Publications

Find at Harvard

27 Aug 2007
Op-Ed

Mattel: Getting a Toy Recall Right

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch is debuting a blog on marketing issues at Harvard Business Online. HBS Working Knowledge is reprinting his first entry, which looks at the Mattel toy recall.Mattel has been criticized heavily View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Consumer Products

Article

Happiness on Tap: Piped Water Adoption in Urban Morocco

By: Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, William Pariente and Vincent Pons

Connecting private dwellings to the water main is expensive and typically cannot be publicly financed. We show that households' willingness to pay for a private connection is high when it can be purchased on credit, not because a connection improves health but because... View Details

Keywords: Water Supply; Urban Development; Household; Credit; Well-being; Morocco

Read Now

We consider the effect of mergers between firms whose products are not viewed as direct substitutes for the same good or service but are bundled by a common intermediary. Focusing on hospital mergers across distinct geographic markets, we show that such... View Details

04 Feb 2020
News

How Google’s Founders Slowly Stepped Away From Their Company

08 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: A Sense of Urgency

demands, the head of the largest division of a Midwestern manufacturing company reluctantly drew the conclusion that his only alternative was to engineer a crisis. [ ] But energy within his organization did not emerge as a strong sense of... View Details

Keywords: by John P. Kotter

April 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Antler

By: Dennis Campbell and Iuliana Mogosanu

The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the... View Details

Keywords: Platform; Technology; Analytics; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Expansion; Financial Services Industry

October 2006 (Revised September 2014)
Case

Summit Partners - The FleetCor Investment (A)

By: Michael J. Roberts

Part of a 3-case series in which students get to see the unfolding of due diligence on private equity (buy out) deal. In this, the A case, the deal team has negotiated a letter of intent with FleetCor, a firm that operates a fuel payment network for vehicle fleets.... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Preparation; Private Equity; Leveraged Buyouts; Investment; Negotiation Offer; Service Industry

Web

PhD Programs - Doctoral

PhD Programs The start of your PhD program launches your journey to a career in business academia. Students in our PhD programs are encouraged from day one to think of this experience as their first job in business academia—a training ground View Details

Research Summary

Foreclosure with Incomplete Information

In this paper we investigate the robustness of the widely-used new foreclosure doctrine and its associated welfare implications to the introduction of incomplete information. In particular, we make the realistic assumption that the upstream firm’s marginal cost... View Details

August 2009 (Revised January 2012)
Case

Pandora: Royalties Kill the Web Radio Star? (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen and Alex Curtis Rosenfeld

Joe Kennedy, president and CEO of Pandora, one of the largest and most popular web (Internet) radio broadcasters, had just received bad news. The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) had announced its decision to increase the royalties required to be paid by the web radio... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Copyright; Laws and Statutes; Rights; Internet and the Web; Media and Broadcasting Industry

20 Mar 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Waste, Recycling and Entrepreneurship in Central and Northern Europe, 1870-1940

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones & Andrew Spadafora

03 Oct 2019
News

Green Accounting: Financial Statements May Get New Life as Environmental-Sustainability Tool

March 2005 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Foreign Exchange Hedging Strategies at General Motors: Competitive Exposures

By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen

How can a multinational firm analyze and manage currency risks that arise from competitive exposures? General Motors has a substantial competitive exposure to the Japanese yen. Although the risks GM faces from the depreciating yen are widely acknowledged, the company's... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Currency Exchange Rate; Competition; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; International Finance; Financial Management; Investment Funds; Risk and Uncertainty; Auto Industry

August 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Sian Flowers: Fresher by Sea?

By: Willy C. Shih, Michael W. Toffel and Pippa Tubman Armerding

The setting for this case is the Sian Flowers, a company headquartered in Kitengela, Kenya that exports roses to predominantly Europe. Because cut flowers have a limited shelf life and consumers want them to retain their appearance for as long as possible, Sian or its... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Supply Chains; Sustainability; Sustainable Agriculture; Sustainability Reporting; Carbon Emissions; Supply Chain Management; Quality; Ship Transportation; Cost Management; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa; Kenya; Netherlands; Europe

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

Sam Walton: Great From the Start

He could have added that he had not had a day's experience in running a business of any kind. He paid a price for this inexperience and excessive enthusiasm before his store even opened. He had selected the... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow; Retail

October 2007
Case

The AtekPC Project Management Office

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Mark Keil and John Hupp

Presents one company's efforts to implement a project management organization, or PMO, and the challenges they faced in doing so. Issues brought out in the case include defining the PMO's purpose and mission, the structure and governance of the PMO, and how to... View Details

Keywords: Projects; Goals and Objectives; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Business Strategy; Mathematical Methods; Consulting Industry

May 2020
Article

Inventory Auditing and Replenishment Using Point-of-Sales Data

By: Achal Bassamboo, Antonio Moreno and Ioannis Stamatopoulos

Spoilage, expiration, damage due to employee/customer handling, employee theft, and customer shoplifting usually are not reflected in inventory records. As a result, records often report phantom inventory, i.e., units of good not available for sale. We derive an... View Details

Keywords: Shelf Availability; Inventory Record Inaccuracy; Optimal Replenishment; Retail Analytics; Performance Effectiveness; Analysis; Mathematical Methods

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May 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Arcos Dorados: Decarbonizing McDonald’s in Latin America

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal

This case describes the decarbonization strategy of Arcos Dorados—McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, operating in 20 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean—and how the company measured its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including those... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Change Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Growth Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Latin America; North and Central America; South America

February 2010 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Sheikh Mohammed and the Making of 'Dubai, Inc.'

By: Anthony Mayo, Nitin Nohria, Umaimah Mendhro and Johnathan Cromwell

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has converted Dubai from a sleepy little coastal village into a world-class city, famous for its ambition, drive, and economic promise. He is the founder, part-owner, and visionary behind companies such as Emirates Airlines, a... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Leadership Style; Emerging Markets; Personal Development and Career; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Dubai