Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,835)
- Faculty Publications (1,142)
- March 2019
- Technical Note
Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)
By: Tatiana Sandino
This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details
- March–April 2019
- Article
Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees
By: Ryan W. Buell
Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details
- February 2019 (Revised August 2019)
- Case
Maccabitech: The Promise of Israel's Healthcare Data
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Dr. Varda Shalev bridges technology and medicine through Maccabitech, a "research and innovation wing" of Israel's Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS) that partners with research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and startups. Shalev hopes to scale Maccabitech's... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
CrossBoundary Energy
By: John Macomber
Almost 500 million people are without electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Governments and public utilities are challenged to bring generation and distribution to most of them. Considerable promise exists in “off-grid” or “mini-grid” technologies, notably using renewable... View Details
Keywords: Energy Investing; Economic Development; Renewable Energy; Business Growth and Maturation; Developing Countries and Economies; Project Finance; Emerging Markets; Industry Structures; Infrastructure; Segmentation; Private Equity; Decision Choices and Conditions; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Africa; Tanzania; Ghana
- January 15, 2019
- Article
Is Your Company's Strategy Aligned with Your Ownership Model?
By: Josh Baron
The legacy of Vanguard founder John Bogle has brought attention to the transformative influence of ownership structures within the business world. Bogle's revolutionary insight into the limitations of active fund management led to the widespread adoption of index... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised June 2019)
- Technical Note
U.S. Commercial Health Insurance Industry
By: Susanna Gallani, Mary Witkowski and Harry B. Wolberg
This note describes the role of commercial payers in the U.S. healthcare industry. We begin with a review of the historical evolution of commercial payers and their role in the market, from the beginning to the Affordable Care Act and beyond. Every wave of reforms in... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Rural Taobao: Alibaba's Expansion into Rural E-Commerce
By: Tarun Khanna, Ryan Allen, Adam Frost and Wesley Koo
Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China’s remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed “1.0” and “2.0,” Alibaba had partnered with local businesses... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Business Growth; Ecommerce; Corporate Social Responsibility; Business And Government; Emerging Market; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Emerging Markets; Rural Scope; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Decision Making; E-commerce; China
- 2019
- Book
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
By: Shoshana Zuboff
In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in... View Details
- December 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Husk Power: Scaling the Venture
In January 2018, Manoj Sinha—founder and CEO of Husk Power—was contemplating raising $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
ofo
By: Mitchell Weiss
Dai Wei and his co-founders grew Beijing-based ofo from a school-based startup to a bike-share behemoth in a matter of months, topped an all-out market-share battle fueled with almost $1 billion in venture capital, provided 2 billion bicycle rides, soaked up the... View Details
Keywords: Ofo; Bikeshare; Scale; Platforms; Government As A Platform; Platform Mechanics; Dai Wei; Dockless Bikes; Mobike; Bike-share; Online-to-offline; Mobility; Digital Platforms; Infrastructure; Transportation; Bicycle Transportation; Growth and Development Strategy; Bicycle Industry; China; Beijing
- November 2018
- Case
David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics
By: Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia
In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his... View Details
- November 2018
- Case
frog design
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
The case follows the genesis and development of Palo, a radical urban communications hub designed to replace payphone booths on Manhattan’s city streets, through a joint venture between frog design and a venture-backed firm LQD WiFi. The case explores the complexity of... View Details
- Article
Operational Efficiency and Effective Management in the Catheterization Laboratory
By: Grant W. Reed, Michael L. Tushman and Samir R. Kapadia
Operational efficiency is a core business principle in which organizations strive to deliver high-quality goods or services in a cost-effective manner. This concept has become increasingly relevant to cardiac catheterization laboratories, as insurers move away from... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Recipe for Success: Growth and Evolution at Cafe Cupcake
By: Anthony Mayo and Heather Beckham
Café Cupcake (CC) is a fast-casual restaurant chain that offers artisan cupcakes and light fare throughout the southeastern United States and Texas. This case chronicles the growth and evolution of Café Cupcake. It also considers the specific human resource challenges... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised April 2019)
- Teaching Note
Kids & Company: Entering the U.S.
By: Boris Groysberg and Matthew G. Preble
Teaching Note for HBS No. 418-011. View Details
Keywords: Child Care; Childcare; Day Care; Daycare; Strategy; Growth Management; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Leadership; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Product Design; Product Development; Selection and Staffing; Customer Focus and Relationships; United States; Canada
- October 2018
- Case
Accomplice: Scaling Early Stage Finance
By: Ramana Nanda, Raffaella Sadun and Olivia Hull
Accomplice, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, is raising its second fund in November 2017. Since 2009, the firm has followed a seed-led investment model, investing in tech companies at the earliest stages, often when products and business models are... View Details
Keywords: Early Stage Finance; Seed Finance; Scouts; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Networks; Adaptation; Corporate Strategy; Technology; Financial Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston; Cambridge; United States
- October 2018 (Revised August 2019)
- Module Note
Supply Chain Management
By: Willy C. Shih
This note on supply chain management provides background for the seven class supply chain module in the Technology & Operations Management required curriculum course taught at the Harvard Business School. This module includes four broad topics: sourcing and supply... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
- Teaching Note
Intuit: Turbo Tax PersonalPro - A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs
By: Joseph Fuller, Shikhar Ghosh and Monica Baraldi
Teaching Note for HBS No. 816-048. The case tells the story of a product manager within Intuit who develops an idea for a new product that spans two of the company's existing business units—professional tax software, sold to accountants, and the consumer focused... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Need for Speed: The Impact of Website Performance on Online Retail
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
The share of e-commerce sales is rapidly increasing and so are the associated losses generated by website outages and slow websites. We leverage novel retail and website performance data to investigate the impact of website performance on online sales. This question is... View Details
- September–October 2018
- Article
Online MAP Enforcement: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment
By: Ayelet Israeli
This paper investigates a manufacturer’s ability to influence compliance rates among its authorized online retailers by exploiting changes in the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy and in dealer agreements. MAP is a pricing policy widely used by manufacturers to... View Details