Publications

August 2022
Case

Meaningful Gigs

By: Brian Trelstad and Rachel Philbin

In October 2020, just a year after founding their company Meaningful Gigs, founders Ronnie Kwesi Coleman and Stephanie Nachemja-Burton prepared for a vital investment meeting with Rethink Education. They had already reached $400,000 in annually recurring revenue (ARR)... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Revenue; Education Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; United States

Program

Advanced Management Program

responsibilities, the Advanced Management Program is designed to bring about a full-scale change that empowers executives to create and renew competitive advantage for their organizations. Three highly integrated modules are presented... View Details

24 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 24

would not be achieved even if the product offered a payout ratio comparable to U.S. insurance contracts. We present evidence suggesting that lack of trust, liquidity constraints, and limited salience are significant non-price frictions that constrain demand. We suggest... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

December 2018
Supplement

The Global-Local Tension: Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao Leading with 'International Values and Local Roots' (B)

By: Tsedal Neeley

Vittorio Colao, CEO of telecommunication giant Vodafone, must respond to reports of disturbing accounting practices at two of Vodafone’s operating companies. In one case, €60 million have been misreported due to a series of failures to check manual accounting... View Details

Keywords: GLOBAL-LOCAL; Global Identity; Local Identity; Accounting Discrepency; Globalization; Leadership; Trust; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Organizations; Identity; Local Range; Global Range; Values and Beliefs; Accounting Audits

October 1992 (Revised December 1997)
Case

Sterling Chemicals, Inc.: Quality and Productivity Improvement Program

Describes the design and implemenation of a quality improvement program. Sterling Chemical's management hoped the program would improve teamwork and productivity at the plant. View Details

Keywords: Quality; Groups and Teams; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; Chemical Industry

March 2010 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Systems Infrastructure at Google (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker

This case describes how a senior vice president of engineering at Google, Bill Coughran, leads a high-performing engineering organization. The case focuses specifically on Coughran's encouraging two teams of engineers to develop competing solutions for application... View Details

Keywords: Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Leadership Development; Product Design; Groups and Teams; Creativity; Motivation and Incentives; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry; United States

Robin Ely is the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She conducts research on race and gender relations in organizations with a focus on leadership, identity, and organizational culture change.... View Details

March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses

By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan

The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Growth and Development Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Innovation and Invention; Business Startups; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; Middle East; North Africa

February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

OpenInvest

By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Impact Investing; Investment Portfolio; Customization and Personalization; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

July 2001
Exercise

Working with Your "Shadow Partner": Building a High Tech Investment Portfolio

By: Dwight B. Crane and Richard L. Nolan

Team-based exercise designed to illustrate the use of the Internet directly by executives. Requires going on the Internet to search for information required to construct a high-tech investment portfolio. View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Groups and Teams; Internet and the Web; Information Management

28 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 28, 2010

individuals and groups in organizations. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-024.pdf Using What We Know: Turning Organizational Knowledge into Team Performance Authors:Bradley R. Staats, Melissa A. Valentine, and Amy C.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

Richard L. Nolan are professors at Harvard Business School while Shannon O'Donnell is a consultant with Cutter Consortium's Innovation Practice and a PhD fellow at Copenhagen Business School. The three teamed up via email for the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

20 Sep 2016
First Look

September 20, 2016

hosts who have never had an African-American guest, suggesting only a subset of hosts discriminate. While rental markets have achieved significant reductions in discrimination in recent decades, our results suggest that Airbnb’s current View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 1989 (Revised August 1993)
Supplement

Kanthal (B)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Describes actions taken by senior management of Kanthal after seeing the results of the newly installed account management system. Designed as a class handout. A rewritten version of an earlier case by the same author. View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Management Systems; Management Teams

08 Feb 2017
HBS Seminar

Andrew Mao, Microsoft Research

2015
Chapter

Leading Proactive Punctuated Change

By: Michael Tushman, Charles O'Reilly and Bruce Harreld

This chapter focuses on leading proactive punctuated change. Based on the institutional and organizational change literatures and our extended involvement with IBM between 1999 and 2008, we suggest that proactive punctuated change can be effectively managed through an... View Details