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November 2003 (Revised June 2004)
Case

Samsung and Daewoo: Two Tales of One City

By fiscal year 2000, Samsung had pulled far ahead of other "chaebols," Korean conglomerates. For example, the market value of Samsung affiliates listed on the Korea Stock Exchange exceeded the sum of the market value of listed affiliates of second, third, and fourth... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Business Conglomerates; Corporate Strategy; Emerging Markets; Crisis Management; Electronics Industry; South Korea

01 Dec 2007
News

A View from the Top

devoted time and resources to protecting the world’s wide-open spaces. Two of this year’s winners cited family life. “Finding a balance is something I’m proud about,” remarked Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (MBA ’87), leader of the 173-year-old Ayala Corporation, a View Details

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services; Management

22 Jan 2019
Blog Post

Balancing the Ideal with the Real: Conveying Corporate Culture to Candidates

to assert their most attractive qualities to discriminating job seekers. At Samsung, the manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Korea, “Results speak for everything,” says Phoebe Hung (HBS MBA 2011), the company’s Senior Manager of... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

June 1991 (Revised April 1993)
Case

General Electric: Jack Welch's Second Wave (A)

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

By the mid 1980's Jack Welch had completely transformed General Electric with more than 300 divestitures and acquisitions since the beginning of the decade. Welch insisted that his business units be number one or number two in their markets, and have the strength of... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Transformation; Employee Relationship Management; Planning; Corporate Strategy

01 Mar 2018
News

Democratizing Data to Favor Farmers

sector has been dominated by big players. A few buyers like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland dominate global commodity trades, while a cluster of conglomerates like Monsanto and DuPont control vital farm inputs like seeds and chemicals,... View Details

Keywords: Sasha Issenberg

Web

Globalization and Emerging Markets - Course Catalog

take the perspective of a large-cap mining firm in Mongolia, a domestic conglomerate in the Philippines, a muckraking foreign-run hedge fund in Russia, or the Prime Minister of Bhutan considering the development of a new hydropower... View Details

24 Aug 2017
News

Jeffrey Immelt: How I Remade GE

“For the past 16 years GE has been undergoing the most consequential makeover in its history,” departing CEO Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982) writes in Harvard Business Review. “We were a classic conglomerate. Now people are calling us a 125-year-old start-up—we’re a digital... View Details

01 Mar 2023
News

The Latest Model

broader economy. Prysm was retained recently by a large conglomerate to help design a crypto token, in a highly regulated jurisdiction. “They came to us and said, we need a token economic model that does the things we want to achieve and... View Details

Keywords: Alexander Gelfand; blockchain; cryptocurrency; economic models; innovation; consulting; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

September 2001 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Virgin Group, The: Filling in the Value Gap

By: Frances X. Frei, Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar and Corey B. Hajim

Chronicles the successes and failures of the Virgin Group. By examining these examples, students discover attributes of Virgin's overall service concept, which, at its core, competes on quality rather than on price. Students are challenged to consider how Virgin might... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Competition; Price; Business Conglomerates; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Market Entry and Exit

December 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Nestle and Alcon--The Value of a Listing

By: Mihir A. Desai, Vincent Dessain and Anders Sjoman

In response to a perceived undervaluation by the capital markets, Nestle is considering divesting a part of its ophthalmology subsidiary, Alcon, and must decide on a listing location. In the process, students are challenged to wrestle with the valuation of a... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; International Finance; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Markets; Taxation; Business Subsidiaries; Valuation; Food and Beverage Industry; Health Industry; Europe; United States

01 Jun 1997
News

Short Takes

with the ungainly conglomerates assembled in the 1960s and 1970s that provided a variety of seemingly mismatched products and services. And while many consultants and investors are seeking to extend this focused model into emerging... View Details

Keywords: Judith A. Ross

Web

Israel - Global Activities 2021

scale drip irrigation systems to customers. Netafim’s digital farming platform, Netbeat, was designed to “empower farmers to monitor, analyze, and control their irrigation systems,” but the firm, which was acquired by global conglomerate... View Details

June 1991
Background Note

Corporate Advantage: Identifying and Exploiting Resources

By: David J. Collis

Describes the economic theory that was behind the view that resources are central to the creation of value in multibusiness corporations and identifies tests that resources must pass to become part of a firm's "distinctive competence". Describes how those resources can... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Business or Company Management; Resource Allocation; Competitive Strategy; Theory; Value Creation

17 Apr 2017
News

Jeff Immelt Wants a Radical Transformation of GE

Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982) wants to change just about everything at GE, from its image as a slow-moving corporate behemoth, to the focus of its core businesses, to the location of its corporate offices. In May, the company that made the first lightbulb, as well as... View Details

Keywords: Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Manufacturing

January 2013
Supplement

Wanxiang Group: A Chinese Company's Global Strategy (B)

By: William C. Kirby, Nancy Hua Dai and Erica M. Zendell

Supplements the A Case 308-058. With an almost forty-year history as a business in China, the Wanxiang Group has navigated through the significantly different political and economic changes in China to succeed as a global leader in the auto parts industry, and to... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Global Strategy; Business Conglomerates; Vertical Integration; Goals and Objectives; Mergers and Acquisitions; Auto Industry; China; United States