Publications

01 Mar 2012
News

Harvard Business School Opens New Classroom At Taj Lands End, Mumbai

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

A Perfect Fit: Aligning Organization & Strategy

professor Michael Beer says companies should do on a regular basis. "Business success is a function of fit between a host of key variables within an organization," he says. "Strategy, values, culture, employees, systems,... View Details

Keywords: by Judith A. Ross

February 2022 (Revised June 2022)
Case

Resident 2020

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones

Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Business Growth and Maturation; Operations; Entrepreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Decisions; Marketing Strategy; Cash Flow; Demand and Consumers

April 2023
Case

Fizzy Fusion: When Data-Driven Decision Making Failed

By: Michael Parzen, Eddie Lin, Douglas Ng and Jessie Li

This is a case about a fictional New York beverage company called Fizzy Fusion. The business is facing supply chain and inventory management challenges with its new product, SparklingSip. Despite seeking help from a data science consulting firm, the machine learning... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Production; Risk and Uncertainty; Analytics and Data Science; Food and Beverage Industry

February 2009 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Big Spaceship: Ready to Go Big?

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Big Spaceship, a digital marketing agency, faced a rather big challenge: How to scale the distinctive culture that was essential to its competitive strategy? Renowned for the cutting-edge websites that it developed to market major Hollywood movies and leading consumer... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Human Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

January 2023 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Belden and Digital Transformation: From Product Sales to Solutions Sales

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Klopfenstein

This case concerns the industrial automation division at Belden, a hardware manufacturer. While Belden historically sold products such as cables, wires, and other networking devices, EVP of Industrial Automation Ashish Chand recognized that IT vendors were entering the... View Details

Keywords: Implementation; Sales Cycle; Digital Transformation; Sales; Product Positioning; Business Model; Market Entry and Exit; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Supply and Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States

May–June 2021
Article

Getting Up to Speed in Your Sales Efforts

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Zoran Latinovic

In a study before the pandemic, Pricewaterhouse Coopers found that companies had made little progress in the previous decade in speeding up their cash-conversion cycle, as the cash crunch generated by the pandemic painfully demonstrated. In most firms, sales velocity... View Details

Keywords: Sales Velocity; Opportunity Selection; Deal Size; Win Rate; Sales; Management; Cash Flow

Read Now

16 May 2018
News

Spotify's 'Hateful Conduct' Policy Drags The Music Industry Into The #MeToo Moment

01 Mar 2010
News

Study: Companies, Employees Benefit Directly From ISO 9001

2023
Working Paper

When Should Public Programs Be Privately Administered? Theory and Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program

By: Alexander Bartik, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher Stanton and Adi Sunderam

What happens when public resources are allocated by private companies whose objectives may be imperfectly aligned with policy goals? We study this question in the context of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which relied on private banks to disburse aid to small... View Details

Keywords: Paycheck Protection Program; Targeting; Impact; Entrepreneurship; Health Pandemics; Small Business; Financing and Loans; Outcome or Result; United States

SSRN

Read Now

30 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

The New Rules for Remote Work: Pandemic Edition

and increase “asynchronous work” that workers can do on their own time in a Google doc, Slack, or email, says Prithwiraj Choudhury, whose research shows companies often benefit when employees work remotely. Choudhury is the Lumry Family... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

04 Mar 2019
What Do You Think?

What’s the Antidote to Surveillance Capitalism?

trusts like Standard Oil were busted by President Theodore Roosevelt. They were the Big Tech of their day. Where is the outrage today?” Facebook should be broken up, he added. Wildebeest proclaimed, “The best approach is to break up the big View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Advertising; Consumer Products

November 2002 (Revised October 2003)
Case

Circles: Series D Financing

By: Paul W. Marshall and Kristin Lieb

Circles, a corporate concierge company on the verge of profitability, must make a decision whether to take a D-round venture capital despite ever-changing and ever-worsening terms. A four-year-old company with several major clients, it has met its business plan... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Financing and Loans; Management Teams; Growth and Development Strategy; Negotiation Process; Venture Capital; Governing and Advisory Boards; Entrepreneurship; Service Industry; Consulting Industry; Massachusetts

Steve Wheelwright is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School.

Following his retirement from HBS in 2006, he served with former Dean Kim B. Clark at BYU-Idaho and then from 2007-2015 he served as... View Details

May 2004 (Revised June 2004)
Case

SchmidtCo (A)

John Schmidt's project to convert the information system of his auto parts distribution business is in real trouble, putting his company at risk. He must decide what his decision problem is and set appropriate objectives as well as create a good set of alternatives... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Negotiation; Information Technology; Decision Making; Distribution Industry; Auto Industry

31 Jan 2019
News

The Backlash to Larry Fink’s Letter Shows How Far Business Has to Go on Social Responsibility

June 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Technical Note

Sustaining Corporate Culture in a Growing Organization

By: Dennis Campbell and Tatiana Sandino

An organization’s culture can be a significant source of sustainable competitive advantage. For the organization, it can attract job candidates who fit and align employees working in different teams around common goals. For employees, a strong culture can generate... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Growth and Development; Mission and Purpose; Values and Beliefs; Management Systems

July 2007
Case

Kroger Union Negotiations 2005

By: Dennis A. Yao and Mary L. Shelman

A stylized version of the negotiations between Kroger Company and its local unions during 2005. Management faces a sequence of individual negotiations with local unions in addition to meeting the new competitive challenges presented by Wal-Mart's expansion in the... View Details

Keywords: Labor and Management Relations; Labor Unions; Reputation; Wages; Management; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Style; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry