industries in order to primarily monitor business health, such as revenue and payments, product... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Knowledge Sharing; Information Management; Sales; Value Creation; Product Positioning; Israel

30 Nov 2016
HBS Seminar

Melissa Valentine and Michael Bernstein, Stanford University

March 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Purolator Courier Ltd.

By: Rajiv Lal and Catherine Ross

On a fall day in September 2003, Robert Swanborough made his way down a thickly carpeted hallway in Purolator's headquarters in Toronto, Canada, toward a meeting with his two deputies. Several months earlier, Swanborough, then vice-president of Marketing, had been... View Details

Keywords: Conferences; Customer Focus and Relationships; Leading Change; Marketing Strategy; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Research; Segmentation; Canada

July 2012 (Revised January 2014)
Case

HGRM: Bringing Back High Touch Hospitality

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Gabriele Piccoli

The case centers on the dilemma faced by Carlo Fontana, the owner-operator of a small chain of two four-star urban hotels located in Lugano, Switzerland, and the other in Milan, Italy. Having developed an extensive customer service and operations information system,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Customer Relationship Management

08 Jan 2019
Blog Post

New Year, New Career Goals: Coaches Offer Advice for 2019

For many people, the New Year can mean new beginnings. Now is a common time to make resolutions, so we asked our coaching team their advice on what to keep in mind with your own professional development. Welcoming the New Year often... View Details

06 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Conducting Layoffs: ’Necessary Evils’ at Work

did you focus on those people who carry out "necessary evils" in the workplace? Joshua Margolis and Andrew Molinsky: We became interested in necessary evils because students in our undergraduate, MBA, and executive education... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

03 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

NFL Black Monday: How Much Do Coaches Really Matter?

rich portfolios. Many pre-Black Monday discussions focus on whether coaches really matter and how much. Coaching ability is crucial in leading and managing the team that results in ascendancy over... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik; Sports

17 Apr 2025
Blog Post

From Tech to Coaching: Empowering Women and Minority Leaders with Yue Zhao (MBA 2013)

something with lasting impact—something that could truly make a difference in people’s lives. HBS became the perfect launch pad. I dove headfirst into entrepreneurship, co-founding FirstCrush, a wine e-commerce startup that aimed to be the “Netflix of wine.” My View Details

February 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Customer Value Measurement at Nortel Networks--Optical Networks Division

By: Das Narayandas

Since 1995, Nortel Networks' Optical Networks (ON) division has been incorporating customer satisfaction and loyalty measures into its business practices to increase customer value. Over the years, key process owners in various parts of the organization have become... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Management Teams; Marketing Strategy; Value Creation; Telecommunications Industry