Publications

December 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Bulb 2015: Foundation

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In late August 2015, Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood, co-founders of Bulb, Ltd (Bulb), were ready to offer affordable renewable energy to the United Kingdom’s 27 million households. They hoped to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of customers switching their energy... View Details

March 2018
Article

In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions

By: Eva Ascarza, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost and Rom Schrift

In today’s turbulent business environment, customer retention presents a significant challenge for many service companies. Academics have generated a large body of research that addresses part of that challenge—with a particular focus on predicting customer churn.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Retention; Churn; Customer Relationship Management; Measurement and Metrics

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2014
Case

Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant Group

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Weiku Wu and Jia Guo

Since the establishment of the first Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant in Beijing in 1996, Wang Gang and his wife Liang Di have opened more than 100 chain restaurants in China and foreign countries, and set up the group headquarters, logistics center, R&D center and central... View Details

Keywords: Internationalization; Management; Standardization; Strategy; Restaurants; China; China

July – August 2010
Article

Are You Ignoring Trends That Could Shake Up Your Business?

By: Elie Ofek and Luc Wathieu

Virtually all managers in consumer businesses recognize major social, economic, and technological trends. But many do not consider the profound ways in which trends--especially those that seem unrelated to their core markets--influence consumers' aspirations,... View Details

Keywords: Trends; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Product Development

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The willingness to connect with an external network is key in an environment where products and services are themselves increasingly inter-connected. We see trends in this direction for a variety of reasons, either because uses of multiple products are complementary... View Details

June 2023
Case

Investing in the Climate Transition at Neuberger Berman

By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta

By mid-2023, Neuberger Berman (NB), an active asset manager, had grown its assets under management to about half a trillion dollars and took pride in its client centricity and innovative spirit. Responding to client demand for investment products that integrated... View Details

Web

Historical Data & Sources - Business History

Extension University, 1924), map no. 6. Tata Group International Businesses Tata Consultancy Services Taj Group Tata International Tata Motors Tata Steel Tata Global Beverages Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu, “House of Tata: Acquiring a... View Details

09 Dec 2019
Research & Ideas

Identify Great Customers from Their First Purchase

Using information collected during a customer’s first purchase, a new marketing tool that leverages machine learning technology can provide firms with valuable predictions about the customer’s future behavior, says Eva Ascarza, a marketing researcher and associate... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Service; Service

11 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The High Risks of Short-Term Management

Companies that manage for short-term gain rather than long-term growth have been blamed for everything from popularizing celebrity CEOs to causing a significant chunk of the current financial crisis. Now new research findings suggest that short-termism might have... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

D. Quinn Mills

Daniel Quinn Mills provides thought leadership in several fields including leadership, strategy, venture capital, finance, economics and geopolitics. He has been a director of publicly-listed firms and is currently a director of several closely-held private... View Details

Keywords: professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services; professional services

June 2020
Case

RBC: Transforming Transformation (A)

By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Aldo Sesia

In 2017, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), a Canadian financial icon, mandated a swat team of “enablers of collaboration” (their job description) to support the personal and commercial bank in the enterprise-wide RBC Cultural Transformation initiative. Historically,... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Information Technology; Transformation; Change Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Decision Making; Human Resources; Management Systems; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Management Teams; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Canada

07 Jun 2016
First Look

June 7, 2016

likelihood of meeting or beating analyst expectations. Collectively the results shed light on the effect of increased ownership concentration on tax avoidance. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51123 June 2016 View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2009
Chapter

Nonlinear Pricing

By: Raghuram Iyengar and Sunil Gupta

A nonlinear pricing schedule refers to any pricing structure where the total charges payable by customers are not proportional to the quantity of their consumed services. We begin the chapter with a discussion of the broad applicability of nonlinear pricing schemes. We... View Details

Keywords: Price; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Monopoly; Service Operations; Research