Publications

December 2021
Case

Bunge: Building a Sustainable Future?

By: Forest Reinhardt, David E. Bell, Pedro Levindo and Ruth Costas

Bunge, one of the world’s leading agribusiness traders and processors, strives to comply with its commitment to having a deforestation-free value chain by 2025 while it considers potential new business growth areas. After a complex turnaround, which involved one of the... View Details

Keywords: Deforestation; Value Chain; Agribusiness; Values and Beliefs; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

Keywords: Professor Elton Mayo: Professor Fritz Roethlisberger; George M. Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business, Professor Emeritus Ray A. Goldberg; Professor Abraham Zaleznik; Professor Alfred Chandler; Professor Michael Porter; Professor Robert S. Kaplan; Professor Michael C. Jensen; Professor C. Roland Christensen; Professor Robert Menton; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

01 Sep 2012
News

An Intellectual Capital: Some Influential HBS Ideas, at a Glance

1911 HBS establishes the Bureau of Business Research to write cases. 1922 Founding of Harvard Business Review (HBR). 1930s Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger conduct pioneering studies establishing the importance of field-based View Details

December 2008 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Olam International

By: David E. Bell and Mary Shelman

In 20 years, Sunny Verghese had built Singapore-based Olam International from a small Nigerian export company into a $5 billion global leader in agricultural commodities with a core competence in Africa. Olam's growth had come by pursuing product and geographic... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Trade; Growth and Development Strategy; Supply Chain; Expansion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa; Singapore

05 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 5, 2017

urban and rural, the new urbanization does not upend China’s longstanding duality between those categories. The central goals of the new urbanization are to manage urbanization so as to generate domestic demand View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2014
Working Paper

Bio-Piracy or Prospering Together? Fuzzy Set and Qualitative Analysis of Herbal Patenting by Firms

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna

Since the 1990s, several Western firms have filed patents based on medicinal herbs from emerging markets, evoking protests from local stakeholders against 'bio-piracy'. We explore conditions under which firms and local stakeholders share rents from such patents. Our... View Details

Keywords: Rents From New Technology; Local Stakeholders; Herbal Patents; QCA; Fuzzy Set Analysis; Qualitative Case Studies; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Patents; Emerging Markets; Health Care and Treatment; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

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December 1998
Case

Pioneer Hi-Bred: Turning Seeds Into Factories

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Melissa Dailey

The agricultural sector is among the preeminent information technology users in our economy," exclaimed an August 1998 Forbes ASAP survey of the U.S. economy's best and worst users of information technology (IT). The survey designated Pioneer Hi-Bred International,... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Multinational Firms and Management; Information Management; Infrastructure; Business Strategy; Information Technology; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Iowa

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August 2013
Article

Lords of the Harvest: Third-party Influence and Regulatory Approval of Genetically Modified Organisms

By: Shon R. Hiatt and Sangchan Park

Little is known about the factors that influence regulatory-agency decision making. We posit that regulatory agencies are influenced by the firms they regulate, but not exclusively via dyadic exchanges as is traditionally argued in the regulatory capture and... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Government and Politics; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

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November 2000
Case

WARDA: Leading a Rice Revolution in West Africa

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

The West Africa Rice Development Association, along with various national and international partners, was developing and transferring new rice technologies to farmers throughout West and Central Africa. While production in West Africa was growing faster than any other... View Details

Keywords: Private Sector; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government and Politics; Technological Innovation; Leadership; Performance Effectiveness; Problems and Challenges; Research and Development; Nonprofit Organizations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa

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December 2015 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Chicken Republic

By: Jose Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Deji Akinyanju, founder of Nigerian fast-food chain Chicken Republic, and Ayo Oduntan, founder of an integrated Nigerian poultry operation (Amo Byng Group), are among a growing cadre of skilled food-industry entrepreneurs for whom the opportunities to serve the... View Details

December 2016
Case

Muñoz Group Faces Brexit

By: Forest Reinhardt and Annelena Lobb

In 2016, Muñoz Group, a multifaceted agribusiness company that developed, produced, packed, imported, and exported citrus, flowers, grapes, juice, and ice cream, faced an unexpected new challenge in the British public’s vote for the United Kingdom to exit the European... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Globalization; Intellectual Property; Government and Politics; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe

September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Helmy Abouleish: Making a Desert Bloom

By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Maxim Pike Harrell

This case examines the history of prominent Egyptian-based social enterprise SEKEM from its foundation in 1977 until the COP27 conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022. Led by father and son team Ibrahim and Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM turned desert into farmland using... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Climate Change; Values and Beliefs; Social Enterprise; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Egypt

09 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Speed Up Energy Innovation

in energy. For example, 100 years ago, half the country worked in agriculture. Now almost no one does. Agriculture has also seen a massive increase in productivity. Some of that is due to mechanization and... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Energy; Utilities

September 2015 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Château Margaux (Abridged)

By: Elie Ofek, Eric E. Vogt and Robert J. Dolan

Château Margaux, one of only five prestigious estates in the Bordeaux Medoc wine region to have been classified as a "first-growth", is facing a host of strategic decisions in early 2013. Up until this point the estate had been selling two red wines, a first wine whose... View Details

Keywords: New Product Launch; Marketing Plan; Brand Management; Go To Market Strategy; Channels Of Distribution; Wine Industry; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Product Launch; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; France

Web

Advanced Negotiation: Great Dealmakers, Diplomats, and Deals - Course Catalog

Examples: In business and finance : Steve Schwarzman on several early make-or-break deals for Blackstone; Sarah Frey negotiates advantageous supplier deals for her tiny farm with a vindictive Walmart enroute to building an View Details

January 2018 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Château Margaux: Launching the Third Wine (Abridged)

By: Elie Ofek

Château Margaux, one of only five prestigious estates in the Bordeaux Medoc wine region to have been classified as a "first-growth", is facing a host of strategic decisions in early 2013. Up until this point the estate had been selling two red wines, a first wine whose... View Details

Keywords: New Product Launch; Marketing Plan; Brand Management; Go To Market Strategy; Channels Of Distribution; Wine Industry; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Product Launch; Brands and Branding; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; France

October 2020 (Revised February 2021)
Case

Twiga Foods: Revolutionizing African Retail (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Pippa Tubman Amerding and Wale Lawal

Twiga is a leading agricultural produce supplier in Kenya offering services to mostly informal retailers. Under Peter Njonjo, a co-founder and Twiga’s new CEO, the company is considering multiple options for expanding its business, including offering packaged foods and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Structure; Retail Industry; Nairobi