Publications

September 2007 (Revised August 2008)
Case

Suncor in the Oil Sands Industry

By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Nazli Uludere

Describes the economics, technology, and politics of the oil sands industry, focusing on one of the industry's leading firms. Oil sands deposits in Alberta represent a potentially vast reserve of hydrocarbons, but the extraction, refining, and transportation challenges... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Non-Renewable Energy; Government and Politics; Supply and Industry; Natural Environment; Competitive Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Industry; Alberta

December 2015
Background Note

Incentive Systems

By: Brian J. Hall

This note serves as a supplement to any course on incentive design within organizations. The note focuses on the principal difficulties in designing incentive systems, including the tradeoff between objective and subjective performance metrics, how to design incentive... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Strategy; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Performance Evaluation; Strategy

October 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Haier: Taking a Chinese Company Global

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Tarun Khanna and Ingrid Vargas

In 2005, Haier, China's leading appliance manufacturer, had over $12 billion in worldwide sales and was the third-ranked global appliance brand behind Whirlpool and GE. Describes Haier's rise from a defunct refrigerator factory in China's Qingdao province to an... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Brands and Branding; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; China

Forest L. Reinhardt is the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and HBS’s Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotions and Tenure.

Professor Reinhardt is interested in the relationships between market and nonmarket... View Details

Keywords: agribusiness; agriculture; beverage; biotechnology; chemical; energy; federal government; food; food processing; forest products; nonprofit industry; oil ＆ gas; paper; petroleum; tourism; transportation

April 2004 (Revised May 2005)
Case

Confronting a Necessary Evil: The Firing of Alex Robins (A)

By: Joshua D. Margolis

A manager recounts his experience firing the person he was asked to replace and reflects on the challenges of the experience. Teaching Purpose: To role-play and reflect on tasks that entail harming other people to fulfill one's responsibility. View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Problems and Challenges; Leadership Development; Behavior; Decision Making; Resignation and Termination

July 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

elBulli: The Taste of Innovation

By: Michael I. Norton, Julian Villanueva and Luc Wathieu

Ferran Adrià, chef at elBulli, the highest-ranked restaurant in the world for two consecutive years, faces two related decisions. First, Adrià and his team must continue to develop new and different dishes for the ground-breaking cuisine at elBulli to guarantee a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Creativity; Food and Beverage Industry; Spain

April 1974 (Revised June 1983)
Case

Robert F. Kennedy High School

By: John J. Gabarro

Presents the problem facing a newly appointed high school principal. Raises issues about interpersonal and group behavior including lack of open conflict resolution and the need to intervene in an interpersonal conflict. Also raises the issue of intergroup conflict... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Secondary Education; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Behavior; Conflict Management; System

November 2021
Supplement

Steve Schwarzman on Dealmaking I: “Becoming a ‘Friend of the Situation’” (B)

By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

This case describes, largely in his own words, how Schwarzman dealt with the eight negotiation challenges in the (A) case (922-005); with respect to each challenge, a series of generalizations follows to enhance one's effectiveness in negotiation. View Details

Keywords: Dealmaking; Bargaining; Conflict Resolution; Negotiation; Private Equity; Entrepreneurship; Conflict and Resolution; Problems and Challenges

Teaching

Overview

Paige served as the Head Teaching Fellow for the Technology and Operations Management MBA Required Curriculum course in 2024 and as a junior Teaching Fellow in 2023, supporting more than 900 first-year MBA students each year. In these roles, she developed problem set... View Details

May 2012 (Revised August 2012)
Case

Apple Inc. in 2012

By: David B. Yoffie and Penelope Rossano

On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs tragically died of cancer. The recently retired CEO of Apple Inc. was a legend: he had changed Apple from a company near bankruptcy to one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Moreover, he had revolutionized several... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Market Positioning; Strategic Planning; Technology; Computer Industry; Strategy Implementation; Consumer Electronics; Telecommunications; Information Infrastructure; Innovation and Invention; Competitive Strategy; Leadership; Product Positioning; Telecommunications Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry

April 1990 (Revised January 1993)
Case

Ad Council's AIDS Campaign (A): Advertising Strategy

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Janet Montgomery

Ad Council wished to run an educational campaign aimed at preventing the spread of AIDS. They were challenged to find acceptable ways to address this very sensitive subject matter--ways that the media and the public would approve. One of the big challenges was to make... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Goals and Objectives; Social Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Success; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; Health Industry

November 2005 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Leading Change at Simmons (A)

By: Tiziana E. Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, Stacy McManus and Kate Roloff

Explores the challenge of managing large-scale organizational change at Simmons, an old and established company that manufactures and distributes mattresses. The new CEO, Charlie Eitel, hired to turn the organization's performance around, considers whether to implement... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Leading Change; Employee Relationship Management; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

Jun 22 2016
Testimonial

Learning from Peers in a Truly Open Environment

24 Oct 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How the United States Air Force Accelerated AI Adoption

Keywords: Re: Maria P. Roche

December 2008 (Revised June 2009)
Case

Lapdesk Goes Global - Africa First

Shane Immelman, founding CEO of the Lapdesk Company of South Africa, is facing a number of challenges in taking Lapdesk from South Africa and into the rest of the African continent. How should the African strategy be different from that of South Africa? What is the... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Africa; South Africa

07 Jul 2022
Blog Post

Pathlight: Reimagining the Developer Onboarding Experience

a promise to myself to commit these two years to experimenting, learning, and iterating to the right startup idea. It’s been a wild ride since then, but one of the most fulfilling parts of my HBS experience. What is the View Details

03 May 2016
First Look

First Look, May 3, 2016

the results provide new evidence of the impact of rank and file employees on firms' financial reporting choices. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49026 forthcoming Strategy Beyond Markets Navigating Natural... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2019
Background Note

Geographic Inequality Primer

By: William Kerr, Joseph Fuller, Manjari Raman and Donald Maruyama

There are large and persistent divides between urban centers and rural areas in America due in part to structural causes. This primer focuses on the demographic differences between urban and rural areas within the United States and the unique challenges facing rural... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Rural; Development; Equality and Inequality; Demographics; Rural Scope; Urban Scope; Development Economics; Problems and Challenges; Globalization; United States