Publications

Read Now

April 2000 (Revised March 2015)
Case

The First Six Months: Launching a PSF Career

By: Ashish Nanda, Thomas J. DeLong and Scot H. Landry

Presents two situations: 1) two graduating MBAs from Harvard Business School compare and contrast their strategies for getting off to a good start in consulting, and 2) a junior consultant has to deal with difficult feedback in his very first performance review. View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Planning; Practice; Strategy; Performance Evaluation; Adaptation; Consulting Industry

Career Coach

Rich Schneider

Rich (HBS’74) has been a Career Coach since 2009 and works with both students and alumni. He retired from a 35 year career in management consulting that year and is presently active in several capacities: Partner in Sage Partners, a... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Consulting; Consulting; Consulting; Consulting

20 Feb 2014
HBS Seminar

Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Business School

Trang Nguyen

Trang Nguyen is a student at the Ph.D. Business Administration program jointly offered by Harvard Business School and Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Trang is interested in research at the intersection of corporate governance... View Details

December 2004 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Managing Diversity at Spencer Owens & Co.

By: Robin J. Ely and Ingrid Vargas

Spencer Owens & Co, a disguised consulting firm, focuses on domestic and international economic development. As an extension of the firm's commitment to social justice, 20 years ago, Spencer Owens management introduced an affirmative action hiring and promotion... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Selection and Staffing; Development Economics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Employees; Diversity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Consulting Industry

April 2011 (Revised May 2011)
Case

EMC2: Delivering Customer Centricity

By: Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery

This case introduces the concept of customer centricity and traces its development at EMC, the world's leading data storage hardware and information management software company. EMC's customers had historically relied on EMC salespeople to guide them through the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Relationship Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Salesforce Management; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet; Information Technology Industry

November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Case

KFA, Inc.: Building the Future

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth M. Adams

In 2021, Greg Bush, Jr., owner, president, and CEO of KFA, Inc. is working with his leadership team to plan for the future. KFA provides consulting services on software and project management needs for infrastructure projects. Bush and his team have just debuted a new... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Communication Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Growth and Development Strategy; Infrastructure; Consulting Industry; Consulting Industry; Chicago; United States

March 2023
Module Note

Persuasive Client Presentations

By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti

A module note for the Mastering Consulting and Advisory Skills (MCAS) course, "Persuasive Client Presentations" breaks down bad habits and good rules of thumb when preparing and giving client presentations. View Details

Keywords: Presentations

September 2006 (Revised April 2007)
Case

Tim Keller at Katzenbach Partners LLC (A)

By: Boris Groysberg, Christopher Marquis and Ayesha Kanji

Tracks of the first 6 months of a recent MBA grad, Tim Keller, at Katzenbach Partners, a boutique consulting firm focused on organizational change and strategy. Covers how Keller initially struggles with his assignment and ends with a question of whether or not he... View Details

Keywords: Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Personal Development and Career; Work-Life Balance; Projects; Situation or Environment; Strategy

17 Apr 2020
News

Q&A with former SBA Administrator Karen Mills

10 Dec 2018
Blog Post

Interning in the Technology Sector

Shelby Colby, MBA 2019, describes her summer at Hubspot interning in the product group. Coming from previous roles in management consulting focused on strategic analysis, she was looking for a role where she could be hands-on in the... View Details

Keywords: Technology

Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Felix Oberholzer-Gee is the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. An award-winning instructor, his academic work and consulting are focused on competitive strategy and the effects of digital technology on corporate... View Details

Keywords: media; professional services; manufacturing; advertising

October 1994 (Revised March 1995)
Case

Monitor Company: Personal Leadership on Diversity

Several members of a consulting firm work to develop ways to build and nurture a more diverse work environment while reflecting on personal experiences that help them to become leaders in issues of diversity. View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Culture; Diversity Characteristics; Consulting Industry

Bohan is a doctoral student in Health Policy Management. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 with a double major in Chemistry and Economics. Post-graduation, Bohan spent 4 years as a management consultant advising both payers and providers,... View Details

March 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Transforming Kimball International, Inc. (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

Kimball International, Inc. (KII), led by CEO Kristie Juster, and its board of directors, chaired by Kim Ryan, faced critical questions about KII’s future in the spring of 2021. Two years earlier, the board had appointed Juster as the new CEO of KII, a publicly traded,... View Details

March 2022
Supplement

Transforming Kimball International, Inc. (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

March 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Catalant: The Future of Work?

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Christine Snively

Catalant, founded in 2013 as an online marketplace where MBAs could bid on consulting projects posted by small- to medium-sized businesses, had expanded by 2016 to provide Fortune 1000 companies with access to over 35,000 independent experts. The founders envisioned... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Recruitment; Labor; Market Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Consulting Industry; Consulting Industry; United States