Publications

March 13, 2023
Article

Sales Teams Need to Stop Focusing on the Customer Funnel

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Understanding where customers are, how they navigate streams in your market, and how to interact with them in a given stream is now central to crafting a good customer experience, and that has implications. Among other things, companies need to shift from thinking... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior

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19 Mar 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

8 Ways To Be An Environmentally Conscious Manager

iPhoto In an interview about his recent book Profits and Sustainability, which portrays the iconoclastic entrepreneurs who built green startups in the 19th century, Harvard Business School historian Geoffrey Jones notes that being a business-environmentalist can be... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Energy

22 May 2017
Blog Post

Changing How You Think at HBS

are outside the box. HBS has turned me upside down. It started with changing my relationship to myself—getting in touch with my inner values and understanding more about who I really am View Details

2017
Working Paper

Cooperative Strategic Games

By: Elon Kohlberg and Abraham Neyman

We examine a solution concept, called the “value," for n-person strategic games. In applications, the value provides an a-priori assessment of the monetary worth of a player's position in a strategic game, comprising not only the player's contribution to the total... View Details

Keywords: Game Theory

2010
Working Paper

The Influence of Prior Industry Affiliation on Framing in Nascent Industries: The Evolution of Digital Cameras

New industries sparked by technological change are characterized by high uncertainty. In this paper we explore how a firm's conceptualization of products in this context, as reflected by product feature choices, is influenced by prior industry affiliation. We study... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Technological Innovation; Product Launch; Market Entry and Exit; Industry Growth; Product Development; Behavior; Competitive Strategy; Electronics Industry

29 Sep 2011
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Leveraging Intellectual Property

Hollywood's efforts, but local Bollywood companies as well. Hollywood's efforts in India are far from a lost cause: all these problems can be addressed if a studio understands India and develops a coherent strategy. Is My Ip Threatened By... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

April 2006 (Revised November 2020)
Background Note

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Introduces the role for time-driven activity-based costing. Identifies the value from an accurate costing model, describes the difficulties of traditional ABC, and illustrates how time-driven ABC provides a simpler and more powerful method. View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Value

Research Summary

Customer-Centricity as a Vehicle for Organic Growth

By: Ranjay Gulati

This body of work examines the mechanics of how firms grow profitably in commoditizing markets. Underlying the "customer-centricity" that many firms embrace today is a factor that will determine their success with this effort: enabling collaboration across... View Details

November 2008
Supplement

NEC Electronics (CW)

By: C. Fritz Foley, Robin Greenwood and James Quinn

Why do shares in NEC Electronics, a publicly listed subsidiary of Japan conglomerate NEC trade at a discount to their fundamental value? Can Perry Capital, a U.S. hedge fund, restructure this subsidiary and generate significant returns? This case provides students with... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Business Subsidiaries; Restructuring; Decisions; Investment Return; Investment Funds; Price; Ownership; Agency Theory; Business and Shareholder Relations; Value Creation; Electronics Industry; Japan; United States

Article

The Not-So-Common-Wealth of Australia: Evidence for a Cross-Cultural Desire for a More Equal Distribution of Wealth.

By: Michael I. Norton, David T. Neal, Cassandra L. Govan, Dan Ariely and Elise Holland

Recent evidence suggests that Americans underestimate wealth inequality in the United States and favor a more equal wealth distribution (Norton & Ariely, 2011). Does this pattern reflect ideological dynamics unique to the United States, or is the phenomenon evident in... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Australia; United States

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July 2011
Article

Mixed Source

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gaston Llanes

We study competitive interaction between a profit-maximizing firm that sells software and complementary services and a free open source competitor. We examine the firm's choice of business model between the proprietary model (where all software modules are... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Open Source Distribution; Profit; Sales; Applications and Software; Service Operations; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Quality; Value Creation

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September 28, 2023
Article

A Perspective on the Great Reallocation of Global Supply Chains

By: Laura Alfaro and Davin Chor

Previous optimism that cross-border supply chains would improve efficiency for firms and open up growth opportunities for countries has been tempered by concerns that global value chains now expose firms and countries to the risk of disruptions. This column analyses... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Policy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; United States

January 2019 (Revised October 2020)
Technical Note

Brand Storytelling

By: Jill Avery

Marketers have long appreciated the value and power of storytelling. Stories fill brands with resonant and relevant meaning and empower brands to serve as critical elements in the lives of consumers. Mastering the art of brand storytelling is an increasingly important... View Details

Keywords: Brand Communication; Brand Management; Brand Storytelling; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Advertising; Consumer Behavior; Consumer Products Industry

March 2016
Case

M-Pesa: Financial Inclusion in Kenya

By: Rajiv Lal, Lisa Cox and Sarah McAra

M-Pesa, a mobile money transfer service launched in 2007 in Kenya by telecommunications company Safaricom, allowed people to send money via mobile messaging to contacts, such as friends and family, or even to pay for goods and services, such as groceries or a taxi... View Details

Keywords: Mobile Money Transfer; Market Transactions; Emerging Markets; Developing Countries and Economies; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Kenya

December 1999 (Revised November 2003)
Background Note

Pricing: A Value-Based Approach

By: Robert J. Dolan

Presents a framework for determining prices for products and services in concert with the value provided to customers. Discusses methodologies for estimating customer value. View Details

Keywords: Price; Customers

Summer 2014
Article

Delegation in Multi‐Establishment Firms: Adaptation vs. Coordination in I.T. Purchasing Authority

By: Kristina Steffenson McElheran

This paper conducts one of the first large-scale, establishment-level empirical studies of delegation within firms. Recent contributions to a rapidly growing theory literature have focused on the tradeoff between adaptation and coordination in determining... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Adaptation

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