Publications

Web

Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise - Course Catalog

in-house and which to outsource? What’s the signal that an industry is about to commoditize, and how can we profit from that shift? How do we set strategy in a rapidly changing world (where unknowns vastly outweigh knowns)? Whose... View Details

August 1983 (Revised June 1986)
Case

Johnson & Johnson (B): Hospital Services

By: Francis Aguilar

The main issue has to do with the lack of fit or incompatibility between the early environmental requirements for strategy and the cultural constraints on the organization. Describes the internal resistance to the proposed changes and top management's efforts to... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry

October 2022
Case

Ethena: A Go-to-Market Dilemma

By: Rembrand Koning and Stacy Straaberg

In November 2021, Roxanne Petraeus and Anne Solmssen, founders of Brooklyn-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Ethena, were looking to expand their compliance training business. The founders hired Arnie Gullov-Singh, an outside revenue consultant, to advise on... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Growth and Development Strategy; Business or Company Management; Business Strategy; Expansion; Segmentation; Technology Industry; United States; New York (state, US)

June 2010 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Virginia Mason Medical Center (Abridged)

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer

In 2000, Dr. Gary Kaplan became CEO of the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. The hospital was facing significant challenges: it was losing money for the first time in its history, staff morale had plummeted, and area hospitals presented ardent... View Details

Keywords: History; Competition; Operations; Leadership Style; Problems and Challenges; Change Management; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Seattle

April 2007 (Revised November 2007)
Case

Bankinter: Growing Through Small and Medium Enterprises

Surveys the overall sequence of processes needed for the success of a strategy based on customer analytics. In particular, it charts the formulation and implementation of this strategy by a Spanish bank that decided to expand into the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Data and Data Sets; Knowledge Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Segmentation; Banking Industry; Spain

02 Sep 2014
First Look

First Look: September 2

acquired. Until we can better develop and apply contextual intelligence, failure rates for cross-border businesses will remain high, what we learn from experiments unfolding around the world will remain limited, and the promise of healthy View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Sep 2008
News

Alumni Books

I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History by Walter Mirisch (IA ’43) (University of Wisconsin Press) The producer of such film classics as West Side Story, Some Like It Hot, In the Heat of the Night, and The Magnificent Seven, Mirisch tells the story of his climb to... View Details

Keywords: Publishing Industries (except Internet); Publishing Industries (except Internet); Publishing Industries (except Internet); Publishing Industries (except Internet)

01 Dec 2006
News

One-on-One with Jeff Hicks

industry entirely. Instead, the Miami native went home after graduation to join an upstart agency that seemed interested in doing things a little differently. At the time, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) had a regional focus, with 55... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Advertising, Public Relations, and Related Services; Professional Services

01 Oct 2002
News

The Class of 1977

debt, asleep-at-the-wheel boards of directors, and multiple mega-bankruptcies. We have watched with disbelief the disintegration of a major accounting firm, the discrediting of an alarming number of CEOs, and the growth of a widespread... View Details

Keywords: Desmond Wong

October 2024
Teaching Plan

Teamworks: Tackling a Forecasting Fumble

By: Lou Shipley and Stacy Straaberg

In late March 2018, Teamworks CEO Zach Maurides learned Q1 2018 sales were at risk for a large forecasting miss. Founded in 2004, Teamworks’s software application assisted support staff in messaging, scheduling, and sharing documents with collegiate and professional... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Cycles; Technological Innovation; Sports; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Sales; Business Strategy; Expansion; Sports Industry; Sports Industry; United States; North Carolina

April 2000 (Revised June 2000)
Case

E-Loan: The CarFinance.com Acquisition

E-Loan is an online mortgage lender that acquired an auto-lending arm in August of 1999. This case examines E-Loan's purchase of CarFinance.com and highlights E-Loan's strategy-setting process. In addition, the case explores business development as a strategic process... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Internet and the Web; Change Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry

Find at Harvard

March 2018
Teaching Note

Augmedix

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-048. Augmedix provides a service that live-streams video of patient appointments to a remote scribe, freeing up significant physician time from electronic medical record data-entry tasks. The venture is confronting decisions in areas such... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Sales; Management; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Adoption; Customers; Segmentation; Health Industry; Health Industry; United States

13 Jul 2016
Blog Post

How To Hire A Millennial

sciences. Survey after survey has found millennials prefer flexible work schedules, with the opportunity to work from home on more than just an occasional basis. These preferences have helped fuel the rise of the “gig economy” and the rapid View Details

Keywords: All Industries

01 Dec 2020
News

The Camel and the Unicorn

capitalist by day. I teach entrepreneurship with the Middlebury Institute for International Studies. I often ask my students where they think the root of venture capital is. They'll often tell me they think it's Silicon Valley. The reality is it's much older. It comes... View Details

June 2009 (Revised October 2009)
Case

SABIS—A Global Educational Venture From Lebanon

Carl Bistany is struggling with how the global educational management company, SABIS, can grow 100-fold in the coming twelve years. Founded in 1886 in Lebanon, SABIS is the world's largest and only global education management organization (EMO), with schools in the US,... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Entrepreneurship; Business Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Education Industry; Lebanon