Publications

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November 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Marcus by Goldman Sachs

By: Rory McDonald, Samir Junnarkar and David Lane

Five years on from the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman Sachs remained wounded. Revenues at the global investment bank had stagnated below pre-crisis levels, and the firm had yet to rebound from a substantial decline in securities-trading revenues. Marcus by Goldman... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Banks and Banking; Innovation Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Financial Services Industry; United Kingdom

01 Jun 2023
News

Buy Big, Sell Small

tolerance for risk and responsibility, Shruti returned to India and jumped into entrepreneurship “head first, feet next.” With a startup team, she began fine-tuning plans to launch a digital platform to help local travel agents maximize their effectiveness through... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; retail; supply chain management; entrepreneurship; leadership; innovation; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

01 Aug 1998
News

Spangler Family Gift Endows New Campus Center

Spangler embarked on an ancillary career of public service in education at the local, county, and state level. He was chairman of the state's Board of Education in 1986 when the University of North Carolina named him its fourteenth... View Details

Keywords: Nancy O. Perry

September 2015 (Revised February 2017)
Case

MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?

By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble

Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015 to 200 stores by the end of 2016, and while the two believed that MOD could manage... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Service Industry; United States

Web

Global Opportunity Fellowship GO: AFRICA - Alumni

in Africa will contribute to your career development. EXECUTIVE BRIEF (6-8 pages) that includes the following information about your venture: Management Team Provide team information, including relevant work experience/skills and education. Business Product or View Details

06 Jul 2023
News

Home Economics

In a remote village in the Mexican state of Chiapas, 13 women gather in an open-air community space. Each has arrived at their weekly meeting with a small deposit for El Banco—“the bank”—as the women have named the savings club they’ve formed with the assistance of... View Details

Keywords: April White

Web

Online Entrepreneurship & Innovation Courses | HBS Online

Certificate New Transforming Customer Experiences Professor Ryan Buell Gain a systematic approach for delivering standout services and experiences that provide a competitive edge and build customer loyalty. 4 weeks, 5-6 hrs/week Enroll by... View Details

02 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Coronavirus Careers: Cloud Kitchens Are Now Serving

work, typically through online delivery companies such as Uber Eats, Postmates, Grubhub, and DoorDash. (Delivery services are not new, of course. In 2018, American consumers used third-party delivery View Details

Keywords: by Lena Ye and Geoffrey Jones; Food & Beverage

September 2017
Case

Blackstone's Julia Kahr at the Summit

By: Paul A. Gompers, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal

In 2009, Blackstone, the New York-based alternative asset and financial services firm, committed to invest up to $750 million into Summit Materials, a new company in the aggregates sector (i.e., construction materials, such as crushed stone, sand, gravel, cement,... View Details

01 Mar 2024
News

Vital Signs

Image by Edmon De Haro Illustration by Edmon De Haro The signs of strain were there long before the pandemic: Health care workers had been managing under tremendous pressures while working long hours in understaffed hospitals. Then COVID unleashed an unprecedented... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Hospitals; Health, Social Assistance

23 May 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Know If Your Neighborhood Is Being Gentrified

shop may be a harbinger of things to come,” says Luca. The study didn’t specifically track the fate of existing shops or services after new businesses started opening in the area, so it’s possible the occasional shop might be crowded out... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

07 Jul 2023
Blog Post

Harvard Innovation Labs: Where Passion and Purpose Meet

sectors; and supports more than 700 venture teams each semester. What are the support systems and resources provided at the labs to student and alumni ventures? What sustains this community is the incredible team here that works fully in View Details

14 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 14

pervasive in the China business context characterized by heavy reliance on personal relationships or guanxi, it went against the founding principles of CDG-professionalism and service quality. Yang had to decide where to draw the line... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2017 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Ant Financial (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Ying Zhang, Krishna G. Palepu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai

Headquartered in Hangzhou (China), Ant Financial has grown into a fintech “Unicorn.” The fintech empire that the company established spanned verticals such as mobile and online payment (Alipay), money market fund (Yu’e Bao), wealth management (Ant Fortune),... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Global Strategy; Finance; Opportunities; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

16 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Can Consumers Be Saved From Their Misguided Decisions?

on a number of products and services including health insurance plans, generic versus brand drug choices, copays and medication use, mobile phone plan choices, and even better methods for farming seaweed. “If you’re thinking about using... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Consulting; Retail

21 Aug 2013
Research & Ideas

What Went Wrong at J.C. Penney?

for customers to come into the store, he came up with the idea of unique boutiques within each J.C. Penney—the store-within-a-store concept. He added services in the middle of the store where, for example, people got their nails done. He... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner; Retail

December 2017 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Amazon Buys Whole Foods

By: José B. Alvarez, David Lane and Joni Coughlin

The June 2017 news that e-commerce giant Amazon was paying $13.7 billion for organic supermarket chain Whole Foods precipitated a broad sell-off in the shares of grocery retailers and suppliers. Behind the precipitous declines lay recognition that Amazon’s bold move... View Details

Keywords: Amazon; Whole Foods; Grocery; Grocery Delivery; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Business Models; Food Value Chain; Agribusiness; Mergers and Acquisitions; Operations; Competitive Strategy; E-commerce; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Retail Industry; Web Services Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States