Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,680)
- Faculty Publications (532)
- April 2014 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Texas Teachers and the New Texas Way
By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Luis M. Viceira, John D. Dionne and Nathaniel Burbank
In 2011 Britt Harris, the Chief Investment Officer for the $107.4 billion Teachers Retirement System of Texas (TRS), was considering whether to pursue strategic partnerships with a group of large private equity firms. After spending four years aggressively moving the... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Filene's Basement: Inside a Fired Customer's Relationship
By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier
How, in a business climate in which building relationships with customers has dominated both managerial thought and marketing budgets, could Filene's Basement have fired a loyal customer, one who was formally and informally recognized as a best customer? This case... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised May 2014)
- Case
Tech Mahindra and the Acquisition of Satyam Computers (A)
By: Srikant M. Datar, Anjali Raina and Namrata Arora
Set in 2008, the case details Tech Mahindra, an information technology (IT) company within the Mahindra Group, an Indian multi-industry company with a diverse stable of businesses including automotives, farm equipment, and financial services, and its decision to... View Details
- January 2014
- Technical Note
Learning From Extreme Consumers
By: Jill Avery and Michael Norton
Traditional market research methods focus on understanding the average experiences of average consumers. This focus leads to gaps in our knowledge of consumer behavior and often fails to uncover insights that can drive revolutionary, rather than evolutionary... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability, or their responsiveness to a... View Details
- August 2013 (Revised August 2014)
- Case
Catalina In the Digital Age
By: Robert J. Dolan and Uma R. Karmarkar
Catalina in the Digital Age considers how a company with a dominant market position should evolve its established product lines given the rise of novel digital technologies. Since its founding in 1983, Catalina had enjoyed a distinct position in the world of consumer... View Details
- August 2013
- Article
Customer-Driven Misconduct: How Competition Corrupts Business Practices
By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Lamar Pierce, Jason A. Snyder and Michael W. Toffel
Competition among firms yields many benefits but can also encourage firms to engage in corrupt or unethical activities. We argue that competition can lead organizations to provide services that customers demand but that violate government regulations, especially when... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Where do the Most Active Customers Originate and How Can Firms Keep Them Engaged?
By: Clarence Lee, E. Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh
In this paper, we study how firms offering Web services can acquire and develop an active customer base. We focus on two basic questions. First, how does the method of customer acquisition affect the way customers use the service to meet their own needs and to interact... View Details
- July–August 2013
- Article
A Joint Model of Usage and Churn in Contractual Settings
By: Eva Ascarza and Bruce G.S. Hardie
As firms become more customer-centric, concepts such as customer equity come to the fore. Any serious attempt to quantify customer equity requires modeling techniques that can provide accurate multiperiod forecasts of customer behavior. Although a number of researchers... View Details
- June 2013 (Revised March 2014)
- Case
Kvadrat: Leading for Innovation
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
In 2013, Anders Byriel, CEO of the family-owned Danish textiles company, Kvadrat, considered the firm's strategic plan. In 2000, Byriel and Mette Bendix, Kvadrat's Product Director, had taken over management of the company from their fathers, who had founded Kvadrat... View Details
- Article
Contagion of Cooperation in Static and Fluid Social Networks
By: Jillian J. Jordan, David G. Rand, Samuel Arbesman, James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis
Cooperation is essential for successful human societies. Thus, understanding how cooperative and selfish behaviors spread from person to person is a topic of theoretical and practical importance. Previous laboratory experiments provide clear evidence of social... View Details
- May 2013
- Case
Transport Corporation of India (A): The Cross-selling Conundrum
By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi
Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details
- May 2013
- Supplement
Transport Corporation of India (B): Choosing the Right Candidate
By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi
Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details
- May 2013
- Supplement
Transport Corporation of India (D): Business Development across Divisions
By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi
Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details
- April 2013
- Article
Business Model Innovation and Competitive Imitation: The Case of Sponsor-Based Business Models
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Feng Zhu
This paper provides the first formal model of business model innovation. Our analysis focuses on sponsor-based business model innovations where a firm monetizes its product through sponsors rather than setting prices to its customer base. We analyze strategic... View Details
- March 2013
- Case
Singapore Metals Limited
Singapore Metals Limited (SML) has declining sales but has developed a new product (curled metal pile driver pads) that, in field tests, delivers customer benefits that are many times SML's manufacturing costs. Jonathan Lee and Alex Tan of SML's Engineered Products... View Details
- March 2013
- Teaching Note
Nestlé: Agricultural Material Sourcing Within the Concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV) (TN)
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Matthew Preble
In December 2012, Hans Jöhr, Nestlé's head of corporate agriculture, was preparing to meet with the company's board of directors to discuss its vision for the future related to sustainable agriculture. Nestlé's continued success depended on its ability to access the... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Achievement Motivation, Strategic Orientations and Business Performance in Entrepreneurial Firms: How Different are Japanese and American Founders?
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Amir Grinstein, Elie Ofek and Sang-Hoon Kim
Purpose: There is lack of research on the link between the personal disposition of an entrepreneurial firm's founder, the firm's strategic orientation, and its performance outcomes. Also, there is lack of cross-national research on entrepreneurial firms' strategic... View Details
Keywords: Motivation; Entrepreneurs; Japan; Motivation and Incentives; Entrepreneurship; Japan; United States
- February 2013 (Revised December 2015)
- Case
Groom Energy Solutions: Selling Efficiency
By: Michael W. Toffel, Kira R. Fabrizio and Stephanie van Sice
Groom Energy Solutions helps organizations reduce their energy use and costs through the implementation of energy efficiency measures, which create long-term financial and environmental benefits. With early success serving customers in the cold storage and industrial... View Details
Keywords: Groom Energy Solutions; Jon Guerster; Salem, MA; Energy Management; Energy Efficiency Paradox; Sustainability Management; Manufacturing; Cold Storage; Commercial Real Estate; Enterprise Smart Grid; Carbon Accounting; LED Lighting; Sustainability Research; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Entrepreneurship; Energy Entrepreneurship; Energy Services; Electricity; Startup; Expansion; Growth; Sustainability; Business Startups; Forecasting and Prediction; Energy Conservation; Revenue; Geographic Location; Human Resources; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Operations; Service Delivery; Strategic Planning; Science; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Society; Social Issues; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Utilities Industry; United States; Boston
- 2013
- Article
The Strategic Fitness Process: A Collaborative Action Research Method for Developing Organizational Prototypes and Dynamic Capabilities
By: Michael Beer
Organizations underperform and sometimes fail because their leaders are unable to learn the unvarnished truth from relevant stakeholders about how the design and behavior of the organization is misaligned with its goals and strategy. The Strategic Fitness Process (SFP)... View Details