Publications

September 2016
Case

Financial Services at Falabella (A)

By: C. Fritz Foley and Agustin M. Hurtado

In 2010, the board and senior management team of Falabella, a leading retailer with operations throughout Latin America, faced choices about what to do with its financial services division. More than 4.5 million customers had CMR credit cards that could be used in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Credit; Financial Institutions; Personal Finance; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Banking Industry; Banking Industry; Latin America; Chile; Argentina; Colombia; Peru

October 2020 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Experimentation at Yelp

By: Iavor Bojinov and Karim R. Lakhani

Over the last decade, experimentation has become integral to the research and development processes of technology companies—including Yelp—for understanding customer preferences and mitigating innovation risks. The case describes Yelp's journey with experimentation,... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Risk Management; Advertising; Research and Development; Technology Industry

Dorothy Leonard*, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita, joined the Harvard faculty in 1983 after teaching for three years at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has taught MBA courses in... View Details

Keywords: education industry; education industry; education industry; education industry; education industry; education industry; education industry; education industry; education industry

11 Jul 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Deconstructing 'Customer Experience'

Legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt warned his students and industry executives against “marketing myopia”—that is, adopting an insular marketing approach where the business puts its own needs ahead of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail; Service

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

with a diverse set of companies. "In this way, we could pool all this knowledge and distill it down to the essential principles that CIOs can generally apply, regardless of industry or size of firm, while describing 'realistic' and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Mar 2019
What Do You Think?

What’s the Antidote to Surveillance Capitalism?

inter-governmental regulation as powerful enough to offer some hope of containing the excesses of surveillance capitalism. When industrial capitalism was moderated we lived in a world where nation states still had much autonomy confronted... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Advertising; Consumer Products

October 2000 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Editora Abril S.A.

By: Michael Y. Yoshino and Perry Fagan

Brazil's media conglomerate Editora Abril S.A. is Latin America's largest publishing and printing company; it publishes books, and comic books, videos, maps, travel guides, music, and textbooks. It also owns Brazil's largest database marketing company, its... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Communications; Market Design; Media; Service Delivery; Private Ownership; Expansion; Web Sites; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry; Brazil

January 2025
Case

The Vision of Wonder

By: Michael S. Kaufman and Daniella Bertolotti

Serial entrepreneur Marc Lore successfully disrupted three marketplaces—trading cards, diapers (founded Diapers.com and eventually sold to Amazon for more than $500 million) and ecommerce (founded Jet.com competing directly with Amazon and eventually sold to Walmart... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Exit or Shutdown; Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

March 1985 (Revised November 1988)
Case

Precision Parts, Inc. (A)

By: William A. Sahlman

Contains a description of a decision confronting two entrepreneurs in mid-1981. They are considering purchasing a small manufacturer of precision electromechanical parts. Among the issues in the case are the following: 1) Should Taylor and Grayson buy Precision Parts,... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Cost vs Benefits; Investment Return; Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Risk and Uncertainty; Outcome or Result; Manufacturing Industry

June 2014 (Revised March 2016)
Case

Relating to Peapod

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

Explores the relationships formed between consumers and the Peapod consumer-direct grocery delivery service, as revealed through an ethnographic study of Boston-area Peapod shoppers conducted between the Summer of 1997 and the Fall of 1999. Three representative case... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Service Industry; Boston

March 2011
Background Note

Customer Loyalty Schemes in the Retail Sector

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Aldo Sesia

Customer loyalty schemes (or programs) are explicit efforts by retailers to gain long-term patronage from customers. Loyalty schemes are developed for a variety of reasons: to reward loyal customers, to generate more robust information about customer behavior, to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Business Strategy; Retail Industry; United Kingdom; United States

February 1991
Case

Burlington Northern: The ARES Decision (B)

By: Julie H. Hertenstein and Robert S. Kaplan

The ARES team formally proposes that Burlington Northern implement the ARES system. The project meets resistance. In light of financial restructuring and high level of debt, executives wonder whether the company can afford ARES. Weak links during the ARES development... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Restructuring; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Borrowing and Debt; Capital Budgeting; Projects; Technology Adoption; Service Industry

June 2001 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Madison Avenue: Digital Media Services (B)

In late 1999, Madison Avenue was experiencing phenomenal growth in sales, clients, employees, and services provided. The stress and strain on the firm's employees was considerable and threatened to jeopardize the high-quality, active-ad management for which the firm... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Service Operations; Digital Marketing; Business Processes; Advertising Industry

August 2000
Case

Manila Water Company (A)

By: Michael Beer and Elizabeth Weldon

On February 3, 1997, the east zone of the Manila Metropolitan Water and Sewerage System (MWSS) was taken over by the Manila Water Co. (MWC), a newly created joint venture between the Ayala Corp., a large Filipino conglomerate; Bechtel Enterprises, Inc., an American... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Horizontal Integration; Privatization; Problems and Challenges; Utilities Industry

September 2022 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Wordle

By: Karen G. Mills, Christina Wallace, Ebehi Iyoha, Gabriella Elanbeck and Morgane Herculano

After sourdough bread, countertop chive gardens, and vaccine selfies came a pandemic-era trend that everyone seemed to be in on: one daily chance to guess a five-letter word and crow about your success on social media via little green and yellow squares. From a... View Details

Keywords: Games; Innovation; General Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Trends; Entrepreneurship; Bids and Bidding; Consumer Behavior; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

Web

Gender & Race in Organizations Research Group - Race, Gender & Equity

social identities (e.g., race and gender) in professional identity development processes of medical residents. She is also conducting research on identity change and career intentions of first-time pregnant professional women, as well as... View Details

Web

Eligibility | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

applications while at HBS. To be considered for the Social Enterprise Loan Repayment Assistance Program (SELRAP) and both the Rock Center and Career & Professional Development (CPD) at-graduation loan reduction programs, your loans must... View Details

Web

Becoming an Entrepreneur - Alumni

friction from ecommerce shopping, or applying Big Data to achieve supply chain efficiencies Enthusiasm for a particular industry or "space," such as IoT or green energy initiatives For those who recognize themselves as founders, the next... View Details

February 2024
Case

Vespucci Partners: The New World of Venture Capital in Hungary

By: Paul A. Gompers, Tonia Labruyere and Emilie Billaud

Julia Sohajda was the young, female founding partner of the Hungarian VC firm Vespucci Partners, which focused on investing at seed stage into Hungarian deep tech startups and prepare them for a launch in the U.S market. Vespucci's first fund had largely been comprised... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry; Hungary; United States