Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,768)
- Faculty Publications (537)
- October 2013 (Revised August 2015)
- Supplement
Outotec (B): Action Plan
By: Robert J. Dolan and Doug J. Chung
Outotec was a market leader in providing mining solutions to large mining companies. The company’s specialization and proprietary technology created value for its customers and helped the firm differentiate from its competitors. Yet, Outotec was not pricing or... View Details
- 2013
- Tool
Harvard Business Review's Go to Market Tools: Customer Lifetime Value
By: Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
How much are your customers worth? Has your marketing budget been slashed? Need to figure out the best place to invest your time and effort to reach your growth target? HBR's Go to Market Tool helps calculate your customer's lifetime value, allowing you to prioritize... View Details
- October 2013
- Article
The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care
By: Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee
In health care, the days of business as usual are over. Around the world, every health care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality, despite the hard work of well-intentioned, well-trained clinicians. Health care leaders and policy makers have tried... View Details
- September 2013
- Teaching Note
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm
By: Nancy F. Koehn and Nora N. Khan
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm is the story of one entrepreneur's vision and journey to create a market-leading, environmentally responsible business founded on the principles of product quality, organizational alignment and sustainability. A former... 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
- 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
- July–August 2013
- Article
Building Sustainable Cities
By: John D. Macomber
By 2050 the number of people living in cities will have nearly doubled, to 6 billion, and the problems created by this rampant urbanization are among the most important challenges of our time. Of all resource-management issues, the author argues, water, electricity,... View Details
- July–August 2013
- Article
Complementary Goods: Creating, Capturing, and Competing for Value
By: Taylan Yalcin, Elie Ofek, Oded Koenigsberg and Eyal Biyalogorsky
This paper studies the strategic interaction between firms producing strictly complementary products. With strict complements, a consumer derives positive utility only when both products are used together. We show that value-capture and value-creation problems arise... View Details
- June 2013
- Case
Olympic Rent-A-Car U.S.: Customer Loyalty Battles
By: John Deighton and James T. Kindley
The marketing and operations managers for Olympic Rent-A-Car meet to decide how to respond to changes in the loyalty rewards program at the market-leading competitor. The competitor's program gives awards based on dollars spent instead of days rented and eliminates... View Details
- May 2013 (Revised May 2014)
- Case
Innovation at the Boston Consulting Group
By: Robert G. Eccles, Das Narayandas and Penelope Rossano
This case is about how the Boston Consulting Group has approached innovation from its founding to the present day. It discusses the role of the firm's talent market and client market in developing these innovations. View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Strategy Consulting; Professional Service Firm; Knowledge Management; Client Management; Product Development; Leadership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Value Creation; Consulting Industry
- May 2013 (Revised September 2013)
- Case
The Kashagan Production Sharing Agreement (PSA)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Florian Bitsch
When discovered in the 1990s, the Kashagan oil field was the second largest oil field in the world. The project sponsors (equity investors) signed a 40-year production sharing agreement (PSA) with the Kazakh government in 1997, with the expectation the field would... View Details
Keywords: Contracts; Oil ＆ Gas; Project Finance; Kazakhstan; Asia; ENI; Risk Management; Economic Development; Project Management; Expropriation; Product Sharing Agreement; Negotiation; Agreements and Arrangements; Development Economics; Energy Sources; Capital Budgeting; International Finance; Valuation; Joint Ventures; Energy Industry; Asia; Kazakhstan; Italy
- 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
- April 2013 (Revised October 2013)
- Case
National Instruments
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Keri Pearlson and Natalie Kindred
This case explores the use of social media to support product design, customer support, marketing and HR activities at National Instruments (NI). Based in Austin, Texas, with over $1 billion in 2011 sales, NI designs, produces, and sells software and hardware platforms... 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
- 2012
- Chapter
Firing Your Best Customers: How Smart Firms Destroy Relationships Using CRM
By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier
With incidences in the 20%–25% range, the practice of firing customers has become increasingly attractive as firms try to maximize the lifetime value of their customer portfolios. This chapter traces the relationship trajectory of a 30-year customer of Filene's... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
First Solar: CFRA's Accounting Quality Concerns
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Ian McKown Cornell
The case relates to accounting quality analysis conducted by the leading research firm Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA) on companies in the solar industry with a focus on First Solar Inc. In 2009, CFRA was concerned that First Solar, like much of the... View Details
Keywords: Accounting; Accounting Quality; Financial Accounting; Financial Statement Analysis; Accounting Fraud; Accounting Red Flags; Accounting Scandal; Risk and Uncertainty; Quality; Earnings Management; Valuation; Crime and Corruption; Financial Statements; Energy Sources; Green Technology Industry; Accounting Industry; Energy Industry
- January 2013 (Revised April 2015)
- Case
Affinity Labs: Valuing Customer Growth
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Elizabeth Kind
In November 2006, Chris Michel left Military.com, which he founded in 1999, to start Affinity Labs, a global network of online communities. That month, Michel raised a Series A round of venture funding and established a partnership with Monster, which he had sold... View Details
- January 2013
- Case
Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture (MM)
By: Frances X. Frei and Robin J. Ely
On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately-held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft-line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its Board of Directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details
- 2013
- Chapter
Gender Bender Brand Hijacks and Consumer Revolt: The Porsche Cayenne Story
By: Jill Avery
Throughout history, marketers have created gendered brands, creating their brands and the stories they crafted about them in their advertising to appeal either to men or to women. Gendered brands deliver value to consumers, and therefore, deliver value to marketers.... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised April 2013)
- Case
Olam: On a New Course
By: David E. Bell, Forest Reinhardt and Mary Shelman
From modest beginnings as a cashew trader in Nigeria, Olam, founded by Indian nationals in 1989, has grown into a leading global agricultural trading company, with annual revenues of $14 billion. The company recently has begun investing in farms and in the production... View Details