Publications
Publications
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(3,957)
- Faculty Publications (483)
- February 2010 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
Harvard Business School Executive Education: Balancing Online and Offline Marketing
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
How does a small business set its online media budget? The HBS Executive Education Division can be viewed as a small-to-medium sized business unit with annual revenues of $107 million. As we watch it change its culture, practices, and organization from offline to... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Go Mobile: The Phirbol Franchise
By: Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred
To grow Phirbol, a telecom retail franchise chain in Delhi, India's underdeveloped markets, its founders were exploring ways to offer more value to the franchisees. In mid-2009, the Phirbol franchise was comprised of some 150 franchisees that had converted their small... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Shurgard Self-Storage: Expansion to Europe (Abridged)
Shurgard, a U.S.-based firm that rents storage facilities to consumers and small businesses, is considering financing options for rapid expansion of its European operations. Five years after entering Europe, Shurgard Europe has opened 17 facilities in Belgium, France,... View Details
- December 2009 (Revised September 2014)
- Case
TD Canada Trust
By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan
The case illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers and... View Details
- November 2009
- Case
METRO Cash & Carry in China, 2008
By: Tarun Khanna
In April 2008, the country head for METRO AG's Cash & Carry wholesaling operations is considering the most appropriate model for expansion in China, where METRO has operated stores for small business professionals for eight years. In addition, METRO is actively... View Details
- November 2009 (Revised October 2010)
- Case
AME Learning Inc.
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Ann Leamon
Justin Joffe is about to graduate from HBS in Spring 2009. He must decide whether to join his father's company, Toronto-based AME Learning, as president working alongside his father who will be CEO. AME has been in business for 12 years, mostly as a small consulting... View Details
- September 2009 (Revised August 2011)
- Case
Root Capital
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee
Founded in 1999, Root Capital had loaned $150 million to nearly 250 small and growing businesses, mainly in Latin America. In 2009, as the organization launched a five-year, $55 million capital campaign, it had to determine a strategic path going forward in keeping... View Details
- September 2009 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
Intellectual Ventures
By: Andrei Hagiu, David B. Yoffie and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Intellectual Ventures creates and acquires intellectual property, which it then seeks to monetize through non-exclusive licensing. In early 2009, as an increasing number of companies were trying to position themselves as leading intermediaries in the market for... View Details
- August 2009 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
Tenova: Mining for Growth in an Economic Crisis
By: Gary P. Pisano, Elena Corsi and Elisa Farri
In December 2008, Gianluigi Nova, CEO of Tenova SpA, a technology and equipment supplier to the metals and mining industry, had to choose between two options. The first was to continue growing in the company's core business: equipment for the steel production. The... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints and Firm Entry Size
By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
We examine the effect of US branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms using micro-data from the US Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least... View Details
- 18 May 2009
- Other Presentation
Regional Competitiveness in a Global Economy: A Small Business Led Economic Strategy for America
This presentation draws on ideas from Professor Porter's articles and books, in particular, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (The Free Press, 1990), "Building the Microeconomic Foundations of Competitiveness," in The Global Competitiveness Report 2007/08 (World... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues
By: Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda
Mexico is often cited as one of the world's most entrepreneurial countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has started or is in the process of starting a business venture. Yet Mexico does not seem to be very friendly to entrepreneurs, as confirmed by... View Details
- April 2009
- Case
SAP AG: Orchestrating the Ecosystem
By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
Business ecosystems require careful orchestration and strategic choices regarding make/buy/partner decisions and membership access. This case examines the strategic and technological issues related to managing SAP's thriving ecosystem of user communities, software... View Details
- Article
Why Doesn't Capitalism Flow to Poor Countries?
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We show that capitalism is far from common around the world. Outside a small group of rich countries, heavy regulation of business, leftist rhetoric, and interventionist beliefs flourish. We relate these phenomena to the presence of corruption, with causality running... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
- Case
Mistry Architects (A)
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Robert G. Eccles and Mona Sinha
Describes an architecture firm founded and run by a husband and wife team, Sharukh and Renu Mistry, that emphasizes "green" building. The firm presents an unusual mix of projects-spanning the spectrum from larger corporate projects to small private homes. The mix also... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Jieliang Phone Home! (A)
By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria
At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators—bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao—are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and have... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised February 2012)
- Case
Exeter Group, Inc. (A)
By: Robert G. Eccles, Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman
Jonathan Kutchins and Mark Cullen, managing partners of IT consulting firm Exeter Group, Inc., are considering four potential client engagements. Three of them involve prominent universities, an area of market strength for the firm, and one involves a top-tier strategy... View Details
- December 2008 (Revised October 2009)
- Case
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
By: David E. Bell and Brian Matthew Milder
In 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation joined together to form a new organization, AGRA, to tackle the historic challenge of increasing agricultural production in Africa. Launched with much fanfare and led by former U.N.... View Details
- 2008
- Book
On Competition
By: M. E. Porter
Competition is one of society's most powerful forces for making things better in many fields of human endeavor. The study of competition and the creation of value, in their full richness, have preoccupied me for several decades. Competition is pervasive, whether it... View Details
- Article
Can the Virtuous Mouse and the Wealthy Elephant Live Happily Ever After?
What happens when small iconic socially oriented businesses are acquired by large corporations? Such mergers create significant opportunities for creating both business value and substantially expanded social value, but they also pose unusually difficult challenges... View Details