Publications

Find at Harvard

28 Mar 2023
Cold Call Podcast

BMW’s Decarbonization Strategy: Sustainable for the Environment and the Bottom Line

Keywords: Re: Shirley Lu; Transportation; Auto; Battery

20 May 2019
News

How Ferdinand Porsche’s Great-Grandson Is Gearing Up to Disrupt The Sports Car Market

July 2012 (Revised July 2015)
Case

Nalli Silk Sarees (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan, Namrata Arora and Vidhya Muthuram

Nalli Silk Sarees Private Limited was a family owned and operated business that retailed Indian ethnic wear. This 83-year-old company had enjoyed impressive growth with a $95 million turnover, a 22-store retail footprint, and had outdone its competitors by being the... View Details

Keywords: Pricing Strategy; Price; Strategy; Family Business; Growth and Development; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; India

April 2006 (Revised June 2008)
Case

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.

By: H. Kent Bowen, Robert S. Huckman and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Considers whether New Balance, one of the world's five largest manufacturers of athletic footwear, should respond to Adidas' planned acquisition of Reebok--a transaction that would join the second- and third-largest companies in the industry. Highlights the unique... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Production; Supply Chain Management; Performance Improvement; Competition; Consolidation; Apparel and Accessories Industry

February 2010 (Revised October 2010)
Case

Re-THINK-ing THINK: The Electric Car Company

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron

On January 5, 2010, 48-year-old Richard Canny was on his way to meet the governor of Indiana. He was reading his newly issued press release announcing that THINK planned to start automobile production in Elkhart County, Indiana to launch its THINK City battery-operated... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Global Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Product Development; Production; Pollutants; Environmental Sustainability; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Norway; Indiana

04 Sep 2017
Blog Post

HBS Startup Bootcamp and Founders Unfiltered

I’ve kept a list of new product and business ideas on my phone for over 10 years now. While they range from dog toys to B2B SaaS businesses, they all have one thing in common: they only exist on my phone. I’ve never seriously pursued any... View Details

February 2010
Background Note

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Market Size and Market Share Analysis

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery

Marketers frequently need to estimate the size of their markets—both for existing products so that sales forecasts can be developed and for new products so that market opportunities can be assessed. This toolkit enables students to size a market and generate a sales... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Size; Strategic Planning; Sales

January 1986 (Revised March 1997)
Case

Horizon Group

By: William A. Sahlman

Contains a description of a situation confronting the co-founder of a company planning to produce software for microcomputers. The company has just completed raising money from some wealthy investors by forming an R&D Limited Partnership. Development of the program (an... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Venture Capital; Partners and Partnerships; Business Plan; Outcome or Result; Research and Development; Financial Strategy; Corporate Finance; Information Technology Industry

June 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Nissan's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Ananth Raman, William Schmidt and Ann Winslow

In January 2020, Ashwani Gupta took over as COO at Nissan Motor Corporation, and several weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Nissan’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP) had been key to the resilience of Nissan’s supply chain. It had enabled Nissan to recover from... View Details

Keywords: Operations; Supply Chain Management; Health Pandemics; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Japan; India

October 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

ASICS: Chasing a 2020 Vision

By: Elie Ofek, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

In early 2016, Motoi Oyama, president and CEO of ASICS, a major sports apparel and footwear manufacturer based in Japan, lays out his company’s growth plan for the upcoming 5 years. The new plan set ambitious goals in terms of revenue and profit increases. At the heart... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Sports Apparel; Competitive Positioning; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Retail Formats; Lifestyle Brands; Information Technology; Competition; Brands and Branding; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Platforms; Product Positioning; Marketing Channels; Sports; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Visits for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Provides practical guidelines for conducting customer visits to explore and validate demand for an entrepreneurial offering. Reviews conditions under which visits will yield superior insights, compared to other research methods. Describes criteria for selecting visit... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Entrepreneurship

11 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

Strategy Execution and the Balanced Scorecard

resource capacity that are necessary to fulfill the sales and production needs of the strategic plan. Without this coupling, operational plans either provide too little or too much capacity for the strategic... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

September 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Seeds of Innovation: GALY's Quest to Cultivate the Future of Agriculture in the Lab

By: George Serafeim and Michael Norris

In 2023, Luciano Bueno, CEO and founder of plant cell culture agriculture company GALY, was considering the best path forward for his company as he planned to pitch Series B investors. GALY, founded in 2019, aimed to produce cotton and other crops from cells grown in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Green Technology; Goods and Commodities; Growth and Development Strategy; Science-Based Business; Entrepreneurship; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Business Startups; Decisions; Technological Innovation; Production; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Technology Industry; Boston; Sao Paulo

16 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Luxury Isn’t What It Used to Be

refreshing their product lines and extending their brand to more affordable items. Pressure to innovate is intense, says HBS professor Nancy F. Koehn, a business historian and author of Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products

February 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation

By: Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth and Olivia Hull

With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the “valley of death,” unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem.... View Details

Keywords: Energy Conservation; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Mission and Purpose; Science-Based Business; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Enterprise; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States

November 2006 (Revised November 2007)
Case

EFJ, Inc.

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Ajay Vinze and Mara Vatz

Michael Jalbert plans to transform EFJI, a land mobile radio manufacturer, into a leading radio systems and solutions provider. Taking advantage of new industry standards and the country's increased focus on public safety agencies and homeland security, Jalbert says... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Expansion

Find at Harvard

July 2004 (Revised December 2004)
Case

RelayHealth

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Elizabeth Kind

RelayHealth provides secure, online communications for doctors, patients, and health plans. The company's services include online consultations, prescription renewals, and appointment scheduling. RelayHealth's business model derives subscription revenue from doctors... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Telecommunications Industry

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

fail to meet their projected targets and 75 percent of new products fail.” McDonald and co-author Christopher Bingham explore eight central tensions in the new book, Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

August 2022
Exercise

Joy4Home Brands: Pricing Matters

By: Elie Ofek, Oded Koenigsberg and Marco Bertini

Joy4Home Brands, the maker of novel houseware items, was gearing up for its launch. The company would be introducing two lines: kitchenware products and storage containers. The initial go-to-market plan called for a direct to consumer (DTC) channel strategy. While... View Details

Keywords: DTC; Pricing Decisions; B2B; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Marketing Strategy; Business Model; Opportunities; Consumer Products Industry