Publications

Article

More-Experienced Entrepreneurs Have Bigger Deadline Problems

By: Andy Wu, Aticus Peterson and Amy Meeker

Professor Andy Wu and doctoral candidate Aticus Peterson of Harvard Business School tracked 314 entrepreneurs who launched multiple technology hardware products on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter from September 2010 to June 2019. The more projects the founders... View Details

Keywords: Deadlines; Entrepreneurship; Projects; Time Management

Register to Read

February 1996 (Revised September 1996)
Case

Chrysler Takeover Attempt, The

By: Richard S. Ruback and William DeWitt

On April 12, 1995, Kirk Kerkorian made an unsolicited offer to buy the outstanding shares of Chrysler Corp. This case analyzes the proposed deal and addresses the key contextual elements contributing to the takeover attempt. View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Negotiation Deal; Negotiation Offer; Acquisition; Financial Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States

This case analyzes the creation, loss, and attempted re-creation of competitive advantage. At one time, Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the most successful specialty retailers in the United States-it's growth and profit margins far exceeded rates at peer... View Details

November–December 2018
Article

Slack Time and Innovation

By: Ajay Agrawal, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb and Hong Luo

Traditional innovation models assume that new ideas are developed up to the point where the benefit of the marginal project is just equal to the cost. Because labor is a key input to innovation when the opportunity cost of time is lower, such as during school breaks or... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Slack Time; Innovation and Invention; Labor; Projects; Complexity; Value

02 Aug 2011
Working Paper Summaries

To Groupon or Not to Groupon: The Profitability of Deep Discounts

Keywords: by Benjamin Edelman, Sonia Jaffe & Scott Duke Kominers; Retail; Technology

February 2010 (Revised June 2022)
Case

Dollarama Inc.

By: Andre F. Perold

Dollarama is the leading operator of dollar stores in Canada. The firm performed extraordinarily well after a leveraged buyout in 2004 and recently executed a highly successful IPO. The company sources its goods primarily from Asia. It has strong brand recognition and... View Details

Keywords: Price; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Supply Chain; Competitive Advantage; Valuation; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Canada

2016
Book

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

The foremost authority on innovation and growth presents a path-breaking book every company needs to transform innovation from a game of chance to one in which they develop products and services that customers want to buy and are willing to purchase at a premium price.... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Consumer Behavior

08 Aug 2017
News

Great News For Everyone! Elon Musk Is Building A Hyperloop

September 1991 (Revised November 1997)
Case

Gillette's Launch of Sensor

By: Pankaj Ghemawat and Benjamin C. Esty

The introduction of the Sensor Shaving System, one of the biggest product launches ever, forced Gillette to reevaluate its strategy in its shaving and non-shaving business. It had to decide whether to go ahead with the launch and if so, at what scale. Permits analysis... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Business Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Measurement and Metrics; Consumer Products Industry

14 Oct 2016
News

How to Build an Exit Ramp for Trump Supporters

Person Page

A. Harbus Articles 2009-2010

EiR Interview - Jim Sharpe
View Details

February 1998 (Revised July 2003)
Case

ICEDELIGHTS

Three second-year students at the Harvard Business School decide to buy a company. The case focuses on their thoughts about an entrepreneurial career, their search process, and the evaluation of an Icedelights (an ice cream/cafe) franchise. This is a rewritten version... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Franchise Ownership

01 Jun 2011
News

A Lesson from Warren Buffet about Ethical Blind Spots

Research Summary

Advancing Leadership: Research and Teaching

By: Nitin Nohria

Despite the fact that most business schools' mission statement proclaim their commitment to developing leaders who can contribute in a meaningful way to the betterment of their organizations and society, research and teaching on leadership remains a fragmented and... View Details

24 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

With Millions of Workers Juggling Caregiving, Employers Need to Rethink Support

ordinary—a two-parent household with kids—or it could be something much more exotic—they have a chronically ill child or spouse. An apogee group is what we call the “sandwich generation,” where they’re caring for dependent children, from a newborn to a teenager, but... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

2017
Article

Self-Managing Organizations: Exploring the Limits of Less-Hierarchical Organizing

By: Michael Y. Lee and Amy C. Edmondson

Fascination with organizations that eschew the conventional managerial hierarchy and instead radically decentralize authority has been longstanding, albeit at the margins of scholarly and practitioner attention. Recently, however, organizational experiments in radical... View Details

Keywords: Self-Managed Organizations; Self-Managed Teams; Self-organizing Systems; Self-managing Organizations; Flat Organization; Decentralization; Organization Design; Non-hierarchical Organizations; Less-hierarchical Organizing; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Research

October 1998 (Revised May 1999)
Case

Commercial Financial Services, Inc.: Securitization of Charged-off Credit Card Receivables

By: Kenneth A. Froot and Ivan G. Farman

Commercial Financial Services (CFS) is a company that buys charged-off credit card receivables, securitizes them, and then attempts to collect on the receivables. The case deals with how the firm makes money and the limits of securitization as an efficient financing... View Details

Keywords: Financing; Asset-back Finance; Financial Policy; Securitization; Credit; Financial Strategy; Business Strategy; Policy; Financial Services Industry