Publications

September 2020
Article

Relaxing Household Liquidity Constraints Through Social Security

By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller and Natasha Sarin

More than a quarter of working-age households in the United States do not have sufficient savings to cover their expenditures after a month of unemployment. Recent proposals suggest giving workers early access to a small portion of their future Social Security benefits... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Personal Finance; Employment; Welfare; Insurance; Government Legislation

September 2021 (Revised October 2022)
Supplement

Hester Pharmaceuticals (B): Securing Supply

By: Dante Roscini and John Masko

Supplements the (A) case. In late 2020, demand for Hester Pharmaceutical’s (Hester’s) breakthrough oncology drug Akrozumab was outstripping the company’s most optimistic projections. In order to increase manufacturing capacity and meet the demand, Hester was... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Cost vs Benefits; Trade; Supply Chain; Global Strategy; Buildings and Facilities; Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Demand and Consumers; Global Range; Globalized Markets and Industries; Pharmaceutical Industry; Italy; China; United States; Germany

September 2020 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Tulsa Remote: Moving Talent to Middle America

By: Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Emma Salomon and Brittany Logan

Tulsa Remote sought to attract a diverse group of remote workers to the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma—and was willing to put its money where its mouth was, offering $10,000 and a range of wraparound services for its program participants. After a successful pilot year, which... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Relocation; COVID-19 Pandemic; Community; Employment; Internet and the Web; Geographic Location; Programs; Employees; Diversity; Recruitment; Oklahoma; Tulsa

13 Mar 2020
News

Q&A with Karen Mills: Former SBA head says the coronavirus pandemic is situation critical for U.S. small businesses

September 2021
Case

TAV Airports: Acquiring Almaty International

By: Juan Alcácer and Esel Çekin

The case opens in April 2020 with Sani Şener, CEO of TAV Airports, a vertically integrated regional airport operator headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, and his team discussing the pending acquisition of the Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan. The company had... View Details

Keywords: Airports; COVID-19 Pandemic; Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Bids and Bidding; Air Transportation Industry; Central Asia; Turkey

2020
Discussion Paper

Acting Now While Preparing for Tomorrow: Competitiveness Upgrading Under the Shadow of COVID-19

By: Christian H.M. Ketels and Peter Clinch

This paper aims to provide policy makers, especially those focused on the longer-term growth potential of their countries, with an initial framework to think about their action priorities in the context of the overall COVID-19 response. Our focus is on the... View Details

Keywords: Competitiveness; COVID-19 Pandemic; Competition; Government Administration; Health Pandemics; Economy; Supply Chain; Safety

01 Mar 2021
News

Experimenting during the shift to virtual team work: Learnings from how teams adapted their activities during the COVID-19 pandemic

December 2019 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Ray White

By: Boris Groysberg and Tricia Gregg

Ray White is an Australian real estate business that has been owned and operated by the White family for four generations. The business has expanded and prospered. However, as the industry faces new challenges and opportunities, how should the White family respond?... View Details

Keywords: Crisis; COVID-19; Pandemic; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Disruption; Information Technology; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Real Estate Industry; Australia

May 2022
Article

The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Communication Patterns

By: Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeff Polzer and Raffaella Sadun

We explore the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ digital communication patterns through an event study of lockdowns in 16 large metropolitan areas in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Using de-identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270... View Details

Keywords: Meetings; Email; COVID-19 Pandemic; Communication Technology; Health Pandemics; Time Management

January–February 2023
Article

Forecasting COVID-19 and Analyzing the Effect of Government Interventions

By: Michael Lingzhi Li, Hamza Tazi Bouardi, Omar Skali Lami, Thomas Trikalinos, Nikolaos Trichakis and Dimitris Bertsimas

We developed DELPHI, a novel epidemiological model for predicting detected cases and deaths in the prevaccination era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The model allows for underdetection of infections and effects of government interventions. We have applied DELPHI across more... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Epidemics; Analytics and Data Science; Health Pandemics; AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction

February 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Huazhu: A Chinese Hotel Giant's Journey of Digital Transformation

By: Feng Zhu, Yulin Fang, Bonnie Yining Cao and Duan Yang

Based in Shanghai, China, Huazhu Group, the world’s third-largest hotel operator, was known for its standardized IT system. It helped the company boost efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Digital Officer Xinxin Liu also faced some longer-term challenges:... View Details

Keywords: Hotel Industry; COVID-19 Pandemic; Labor; Business or Company Management; Emerging Markets; Information Technology; Operations; Strategy; Digital Transformation; Accommodations Industry; China; United States; Singapore; Germany; Hong Kong

November 2020 (Revised February 2021)
Case

The Roca Brothers: Innovation in Gastronomy

By: Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht and Katherine Connolly Baden

Chef Joan Roca, sommelier Josep Roca and pastry chef Jordi Roca were three brothers based in Girona, Spain whose complementary skills, collective ability, and relentless drive for innovation had brought worldwide fame and awards to their restaurant, El Celler de Can... View Details

Keywords: Restaurants; COVID-19 Pandemic; Food; Crisis Management; Innovation and Invention; Food and Beverage Industry; Spain

2020
Working Paper

Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization

By: Rawi Abdelal

The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also... View Details

Keywords: Pandemics; Populism; Dignity; Globalization; Economic Systems; Equality and Inequality; Policy; Values and Beliefs; United States; Europe; France; Germany

November 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Technical Note

Tales of Life-changing Innovations: Containing a Fearsome Pandemic | Note on the Development of HIV/AIDS Controls, Tests, and Treatments (through 2000)

By: Amar Bhidé, Srikant M. Datar and Katherine Stebbins

September 2020
Case

Merck: COVID-19 Vaccines

By: Willy C. Shih

COVID-19 infections were still climbing across the U.S. and many other parts of the world in September 2020, and it seemed that every time Ken Frazier, the CEO of Merck & Co. consented to an interview in recent months he always seemed to hear the same question,... View Details

Keywords: Vaccines; COVID-19 Pandemic; Health Pandemics; Health Testing and Trials; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Business Strategy; Product Launch; Pharmaceutical Industry

March 5, 2020
Editorial

Murky Data Calls into Question Quarantine Strategy

By: Amar Bhide

Like sepsis, a life-threatening, uncontrolled immune response to infections, draconian efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak may cause more harm than the infection itself. Yet the measures now paralysing the western world before many have actually died are based... View Details

Keywords: Coronavirus; Coronavirus Pandemic; Data; Health Pandemics; Data and Data Sets

September 2022 (Revised June 2025)
Case

York Capital CLOs and WorldStrides International

By: Victoria Ivashina and William Vrattos

The case follows the debt restructuring of WorldStrides International, a travel program provider in the education market, after the onset of COVID-19. The pandemic severely impacted the travel industry, creating challenges for many companies like WorldStrides, which... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Debt Restructuring; CLO; Compliance; Debt Securities; Financing and Loans; Decision Making; Travel Industry; Education Industry

November 2022
Teaching Note

Carvana: Pioneering the Online Car Buying Experience and Carvana (B): Managing Through The Pandemic and Aiming Higher: 2020 and 2021

By: Robert J. Dolan

March 2021 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Blue Meridian Partners (A): Scaling for Impact

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

In 2018, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in a bold move transferred all its assets to a fund pooled with other General Partners and Limited Partners, called Blue Meridian Partners, to focus substantial long range investments in a few carefully chosen nonprofits.The... View Details

Keywords: Venture Philanthropy; Scaling; COVID-19 Pandemic; Social Justice; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Venture Capital; Business Model; Social Issues; Poverty; Values and Beliefs; Decisions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Nonprofit Organizations; Investment Portfolio