Publications

October 2005
Case

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool 2005

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Mary L. Shelman

CEO Mayo Schmidt had just guided his firm through five difficult years. Survival had come with the difficult decision to change the 80-year-old agricultural cooperative into a Canadian business corporation. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) now faced the future with a... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Capital; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Demand and Consumers; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada

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16 May 2016
HBS Case

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

when more than 50 people in 11 states were sickened by an initial E. coli outbreak. “Do those smaller local organic growers have the experience, resources, and commitment to test their products for various food safety risks?” The chain... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

21 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

Strategy and Execution for Emerging Markets

with the challenges of scaling up as well as huge opportunities in managing rapid growth. These countries also provide an innovation platform to justify tailoring and inventing products and services just for... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

03 Jul 2017
Blog Post

4 Ways HBS Alumni Utilize Baker Library

and new product and service development research. We have helped them value firms, find new customers, investigate suppliers, and check in on the competition. We help alumni stay current with state of the art practices and View Details

September 1993 (Revised June 2009)
Case

Mary Kay Cosmetics: Asian Market Entry (A)

By: John A. Quelch

In February 1993, Curran Dandurand, senior vice president of Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc.'s global marketing group, was reflecting on the company's international operations. Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc. products had been sold outside the United States for over 15 years, but by... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Market Entry and Exit; Operations; Sales; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Asia

March 2021 (Revised March 2024)
Case

M-KOPA: Empowering Lives

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Wale Lawal and Pippa Tubman Armerding

The Pay As You Go solar power company in East Africa had sales of $71 million in 2019. It wished to grow to $300 million by 2025. M-KOPA, founded by three entrepreneurs in 2011, had grown nicely in Kenya and Uganda to reach nearly 750,000 households with an innovative... View Details

Keywords: Mobile Payment; Go-to-market Strategy; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Business Growth; Social Entrepreneurship; Renewable Energy; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Marketing Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Kenya; Uganda; Nigeria

17 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 17

Management (forthcoming) Abstract Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

13 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Kind of Blue: Pushing Boundaries with Miles Davis

firm specializing in improvisational collaboration and communication in high-performance teams. In their case, "Miles Davis: Kind of Blue", they reflect on the beauty of the music as well as the unusual story behind its creation. And they suggest that... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Music

Article

Real Effects of Relational Contracts

By: Steven Blader, Claudine Gartenberg, Rebecca Henderson and Andrea Pratt

How important are factors such as "firm culture" and "employee engagement" in driving firm performance? Increasing evidence from a wide range of fields suggests that productivity differs widely across firms, even after the inclusion of careful controls for factors such... View Details

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February 1997 (Revised July 2001)
Background Note

Introduction to Activity-Based Costing

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Introduces the fundamental notions of activity-based costing (ABC). Motivates ABC by means of a simple example, a single and a diversified pen factory. Proceeds to show how ABC assigns costs more accurately to products and customers by: 1) identifying the activities... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management

April 2021
Teaching Note

Drinkworks: Home Bar by Keurig

By: Sunil Gupta and Jonathan Levav

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 521-010. In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company’s upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch... 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

Web

Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

HBS ISC Professor Michael Porter retired from the Harvard Business School faculty on November 30, 2023. Harvard Business Review: Smart, Connected Products Health Care: Value-Based Health Care U.S. COMPETITIVENESS: Competition in the... View Details

Enabling Mission Impact: Funding Strategies for High-Risk High-Reward Innovation

Governments and foundations around the world are urgently seeking strategies to optimize their investments across a range of distinctive missions targeted towards societal challenges. How should such investments be made, from early R&D spending to later-stage... View Details

06 Dec 2016
First Look

December 6, 2016

Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol By: Bellezza, Silvia, Neeru Paharia, and Anat Keinan Abstract—While research on conspicuous consumption has typically analyzed how people spend money on products that signal status, we investigate... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

28 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 28, 2009

implications for how policymakers should evaluate the financial reporting environment facing firms. A real-world tax shelter is dissected to illustrate how tax shelter products enable managers to manipulate... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 1997
Case

American Cyanamid (A) & (B) (Combined)

American Home Products' (AHP) $9 billion hostile takeover of American Cyanamid (Cyanamid) was the largest merger-and-acquistion transaction in 1994, and made AHP the fourth largest pharmaceutical firm in the United States. At the time of AHP's offer, Cyanamid had... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Conflict and Resolution; Pharmaceutical Industry