Publications

22 Dec 2020
News

Dove: Maintaining a Brand with Purpose

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

careers at the Harvard Business School, we discovered that the turnover of CIOs ran at around 30 to 40 percent per year. As a result of our research, we described the driving cause as the rapid change of IT through the operation of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

25 Jan 2021
Working Paper Summaries

India’s Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic

Keywords: by Matt Lowe, G V Nadhanael, and Benjamin N. Roth; Food & Beverage; Agriculture & Agribusiness

01 Dec 2022
News

My First Job

Edited by Jen McFarland Flint; illustrations by Ross MacDonald Here’s the humbling truth: no matter how high your career soars, how many awards you win or companies you sell or differences you make in this world, everyone has to start somewhere. And in those first... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

08 Feb 2024
Blog Post

African American Student Union Spotlight on Joint Degrees

Microsoft, I spent a few years exploring entrepreneurship, both on the operator side – joining and founding startups in the crypto space – and on the investor side as a Venture Partner and mentor at firms including Bessemer and A16z.... View Details

June 2007 (Revised April 2016)
Case

Octone Records

By: Anita Elberse and Elie Ofek

In February 2007, Octone Records founders James Diener, Ben Berkman, and David Boxenbaum had been highly successful with the first two bands they had signed, Maroon 5 and Flyleaf. Known for its grassroots marketing campaigns, Octone operated through a unique... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Joint Ventures; Investment Return; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Development; Outcome or Result; Creativity; Music Industry

Web

Published CSV Cases - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

retail drugstores and 215,000 employees operating in 47 states in 2015. Since 2006, the company had been expanding its role in health care, moving beyond traditional drugstore alone. In 2014, reflecting its new approach, the company... View Details

Web

Cluster Studies - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

may be increasing in the size and “strength” (i.e., relative presence) of related economic sectors. Building on Porter (1998, 2003), we develop a systematic empirical framework to identify the role of regional clusters – groups of closely related and complementary... View Details

August 2023
Case

Reimagining Hindustan Unilever (A)

By: Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani

In the fall of 2019, the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, is wondering what to do about their experiments to digitize distribution. Despite three years of intense efforts, their apps to empower retailers... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Leading Change; Distribution; Decisions; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Competition; Performance; Business Strategy; Marketing; Transformation; Consumer Products Industry; Asia; India

May 2012
Case

BoldFlash: Cross-Functional Challenges in the Mobile Division

By: Michael Beer and Rachel Shelton

Roger Cahill has spent less than a year as head of the Mobile Division of BoldFlash, a flash memory component maker. On the corporate level, BoldFlash has adapted to an evolving and difficult marketplace, but the Mobile Division is struggling. The four groups within... View Details

Keywords: United States; Massachusetts; Morale; Human Resource Management; Technology; Leadership; Opportunities; Organizational Design; Conflict and Resolution; Product Development; Change Management; Information Infrastructure; Business Processes; Manufacturing Industry; Electronics Industry; Massachusetts

August 2017 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Accounting Turbulence at Boeing

By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, David Lane and James Barnett

Unlike its rival Airbus, Boeing had used a practice called program accounting to record its commercial aircraft expenses since the 1980s. Program accounting allowed Boeing to expense estimated average costs instead of the actual production costs of an aircraft. This... View Details

Keywords: Asset Recognition; Program Accounting; Airline Industry; Accounting; Production; Cost; Air Transportation Industry

Web

Faculty - Race, Gender & Equity

(HMC).... Frances X. Frei UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders accelerate performance and... View Details

April 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Wayfair

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie L. Ma and Matthew G. Preble

In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual... View Details

Keywords: Visual Assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts

November 1990 (Revised April 1999)
Case

General Motors: Packard Electric Division

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Packard Electric is the division of General Motors (GM) that does all of the electrical wiring and cabling for GM automobiles. They developed a new approach for passing the cables through the firewall between the engine and passenger compartments. The new technology... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Cost; Management Style; Product Design; Product Development; Production; Projects; Groups and Teams; Conflict and Resolution; Technology; Auto Industry

October 2005 (Revised October 2008)
Case

Virginia Mason Medical Center

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Erika Ferlins

In 2000, Dr. Gary Kaplan became CEO of the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. The hospital was facing significant challenges: It was losing money for the first time in its history, staff morale had plummeted, and area hospitals presented ardent... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Production; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges; Quality; Competition; Seattle