Publications

2010
Working Paper

Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster

By: Nelson P. Repenning and Rebecca Henderson

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers"—delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term investments—makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Performance Improvement; Competitive Advantage; Earnings Management; Management Practices and Processes; Revenue; Quality; Competency and Skills; Motivation and Incentives; Auto Industry; United States

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January – February 2011
Article

How to Design a Winning Business Model

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart

Most executives believe that competing through business models is critical for success, but few have come to grips with how best to do so. One common mistake is enterprises' unwavering focus on creating innovative models and evaluating their efficacy in standalone... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Design; Strength and Weakness; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage

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30 Jun 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Empire Struck Back: The Mexican Oil Expropriation of 1938 Reconsidered

Keywords: by Noel Maurer; Energy; Utilities

2013
Working Paper

The Appeal of the Appropriate: Accounting, Risk Management, and the Competition for the Supply of Control Systems

By: Anette Mikes

How do certain risk measurements in organizations come to be seen as more reliable and acceptable than others? Taking a multiple-control perspective, I investigate the aftermath of a control debacle at a financial services company (MultiBank), focusing on its insurance... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Multiple Control Systems; Interactive Control Systems; Performance Measurement; Risk Measurement; Financialization Of Accounting; Institutional Logics; Banking; Risk Management; Fair Value Accounting; Insurance; Financial Services Industry

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June 2007 (Revised June 2008)
Case

GE's Imagination Breakthroughs: The Evo Project

By: Christopher A. Bartlett, Brian J. Hall and Nicole Bennett

In September 2003, Jeff Immelt challenged the business leaders at GE to come up with "Imagination Breakthroughs," innovative new projects that would serve as the centerpiece of GE's organic growth initiative. Follows the company as these changes are driven through the... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology Industry

June 2025
Case

From Single Stock to Diversified Portfolio: Mastercard Foundation's $42 Billion Asset Management Launch

By: Luis M. Viceira and Justin Cohen

This case examines the decision of the Mastercard Foundation in 2023 to divest its holdings of Mastercard stock, its only asset since inception in 2006 and worth $42 billion in early 2024, and to invest the proceeds in a newly designed diversified portfolio. To this... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Financial Liquidity; Financial Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance; Selection and Staffing; Risk Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Motivation and Incentives

March 2008 (Revised June 2011)
Case

MySpace

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, David T. Chen and Carin-Isabel Knoop

The case, set in late 2007, examines what MySpace—the largest online social network—should do to respond to its agile competitor, Facebook. Since its inception MySpace had experienced phenomenal growth, acquiring 20 million members in its first 20 months of operation,... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Partners and Partnerships; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry

07 Mar 2023
Blog Post

Deconstructing LEGO’s Decarbonization

essays posted on the HBS Business and Environment Initiative’s Blog that highlights their reflections. Learn more about this IFC course on Decarbonization and Sustainable Production by watching this five minute video summary. Visit Date: January 3, 2023 View Details

13 Feb 2020
Book

Open Your Organization to Honest Conversations

underlying reason why: Leaders often get stuck in echo chambers that merely reinforce their own ideas, says Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer. Meanwhile, lower-level employees are often fully aware of the problems that plague a company or the reasons a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2013
Case

Ningbo FOTILE Kitchen Ware Co., Ltd.

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming, Yuren Fang and Hong Zhang

Since 2008, FOTILE has actively introduced philosophies of the traditional Chinese culture—such as benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and faith—into its management, which it believes to compensate for deficiencies in Western management concepts and creates a new... View Details

Keywords: Human Resource Management; China; Human Resources; Leadership; Management; Strategy; China

March 2019 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Waymo LLC

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

On December 5, 2018, Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., launched the United States’ first commercial driverless-car ride-hailing service (Waymo One), based in Phoenix, Arizona. As with other ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, Waymo One riders... View Details

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

pursue? To adapt to a new customer-centric directional reality, we propose an alternative to Ansoff's (1965) growth strategy matrix (see table below). The proposed 2 x 2 matrix is categorized by whether the firm is competing with existing... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

November 2016
Case

Jollibee Foods Corporation

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly

When Tony Tan Caktiong stepped down as president and CEO of Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC) in mid-2014, Ernesto Tanmantiong, his younger brother, succeeded him. In 2016, the brothers were working together to realize the company’s vision of making JFC a truly... View Details

Keywords: Values; Vision; Fast Food; Values and Beliefs; Goals and Objectives; Expansion; Philippines

01 Sep 2023
News

Returning to the Roots

It’s not a role he sought or expected. But when his brother died of a brain tumor late last year, Florent Latour (MBA 1999) became CEO of Maison Louis Latour, a winemaker established in 1797 in the Burgundy region of France. The 11th generation of his family to lead... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; wine; entrepreneurship; family business; innovation; climate change; Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing; Manufacturing

May 2020
Teaching Note

Kraft Heinz: The $8 Billion Brand Write-Down

By: Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-076. On Friday, February 22, 2019, following an unexpected and disappointing earnings report, The Kraft Heinz Company’s stock price fell 27%, wiping out $16 billion in market value. CEO Bernardo Hees had announced that the company had... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

30 Nov 2021
In Practice

What's the Role of Business in Confronting Climate Change?

The 26th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, also known as COP26, ended with a hard-fought pact that called on businesses and governments to meet their climate change goals faster. The event followed an August report by the Intergovernmental... View Details

Keywords: by Lynn Schenk and Dina Gerdeman

2019
Working Paper

U.S. Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

The key pieces of antitrust legislation in the United States—the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Act of 1914—contain broad language that has afforded the courts wide latitude in interpreting and enforcing the law. This article chronicles the judiciary’s... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust; Trusts; Restraint Of Trade; Merger; Cartel; New Deal; Harvard School; Chicago School Of Law And Economics; Post-Chicago; Law; Competition; Policy; Vertical Integration; Horizontal Integration; Acquisition