Publications

2009
Working Paper

Where Is the Pharmacy to the World? International Regulatory Variation and Pharmaceutical Industry Location

By: Arthur Daemmrich

A consumer-oriented model for drug development and use has attracted attention in recent years as an alternative to the much-maligned approach of mass-marketing blockbuster drugs. In a parallel development, patients and disease-based organizations have assumed greater... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Health Disorders; Health Testing and Trials; Power and Influence; Competitive Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; European Union; Germany; United States

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April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Backchannelmedia: Making Television 'Clickable'

By: Sunil Gupta, Kavita Shukla and Zachary Scott Clayton

Backchannelmedia (BCM), a three-year-old start-up, intended to completely disrupt the world of advertising by transforming the way Americans watched television. BCM had developed a technology to make television "clickable," enabling viewers to interact with the content... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investment; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Marketing Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Competition

2008
Working Paper

Structural Closure and Exposure: Formation of Structural Inequality in Managerial Labor Markets

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Positional advantages arise when actors obtain rewards attached to positions they occupy, but these rewards are not merited by their performance. Existing theory suggests that in competitive markets there should be no positional advantages. This paper proposes a model... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Jobs and Positions; Managerial Roles; Performance Improvement; Alignment; Competitive Advantage; Equality and Inequality

May 2018
Article

Selection and Market Reallocation: Productivity Gains from Multinational Production

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie X. Chen

Assessing the productivity gains from multinational production has been a vital topic of economic research and policy debate. Positive aggregate productivity gains are often attributed to within-firm productivity improvement; however, an alternative, less emphasized... View Details

Keywords: Productivity Gains; Multinational Production; Selection; Market Reallocation; And Within-firm Productivity; Multinational Firms and Management; Production; Performance Productivity; Competition; Mathematical Methods

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October 2010 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

By: Sunil Gupta and Kerry Herman

In September 2010, faced with increasing threat from social game companies such as Zynga, Ben Feder, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software. Inc., had to decide the long-term strategy of his video-game company. As a publisher of traditional video games for Xbox 360,... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Leadership Style; Marketing; Competitive Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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Race, Gender & Equity Social Enterprise Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability Case Method Project Creating Emerging Markets Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Foundry Impact-Weighted Accounts Institute for Strategy and View Details

Other Article

What Do We Know About Variance in Accounting Profitability?

By: Anita M. McGahan and Michael E. Porter

In this paper, we analyze the variance of accounting profitability among a broad cross-section of firms in the American economy from 1981 to 1994. The purpose of the analysis is to identify the importance of year, industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; United States

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25 Oct 2010
HBS Case

Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market

makes ideal Harvard Business School case material for teaching everything from multinational strategy to on-the-ground logistics. Marketing professor John A. Quelch recently introduced Tesco PLC: Fresh & Easy in the United States,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

13 Feb 2020
Book

Open Your Organization to Honest Conversations

underlying reason why: Leaders often get stuck in echo chambers that merely reinforce their own ideas, says Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer. Meanwhile, lower-level employees are often fully aware of the problems that plague a company or the reasons a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

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Understanding Health Systems, Payors, and Regulation - Health Care

Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness at HBS. He advocates that the goal of any health care system should be to increase the value it delivers to patients. This is the underlying thesis of Redefining... View Details

December 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Sword Health

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Annelena Lobb and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Virgilio “V” Bento, CEO of Sword Health—a startup that provided virtual physical therapy to patients in self-insured firms via AI and sensor technology with supervision by a physical therapist with a doctorate—considered how to increase its U.S. market share. To do so,... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Strategy; Health Industry; Technology Industry

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Health Care - Faculty & Research

Enterprise Over the past several decades, HBS has built a foundation in health care research, from Clayton Christensen 's application of disruptive innovations and Regina Herzlinger 's concept of consumer-driven health care to Michael Porter 's use of View Details

2010
Chapter

Business Groups in Historical Perspectives

By: Geoffrey Jones and Asli M. Colpan

Business groups-collections of legally independent firms interconnected by multiple economic and social linkages that exhibit widely diversified product portfolios-are viewed as the prototypical large-enterprise form in contemporary emerging economies. By exploring the... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Management Skills; Emerging Markets; Alliances; Groups and Teams; Competitive Advantage; Great Britain

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April 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Unleashing Human Magic at Best Buy

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Sunil Gupta and Amram Migdal

The case examines the transformation of Best Buy under CEO Hubert Joly's leadership from 2012. Facing significant business challenges, including competition from online and physical retailers, Joly implemented the "Renew Blue" turnaround strategy, which focused on... View Details

30 Nov 2021
In Practice

What's the Role of Business in Confronting Climate Change?

The 26th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, also known as COP26, ended with a hard-fought pact that called on businesses and governments to meet their climate change goals faster. The event followed an August report by the Intergovernmental... View Details

Keywords: by Lynn Schenk and Dina Gerdeman

June 2020 (Revised April 2022)
Case

AFC Ajax

By: Anita Elberse

In July 2019, AFC Ajax’s chief executive officer Edwin van der Sar finalized one of the biggest transfers in soccer—that of Matthijs de Ligt, only 19 years old but already one of the sports world’s brightest stars—from AFC Ajax to Italian powerhouse Juventus FC for a... View Details

Keywords: Soccer; Talent and Talent Management; Sports; Globalization; Competitive Advantage; Strategy; Sports Industry; Europe

March 2008 (Revised April 2008)
Case

Sony PlayStation 3: Game Over?

By: Elie Ofek

Outlines the challenges faced by Sony with the launch of its PlayStation 3. Information on the 2006 and 2007 holiday seasons and the success of rival consoles is outlined. In addition, the case allows examining the costs and revenues associated with a business model... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Cost; Revenue; Product Launch; Sales; Competition; Hardware; Entertainment and Recreation Industry