Publications

30 Nov 2021
News

Glue for the High-Skill Gig Economy

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

Jim joined the HBS Faculty in 2019 and teaches the EC courses Entrepreneurial Finance and Tough Tech Ventures and is a faculty affiliate of the Business & Environment Initiative. He is an active investor, and Board director & advisor for... View Details

February 22, 2023
Article

How to Seed Organic Marketing in a Video-First World

By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Matt Higgins

Early direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies relied on plentiful capital and low-cost digital marketing to power growth. But as this sector has matured, capital is more constrained, social media is more cluttered, and customer acquisition costs are rising. DTC companies... View Details

Keywords: Online Business; Ecommerce; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Omnichannel Retail; Omnichannel Retailing; Influencer Marketing; Consumer; Organic Growth; Video Advertising; Promotion; Celebrities; Online Advertising; Online Channel; Online Communities; Online Community; Go To Market Strategy; Platform; Media; Media Content; Digital; Digital Culture; Digital Influencers; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Direct-to-consumer; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Sales; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Digital Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Internet and the Web; Advertising; Business Model; Growth Management; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Communication Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States; North America

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Profile

Fereshteh Zeineddin

for your current role & your long term career? My education at HBS taught me skills, models and frameworks to tackle everyday business problems; however, the most important lesson that I learned is that "soft" skills are... View Details

Keywords: Retail

13 Mar 2018
First Look

March 13, 2018

result, sponsorship does not close the gender gap in competitiveness or earnings. We discuss how these insights from the laboratory could help to inform the design of sponsorship programs in the field. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2010 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Volkswagen do Brasil: Driving Strategy with the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

A new management team at VW do Brazil develops and deploys a strategy map and Balanced Scorecard to accomplish a turnaround and cultural change after eight consecutive years of financial losses and market share declines. The team uses the strategy map to align... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Developing Countries and Economies; Management Teams; Leadership; Balanced Scorecard; Strategic Planning; Balance and Stability; Motivation and Incentives; Communication Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Auto Industry; Brazil; Germany

October 2010 (Revised August 2012)
Supplement

Harvest: Organic Waste Recycling with Energy Recovery (B)

By: Deishin Lee, Baris Ata and Mustafa H. Tongarlak

This case describes the waste management industry and a clean technology solution for landfill diversion and renewable energy production. The (A) case focuses on the operational characteristics of waste management and waste to energy, and the characteristics of the... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Wastes and Waste Processing; Management; Operations; Social Issues; Problems and Challenges; Energy Generation; Renewable Energy; Quality; Industry Structures; Energy Industry

Derek van Bever is a Senior Lecturer in the General Management Unit of Harvard Business School. He teaches courses in both years of the MBA program (“Leadership and Corporate Accountability” in the first-year required curriculum and “Building and Sustaining a... View Details

January 1996
Case

Transportation Displays Incorporated (C): The Case for a Preemptive Restructuring

By: Stuart C. Gilson, Joel T. Schwartz, Steve Silver and David Stemerman

A company nears the end of a long multiyear turnaround and now must consider how to "cash out" so its management can realize a financial return on investment. The privately held company has several options, including a leveraged ESOP and a leveraged recapitalization. View Details

Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Capital; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Private Ownership

October 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Thermax—Changing of the Guard

By: Christina R. Wing and Inakshi Sobti

Thermax is an engineering company in India that provides integrated solutions in energy, environment, and chemicals. The Aga family along with family trusts owns 62% of the company. Post a restructuring exercise in 2000, Thermax transforms itself from a small family... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Transformation; Business Conglomerates; Strategy; Management Succession; Selection and Staffing; Organizational Culture

July 2020
Case

Kathy Fish at Procter & Gamble: Navigating Industry Disruption by Disrupting from Within

By: Emily Truelove, Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble’s Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world’s leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady... View Details

Keywords: Female Protagonist; Organizational Change; Organizational Behavior; Culture Change; Digital; Innovation; Lean Startup; Experimentation; Metrics; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruption; Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation

November 1991 (Revised April 1994)
Case

Nucleon, Inc.

By: Gary P. Pisano

Nucleon is a small biotechnology company whose first potential product is about to enter clinical testing. Before Nucleon can begin clinical trials, however, its management must decide how and where to manufacture the product. Three options are being contemplated: 1)... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Entrepreneurship; Health Testing and Trials; Rights; Product Development; Production; Partners and Partnerships; Research and Development; Biotechnology Industry

January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

OhmConnect: Energizing the Future

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details

Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

the right people are confident, suggests recent research by Thomas Graeber, assistant professor at Harvard Business School. His work tested the effects of meta-cognition—essentially, whether more skilled people are also more confident... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & Steven R. Anderson; Financial Services

April 2012
Case

Man Group (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen and Thomas M. Clay

The Man Group was a huge and successful UK-based hedge fund and fund of funds manager. Through acquisitions, the company had consciously diversified its portfolio of investment products. In 2007 Man had to decide whether or not to spin off its brokerage business. Man... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Financial Crisis; Decisions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Diversification; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United Kingdom; Europe

Find at Harvard

01 Nov 2021
What Do You Think?

How Long Does It Take to Improve an Organization’s Culture?

consultants who provide advice on changing an organization’s culture generally estimate that the chances of success are low, typically one in three or four attempts. Those odds aren’t encouraging. But what isn’t clear in those statistics... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2022
Chapter

Corporate Misconduct’s Relevance to Society through Everyday Misconduct

By: Eugene Soltes

Terms like "corporate misconduct" and "white-collar crime" typically bring to mind major scandals like Enron or Bernie Madoff. This popular perception overlooks another important—and in fact much more typical—type of deviance: "everyday misconduct." Everyday misconduct... View Details

Keywords: Research; Crime and Corruption; Society