Publications

2014
Other Teaching and Training Material

Marketing Reading: Customer Management

By: Sunil Gupta

This Reading on customer management sheds light on how companies should evaluate and manage their customers in order to grow profitably. Customer management allows marketing managers to inform investment decisions by drilling down into each customer's profitability or... View Details

Keywords: Customer Acquisition; Customer Churn; Customer Profitability Analysis; Customer Retention; Firm Value; Organizational Structure

June 2010 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Hang Lung Properties and the Chengdu Decision (A)

By: John D. Macomber, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-Ho Wong

A residential real estate developer competes in a heated auction for a prime retail development site in the interior of China during the 2009 boom. Total project cost might be in excess of $1 billion U.S. for over 4,000,000 square feet of building. Hang Lung Properties... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Geographic Location; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Infrastructure; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; Chengdu

September 2021
Case

Worldreader: Helping Readers Build a Better World

By: Marco Bertini, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2010, Worldreader was an international nonprofit organization that promoted reading to children around the world. For many years, Worldreader distributed e-readers to under-resourced communities and funded its operations primarily through philanthropic... View Details

January 2012 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Mexico City Water Shortage

By: John D. Macomber, Regina Garcia-Cuellar, Griffin H. James and Frederik Nellemann

In this case, a property company, a water privatizer, and municipal engineers explore the causes of and solutions to a severe water shortage in Mexico City, a great global capital. The protagonist is a real estate investor doing due diligence on the magnitude of the... View Details

Keywords: Infrastructure; Environmental Sustainability; Urban Development; Mexico City

06 Jan 2010
What Do You Think?

Is a Stringent Climate Change Agreement a Pot of Gold?

(through some form of sovereign fund) to those economies that are short of it? Is a climate change agreement a pot of gold or only the rainbow? Does it matter? What do you think? To read more: Vikas Bajaj, "In India, a View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Energy; Utilities

21 Dec 2021
Blog Post

First Look at New Research: January 24, 2017

introduces the product in China, he wonders if the product will be as successful as InMobi anticipates. Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/516030-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 617-020 Indigo Agriculture Indigo Agriculture had... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 May 2011
Research & Ideas

The Difficult Transition from For-Profit to Nonprofit Boards

do I need to read a book on nonprofit management? Isn't it just a subset of the for-profit world, with little difference in the tasks and perspectives of managers and board members? Cannot the tools, practices, and viewpoints View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

18 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ‘Collective Genius’

have developed an integrated framework for understanding, describing, and pre¬scribing how leaders build organizations capable of consistent innovation by focusing on these essential abilities. Leaders Create Collaborative Organizations... View Details

Keywords: by Linda Hill; Entertainment & Recreation

24 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 24

"gospel" of organic production to consumers. Purchase this case: http://hbr.org/search/314019 Harvard Business School Case 214-025 Bardhaman (A) & (B) A real estate developer decides whether to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

05 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Venture Capital Goes Boom—or Bust?

Energy facility, when he suddenly had a brainstorm that he knew would help him as well as others solve an all-too-common problem. 1 Using the "gopher" technology that had long made the exchange of files and programs across mainframe devices possible, in 1991... View Details

Keywords: by Paul A. Gompers & Josh Lerner

September 2003 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Raiser Organization, The

By: John A. Davis and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Jennifer and Philip Raiser, a sibling partnership who inherited a real estate management and ownership company from their father, ponder the strategic and financial challenges facing their family business. Reviews the history of the business and asks what the best... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Family Business; Growth and Development Strategy; Real Estate Industry

01 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: Judgment Calls

entrepreneur, he had overseen employees in a few of his earlier jobs and ventures, and had developed some appreciation of the difference that good people—or bad people—could make to a company. As he recalls, looking back, "I sort of... View Details

Keywords: by Thomas H. Davenport & Brook Manville; Consumer Products

17 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

validation of problems and target customers early in your product development process. One test, or even a few tests, does not qualify a product as marketable or fundable. The more objective tests you do up front, and iterate on those... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

April 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Ping An: Pioneering the New Model of ‘Technology-driven Finance’

By: Feng Zhu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai

In mid-December 2018, Peter Ma, Chairman and CEO of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. was considering whether the company should grow a fifth ecosystem of Smart City Services. Established in 1988, Ping An was one of the top 10 global financial... View Details

Keywords: Business Ecosystems; Fintech; Finance; Information Technology; Business Model; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry

TeachingInterests

United States in the World 39 - History of American Democracy

By: David A. Moss

For Harvard College undergraduates and MBA students

Today we often hear that American democracy is broken - but what does a healthy democracy look like? How has American democratic governance functioned in the past, and how has it changed... View Details

Making the Right Technical Hire

For many CEOs, particularly those running startups, hiring the right people is the single biggest determinant of whether a new business survives. And so it makes sense that the chief executive should be View Details

Restoring American Competitiveness

For decades, U.S. companies have been outsourcing manufacturing in the belief that it held no competitive advantage. That’s been... View Details

April 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

WeWork—November 2018

By: Paul A. Gompers, Patrick Sweeney and Alex Gachanja

In May 2017, SoftBank announced the official launch of the Vision Fund — which promptly became the largest technology-focused investment fund in the world, with nearly $100 billion in capital under its management. Reports from a few months prior hinted that SoftBank... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Valuation; Corporate Governance