Publications

01 Sep 2018
News

Case Study: A Good Fit

employer would be interested. —Harry McCracken (AMP 114, 1994) A highly competitive market with one-year sales cycles on the one hand; a pilot customer in a less-competitive niche with a massive opportunity... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint

01 Jun 2014
News

Spring Training for Startups

The Winners Most Innovative, Greatest Impact (via online voting) York Street Partners Transforming financial markets to support Sri Lanka's development Best Investment (via HBS Alumni Angels) Busbud Busbud makes it easy to search,... View Details

August 2010 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Cork'd: Building a Social Network for Wine Lovers

Lindsay Ronga and Gary Vaynerchuk are launching Cork'd, an online social network for wine lovers. Despite Gary's status as a celebrity wine connoisseur, the team faces a significant challenge: several other wine social networks are well established and already have... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Network Effects; Market Entry and Exit; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry

March 1995
Supplement

The Black & Decker Corporation (C): "Operation Sudden Impact" Results, 1992-94

By: Robert J. Dolan

Describes the initial results of Black & Decker's strategy in the United States. View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Competition; Globalization; Construction Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

04 Apr 2018
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Why Private Investors Must Fund 'New Nuclear' Power Right Now

markets choose the winners, not government officials—no matter how well-intentioned. No politician seeks public financing for a specific competitor without threat of voter reaction. In short, competition... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Lassiter; Energy; Green Technology

February 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Supplement

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (C)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield

Analyzes the company’s decision on Project Cowboy following the events described in the B Case. View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America

05 Aug 2002
What Do You Think?

Is Platform Leadership Old Hat or the Wave of the Future?

determine whether the practice results in "collusion and monopoly?" In fact, does platform leadership have to be confined to those firms developing technology? Can it just as well be established by marketers who serve as traffic... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 13

42,337 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that corporate profitability mean reverts faster in countries where product and capital markets are more competitive. Moreover, holding constant product, capital, and labor View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

spring 1981
Article

From Competitor to Consumer: The Changing Focus of Federal Regulation of Advertising, 1914-1938

By: R. S. Tedlow

Keywords: Competition; Change; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Advertising

Find at Harvard

July 2008 (Revised September 2008)
Case

Work is Good: Branding the Employ+Ability Mission

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Monica Higgins and Susan Saltrick

Employ+Ability, a small company employing developmentally disabled adults, finds itself competing with low-cost producers of its core products-therapeutic hot and cold packs. How might an innovative branding campaign, centered on the company's core value of "Work Is... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Values and Beliefs; Brands and Branding; Competition

Find at Harvard

February 1995
Case

Catalan Leather Industry, The

Antoni Subira, the Minister of Industry in Catalonia, Spain, must decide whether to impose strict European Union environmental guidelines on the local leather industry. Failure to impose new regulations would result in substantial fines. Imposition, on the other hand,... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Industry Structures; Environmental Sustainability; Spain

July 2010
Supplement

AdMob (B)

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and David Chen

CEO is deciding between international expansion and increasing the number of publishers to strengthen the company's advantage in the mobile advertising industry. AdMob displayed advertising on global devices, and powered 6,000 websites and 1,000 applications, and... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Capital; Global Strategy; Resource Allocation; Product Positioning; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Mobile Technology; Advertising Industry; Telecommunications Industry

June 2001 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Ducati

Focuses on the turnaround and strategic repositioning of Ducati, an Italian maker of high-end sport motorcycles, and describes the current concerns with the growth prospects of the company. Federico Minoli, the CEO and strategic mind behind the turnaround, knew that... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Product Positioning; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Motorcycle Industry

15 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Solving the Health Care Conundrum

The U.S. health care industry is unique in that despite the presence of significant competition, which usually drives increased value through decreased costs and improved quality, the nature of the competition in health care has been... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter; Health

2002
Other Unpublished Work

The Effect of Editorial Discretion Book Promotion on Sales at Amazon.com

By: Benjamin Edelman

A new dataset collected by the author allows estimation of the effect on book sales of promotional listing on Amazon's editorial discretion pages. Following Goolsbee and Chevalier (2001), sales quantities are inferred from sales rank data freely available on Amazon's... View Details

Keywords: Online Advertising; Sales; Marketing Strategy; Web Sites; Competition; Books

Read Now

July 2009
Teaching Note

Microsoft's Search (TN)

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Eric J. Van den Steen

Teaching Note for [709461]. View Details

Keywords: Competition; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Markets; Computer Industry; Information Technology Industry

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Where Main Street Meets Wall Street

years later, both camps benefit enormously from their close ties: the mutual fund is America's investment vehicle of choice, with one in three U.S. households owning a stake in the industry's $5.5 trillion in assets. "By making the capital View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Financial Services

October 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Production I.G: Challenging the Status Quo

By: Andrei Hagiu, Tarun Khanna, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Masako Egawa and Chisato Toyama

In July 2006, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa wondered how he could further enhance the success and visibility of his animation production company headquartered in Tokyo, Production I.G. For the year ended May 2006, Production I.G. had sales of 5,439 million yen ($47.3 million),... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Advantage; Markets; Animation Entertainment; Going Public; Growth and Development Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Tokyo

February 2010
Case

Revitalizing Dell

By: Jan W. Rivkin

Dell Inc., with its vaunted Direct Model, defined success in the personal computer industry for more than a decade. Starting in the mid-2000s, however, the company fell on hard times. In 2009, Michael Dell and his management team must figure out why the Direct Model... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Change Management; Industry Growth; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Computer Industry