Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,463)
- Faculty Publications (725)
- March 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Case
Whole Foods Under Amazon
By: Dennis Campbell, Tatiana Sandino, James Barnett and Christine Snively
In August 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. Whole Foods was struggling with high costs and faced growing competition from traditional supermarkets offering more organic products. Prior to the acquisition, Whole Foods began rolling out a new... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
Verizon 2018
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen
In 2018, CEO Lowell McAdam led efforts to transform Verizon through digital innovation, media acquisitions and integration, and changes to the company culture. He sought to manage change at the company as growth in traditional areas slowed and position it as a leader... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Yo-Yo Ma and Silkroad
Silkroad—a cross-cultural music collaboration that world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma had spearheaded since 1998, was preparing to celebrate its 20th anniversary. In parallel, Ma was stepping back from his role as the organization’s Artistic Director. Silkroad had come of... View Details
- March 2018
- Case
GiveDirectly
How should nonprofits design compensation systems to attract and retain talent? GiveDirectly is a respected charitable organization with an unconventional approach. Instead of spending on traditional aid programs in areas such as health care and food access in... View Details
- March 2018
- Case
Lufax: FinTech and the Transformation of Wealth Management in China
By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo
This case examines the rise and competitive positioning of Lufax, an online marketplace headquartered in Shanghai, China, and a pioneer in the origination and trading of financial assets. The company had grown at a remarkable rate, and was awarded “Trading Platform of... View Details
- March 2018
- Article
In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions
By: Eva Ascarza, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost and Rom Schrift
In today’s turbulent business environment, customer retention presents a significant challenge for many service companies. Academics have generated a large body of research that addresses part of that challenge—with a particular focus on predicting customer churn.... View Details
- March 2018
- Article
Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster
By: Hazhir Rahmandad, Rebecca Henderson and Nelson P. Repenning
Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Infrastructure in Nigeria: Unlocking Pension Fund Investments
By: John Macomber and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The so-called “infrastructure finance gap” was a problem in Nigeria as in many parts of the world. Infrastructure projects like power plants and dams were very large capital investments that could generate long-term consistent cash flows, but their financing and... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
Uruguay: Facing the 21st Century
By: Sophus A. Reinert, Michael Chu and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In the fall of 2017, self-made business leader Edgardo Novick pondered his campaign to be elected President of Uruguay, “the Switzerland of Latin America.” Inspired by populist revolts against the status quo observable worldwide, Novick hoped he could ride popular... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
Yunnan Baiyao: Transforming a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise
By: Michael Chu, William C. Kirby, Nancy Hua Dai and Yuanzhuo Wang
This case tells the story of how Wang Minghui, Chairman of Yunnan Baiyao Group since 1999, transformed a single-product traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) state-owned enterprise (SOE) into a major diversified consumer health player in China's highly competitive... View Details
Keywords: State-owned Enterprise (SOE); Traditional Chinese Medicine; Yunnan; Yunnan Baiyao; Consumer Health; Enterprise Transformation; Transformation; Health; Business History; State Ownership; Private Ownership; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Competition; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; China
- 2017
- Article
Frictions or Mental Gaps: What's Behind the Information We (Don't) Use and When Do We Care?
By: Benjamin Handel and Joshua Schwartzstein
Consumers suffer significant losses from not acting on available information. These losses stem from frictions such as search costs, switching costs, and rational inattention, as well as what we call mental gaps resulting from wrong priors/worldviews, or relevant... View Details
- February 2018
- Article
Structural GARCH: The Volatility-Leverage Connection
By: Robert F. Engle and Emil N. Siriwardane
During the financial crisis, financial firm leverage and volatility both rose dramatically. Consequently, institutions are being asked to reduce leverage in order to reduce risk, though the effectiveness depends upon the role of capital structure in volatility. To... View Details
Keywords: Leverage; Credit Risk; Crisis Management; Equity; Volatility; Credit; Risk Management; Financial Crisis
- January 2018 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
SAP: Branding in the Digital Age
By: Das Narayandas and Amram Migdal
By 2017, digital, social, and mobile technologies were rapidly changing the way many of SAP’s traditional customers did business over the last decade. In response to this trend, SAP had acquired companies with capabilities in e-commerce, human capital, workforce... View Details
- January–February 2018
- Article
Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality
By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat
More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details
Keywords: Inclusive Growth; Sustainability; Social Impact; Business Strategy; Shared Value; Impact Investing; Inequality; Corporate Governance; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Execution; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment
- 2018
- Chapter
Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?
By: William C. Kirby
Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.... View Details
- December 2017 (Revised December 2018)
- Case
OCP Group
By: Kristin Fabbe, Forest Reinhardt, Natalie Kindred and Alpana Thapar
This case explores the strategy of OCP Group, the 95% state-owned Moroccan firm charged with managing the North African country’s vast reserves of phosphate. Phosphate was one of the most vital macronutrients for plant health, along with nitrogen and potassium, and... View Details
- December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
- Case
Alltech
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky–based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech... View Details
Keywords: Alltech; United States; Agribusiness; Agriculture; Animal; Animal Agriculture; Animal Feed; Livestock; Family Business; Vertical Integration; Strategy; Growth; Feed Additives; Feed Supplements; Kentucky; Growth Strategy; Family Businesses; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Change Management; Trends; Governance; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Intellectual Property; Leadership; Management; Markets; Organizational Culture; Private Ownership; Science; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Research; Sales; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Kentucky; Brazil; China
- 2017
- Working Paper
Creating the Market for Organic Wine: Sulfites, Certification, and Green Values
By: Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean
This working paper examines the history of organic wine, which provides a case study of failed category creation. The modern organic wine industry emerged during the 1970s in the United States and Western Europe, but it struggled to gain traction compared to other... View Details
- Article
Capturing Value from Intellectual Property (IP) in a Global Environment
By: Juan Alcácer, Karin Beukel and Bruno Cassiman
Globalization should provide firms with an opportunity to leverage their know-how and reputation across countries to create value. However, it remains challenging for them to actually capture that value using traditional Intellectual Property (IP) tools. In this paper,... View Details
- November 2017 (Revised July 2018)
- Case
Royal Philips: Designing Toward Profound Change
By: Srikant M. Datar, Rajiv Lal and Caitlin N. Bowler
This case explores Royal Philips CEO Frans van Houten's bold use of design research to inform a critical strategic decision: Should Philips leave its storied lighting business behind in favor of complete focus on health technology and consumer lifestyle products?... View Details