Publications

December 2005 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Fred Khosravi and AccessClosure (A)

By: Richard Hamermesh and Liz Kind

Fred Khosravi is a serial medical device entrepreneur. In his latest venture, he must decide whether to sell now or continue to develop his current product and whether to market it, sell the company, or IPO. View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Medical Devices; Venture Capital; Life Sciences; Health Care Industry; Healthcare Technology; Healthcare Ventures; Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States

August 1996
Case

ThermoLase

By: William A. Sahlman and Andrew S. Janower

John Hansen, CEO of ThermoLase, must develop a plan of action to exploit the company's new development-stage revolutionary hair removal technology with negligible revenues and a $500 million market capitalization. This nascent public Thermo Electron spin out company... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Plan; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

16 May 2017
News

Facing the Board

of things. The 72 alumni were among 400 who returned to campus to join 936 students for the inaugural HBS Boardroom, a new RC capstone experience that includes first-year student teams presenting case-based management decisions to alumni... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Myers; photos by Susan Young; Blackrock; The Boardroom

January 2020
Case

Lunchclub: Algorithmic Networking

By: Scott Duke Kominers and George Gonzalez

Algorithmic networking startup Lunchclub coordinates in-person meetings between professionals who would have been unlikely to meet. The company faces marketplace design, growth, and monetization challenges: The executive team has to refine Lunchclub's marketplace... View Details

Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Networking; Business Startups; Marketplace Matching; Market Design; Growth and Development Strategy; Information Industry

16 Jun 2020
Blog Post

Delivering Solutions During a Crisis: an Interview with Hans Kristian Furuseth

through crisis while operating an ecommerce organization during Brexit. With business in the UK and across the EU, Furuseth and his team had to adjust to foreign exchange rates and find ways to quickly cut costs. The experience of rapid View Details

March 1999 (Revised May 1999)
Case

Apple Computer--1999

By: David B. Yoffie and Mary Kwak

In 1980, Apple was the leader of the PC industry, but by 1999, it had suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Wintel camp. This case examines Apple's efforts to create sustainable competitive advantage as the PC industry evolves. After discussing Apple's history and... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Business or Company Management; Management Practices and Processes; Corporate Strategy; Information Technology Industry

17 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 17

Management (forthcoming) Abstract Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an anchoring and adjustment approach to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Oct 1999
News

New Chairman Updates Development in MBA Program

features of today's MBA experience. We all know that the effective use of technology is a priority at the School. How is this influencing the MBA Program? Technology is a huge part of the MBA experience. It is something today's students are going to live with and View Details

02 Mar 2016
News

The New Space Race

This entrepreneurial energy is following a decidedly terrestrial opportunity. The nonprofit advocacy group Space Foundation estimated that the global size of the industry reached $330 billion in 2014, with an annual growth rate of 9... View Details

Keywords: Robert S. Benchley

June 2019
Supplement

KaBOOM!: Play at Scale (B)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg

This (B) case describes the changes in the organization’s strategy from one of Building Playgrounds to Influencing Play. It describes the implementation of the strategy and the challenges it faced internally and externally. It goes on to describe how the organization... View Details

Keywords: Scaling Social Enterprise; Scaling Social Impact; Nonprofit Organizations; Nonprofit Scaling; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; United States

March 2017
Supplement

OXXO's Turf War Against Extra (B)

By: Tatiana Sandino, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Annelena Lobb

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry; Mexico

March 2017 (Revised April 2017)
Case

OXXO's Turf War Against Extra (A)

By: Tatiana Sandino, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Annelena Lobb

In 2006, Mexican convenience store chain OXXO faced a threat from a formidable competitor, the rival convenience chain Extra. OXXO had embarked on an initiative to fortify its corporate culture and operating system, but the threat of Extra raised the question of... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry; Mexico

January 2014
Case

Entrepreneurial Finance Lab: Scaling an Innovative Start-up Financing Venture

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

EFL provides credit-scoring services in developing countries using psychometric assessment, but the potential loss of a large customer makes them reconsider their scaling narrative. View Details

Keywords: Finance; Developing Countries; Lending; Psychometrics; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Credit; Developing Countries and Economies; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Latin America

January 2000 (Revised February 2000)
Case

The HBS California Research Center

By: Ashish Nanda, Thomas J. DeLong and Scott D Landry

Harvard Business School's (HBS) California Research Center, a three-year experiment initiated in July 1997 to facilitate research, case-writing, and course development centered in the Silicon Valley Region, has been a "phenomenal success." In June 1999, HBS Dean Kim... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Success; Education Industry; San Francisco

05 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 5, 2019

management, has recently launched its inaugural impact-investing fund—the $2 billion Rise Fund. In an effort to “take the religion out of impact investing,” Bill McGlashan, founder and managing partner of TPG Growth, an arm of TPG focused... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Profile

Rakhi Mehra

communities around me," Rakhi says. "The intensity of intellectual discussion and debate gave me a new perspective on my home country. I felt a new sense of responsibility for the effects of growth on India." Applying an... View Details

07 May 2019
News

How Sonja Hoel Perkins Saved John McAfee from an Especially Bad Deal

attending Harvard Business School, Hoel Perkins landed a job on the ground floor of the venture capital firm TA Associates in Boston. There she impressed management with her computer skills—all self-taught—and her knack for finding... View Details

08 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 8

pursuing growth strategies in adjacent markets or new geographies should consider how similar the needs of new customers are to those of existing customers. Offering complements also allows incumbents to reach additional customer groups.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2011 (Revised October 2011)
Case

If We Ran the World

By: Hanna Halaburda, Radka Dohnalova and Aldo Sesia

Cindy Gallop launched IfWeRanTheWorld (IWRTW) in February 2010, as what the tech world called minimum viable product, in order to real-world test Gallop's "business of the future" concept while development was ongoing. IWRTW was conceived to bring together human good... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Outcome or Result; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Network Effects