Publications

07 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis

customers, and society at large, without regard for how much it costs, with 90 percent of consumers stating that brands should be willing to suffer substantial financial losses to ensure the well-being and View Details

Keywords: by Jill Avery and Richard Edelman

January 2021 (Revised April 2022)
Case

Best Buy's Corie Barry: Confronting the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

This case examines the leadership of Corie Barry, the new CEO of Best Buy, with a focus on actions the company took in 2020 to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. The case includes a history of Best Buy’s strategy and leadership, including the transitions between the... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Change; Disruption; Volatility; Communication; Competency and Skills; Customers; Decision Making; Ethics; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Cash Flow; Financial Condition; Financial Liquidity; Goods and Commodities; Corporate Governance; Health Pandemics; Human Resources; Executive Compensation; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Resignation and Termination; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Innovation and Invention; Jobs and Positions; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Job Design and Levels; Job Interviews; Job Offer; Labor; Employment; Human Capital; Working Conditions; Law; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Management; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Management Style; Management Succession; Management Systems; Management Teams; Risk Management; Operations; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Logistics; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Supply Chain; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Outcome or Result; Personal Development and Career; Retirement; Work-Life Balance; Planning; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Labor and Management Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Science; Strategy; Retail Industry; North and Central America; United States; Minnesota

10 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 10

widely, and research shows that it's often tough to increase profits by investing abroad. A new study of the grocery retail industry reveals that with a few exceptions globalization's benefits have not accrued to retailers. Local... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2019
Working Paper

The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance

By: Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Compatibility; Satisfaction; Profitability; Customer Relationship Management; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Banking Industry

SSRN

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October 2012
Case

Global Diversity and Inclusion at Royal Dutch Shell (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Elena Corsi

Royal Dutch Shell has been among the early players to implement diversity and inclusion policies in the 1990s, first in the U.S. and then globally. In May 2009, Peter Voser, CFO and soon-to-be CEO, wants to adjust the company's business, headcount, and cost levels to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Managerial Roles; Restructuring; Resignation and Termination; Diversity; Financial Crisis; Energy Industry; Netherlands

July–August 2008
Article

Interview with a Quality Leader: Regina E. Herzlinger on Consumer-Driven Healthcare

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA. She received her bachelor's degree from MIT and her doctorate from the Harvard Business School The first woman to be tenured and... View Details

Keywords: Consumer-driven Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

Find at Harvard

December 2012 (Revised July 2013)
Case

The “Chongqing Model” and the Future of China

By: Meg Rithmire

Since opening to the global economy in 1979, but especially since entering the WTO in 2001, China's economy grew at rates around 10% annually by attracting FDI and promoting exports. After the financial crisis that began in 2008 and depressed demand in the United... View Details

Keywords: China; Public Sector; Private Sector; Developing Countries and Economies; Macroeconomics; Public Administration Industry; China

04 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 4

argue that the evolving global network structure affects firms' propensity to form bridging ties by shaping the structural opportunities for bridging. We test our theory using the network of partnership ties among firms in the global computer View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2024
Case

Enerjisa Üretim: The Digital Era of Electricity Generation

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Sadika El Hariri

Launched in 2017, Enerjisa Üretim was one of Türkiye’s largest private sector electricity companies. In its early days, the company faced some financial and operational troubles. When İhsan Erbil Bayçöl, the current CEO of Enerjisa Üretim, joined the business in 2018,... View Details

Keywords: Private Sector; Performance Improvement; Renewable Energy; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Units; Partners and Partnerships; Leadership; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Turkey

January 2024
Background Note

Evaluating Innovations in the Organization of Primary Care: What Type of Innovation Is It and How Well Does It Align with the Six Factors?

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace

How can we evaluate if innovative health care ventures can do good—benefit society—and do well—become financially viable? This question is the topic of the first module in the Innovating in Health Care course book.

This note and "Health Stop (A): What Type... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Health Care and Treatment; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Mission and Purpose; Alignment; Health Industry

July 2018
Article

Reimagining Health Data Exchange: An Application Programming Interface-Enabled Roadmap for India

By: Satchit Balsari, Alexander Fortenko MD, MPH, Joaquin A. Blaya PhD, Adrian Gropper MD, Malavika Jayaram LLM, Rahul Matthan LLM, Ram Sahasranam, Mark Shankar MD, Suptendra N. Sarbadhikari PhD, Barbara Bierer, Kenneth D. Mandl MD, Sanjay Mehendale MD, MPH and Tarun Khanna

In February 2018, the Government of India announced a massive public health insurance scheme extending coverage to 500 million citizens, in effect making it the world’s largest insurance program. To meet this target, the government will rely on technology to... View Details

Keywords: Health Information Exchange; India; Health APIs; Health Care and Treatment; Information; Analytics and Data Science; Information Technology; Health Industry; India

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July 2014
Case

Thompson Asset Management

By: William Fruhan and John Banko

Thompson Asset Management (TAM) is a small investment advisory and asset management firm in Jacksonville, Florida, with about $100 million in assets under management in two different funds. Since starting the firm in 2009, the CEO and founder Allison Thompson has had a... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Asset Management; Expansion; Investment Portfolio; Financial Services Industry; Florida

01 Feb 2002
News

It's academic. (Not!)

Wasserman. "They have a lot of senior people at the top and very few junior people below them. Several other industries that started out that way - such as investment banking and consulting - have evolved into big, pyramid-shaped... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

September–October 2020
Article

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details

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October 2013 (Revised April 2018)
Technical Note

Non-Equity Financing for Entrepreneurial Ventures

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, Ramana Nanda and Piyush Jain

Young, and particularly high-growth ventures often need to raise significant external finance, since their internal cash flow is usually insufficient to support the investments needed to grow. Although raising equity from venture capital or angel investors is the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Financial Services Industry

04 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 4

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51635 forthcoming Journal of Financial Economics Cost of Experimentation and the Evolution of Venture Capital By: Ewens, Michael, Ramana Nanda, and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2008 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Two Brattle Center: A Mental-Health Clinic in Search of a Viable Operating Model

By: Robert G. Eccles

Two Brattle Center (TBC) is a struggling for-profit private mental health clinic based in Harvard Square. Its founder, Dr. Joan Wheelis, is a nationally recognized practicing psychiatrist who has developed outpatient treatment programs based on Dialectical Behavior... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Medical Specialties; Nonprofit Organizations; Emotions; Health Industry; United States

September 2013 (Revised August 2015)
Background Note

Leadership and Teaming

By: Ethan Bernstein

Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. Many initiatives fail not because of a fatal error in judgment or insufficient ideas, knowledge, motivation, or capabilities to deliver a solution. They fail... View Details