Publications

September 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Burunda Prince at The Farm, a Comcast NBCUniversal Innovation Hub (Powered by Boomtown)

By: Linda A. Hill, Eric Mankin and Emily Tedards

After a successful inaugural year, Burunda Prince, the Managing Director of Comcast’s startup business accelerator The Farm, was getting ready for an eventful 2019. Comcast was America's largest cable and internet service provider, having built a profitable business... View Details

2014
Teaching Note

Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant Group (TN)

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; China; Restaurants; China

January 2013 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Chef Davide Oldani and Ristorante D'O

By: Gary Pisano, Alessandro Di Fiore, Elena Corsi and Elisa Farri

This case examines the unique business model of Ristorante D'O, a high end gourmand restaurant located near Milan, Italy. Founded by Chef Davide Oldani, D'O offers meals at approximately one-third the price of other Michelin starred restaurants. Oldani has made this... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Expansion; Creativity; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Milan

April 2009
Case

Invest Early: Early Childhood Development in a Rural Community

By: Stacey M. Childress and Geoff Eckman Marietta

Invest Early was an early childhood development partnership in rural northern Minnesota between 14 different organizations, which worked together through an advisory board, governing board, and leadership team in order to deliver coordinated early childhood services to... View Details

Keywords: Early Childhood Education; Rural Scope; Management Teams; Managerial Roles; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Community Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Social and Collaborative Networks

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January 2008 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Glass Egg Digital Media

Glass Egg is an outsource games development firm in Vietnam. They are able to offer brand-name publishers-Microsoft EA, Atari-significant cost savings in the development of art assets for their video games. However, the firm's management find themselves at a point at... View Details

Keywords: Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Product Development; Organizational Structure; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

April 2004 (Revised November 2004)
Background Note

Why Complex Systems Fail

Operationally excellent organizations create competitive opportunities for themselves that are not available to their peers. One view of the manager's competitive dilemma is to pick the right position for his organization, differentiating it, for example, as a... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Complexity

21 Aug 2018
News

The Business Shelf: Driving Digital Strategy

Eaton Corp.: Portfolio Transformation and the Cost of Capital

In 2000, Eaton Corporation was broadly diversified industrial conglomerate. But its strategy was evolving and its focus was narrowing around “power management” and more recently on “intelligent power,” the use of digitally enabled products and services designed... View Details

09 Oct 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Where the Cloud Rests: The Economic Geography of Data Centers

Keywords: by Shane Greenstein and Tommy Pan Fang

Profile

Brandon Lovell

internship – in which Brandon fulfilled IT service functions – proved to be a powerful step forward. But when Brandon's ambitions grew beyond "fixing computers to wanting to be a management consultant, I found some resistance; I was... View Details

Keywords: Financial Services; Financial Services

16 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Getting the Message: How the Internet is Changing Advertising

expert who has studied advertising for forty years, believes the future of Internet advertising depends on improvements in technology. "We won't really understand the full potential of Internet advertising until broadband service... View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

06 Aug 2021
Book

Steve Jobs and the Rise of the Celebrity CEO

and services inextricably linked to bosses with outsized personalities. Think Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Elon Musk of Tesla. All these leaders have one thing in common: charisma—and in fact, today it’s a quality that... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

July 2023
Case

HealthVerity: Real World Data and Evidence

By: Satish Tadikonda

Andrew Kress (CEO and founder) and his team had built a promising marketplace business at HealthVerity serving its core market in healthcare, with a focus on pharmaceutical R&D and services. Thus far, HealthVerity’s products had been unique to the pharma and pharma... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Product Marketing

August 2021
Case

Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare

By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria

When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Industry; Scaling; Telehealth; Health Care and Treatment; Small Business; Internet and the Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; Growth and Development Strategy; Opportunities; Mergers and Acquisitions; Health Industry

March 2020
Article

Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work-family Narrative as a Social Defense Against 24/7 Work Culture

By: Irene Padavic, Robin J. Ely and Erin M. Reid

It is widely accepted that the conflict between women’s family obligations and professional jobs’ long hours lies at the heart of their stalled advancement. Yet research suggests that this “work-family narrative” is incomplete: men also experience it and nevertheless... View Details

Keywords: 24/7 Work Culture; Hegemonic Narrative; Social Defense; Work-family Conflict; Systems-psychodynamic Theory; Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Organizational Culture

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2017
Working Paper

Inventory Management for Mobile Money Agents in the Developing World

By: Karthik Balasubramanian, David F. Drake and Douglas Fearing

Mobile money systems, platforms built and managed by mobile network operators to allow money to be stored as digital currency, have burgeoned in the developing world as a mechanism to transfer money electronically. Mobile money agents exchange cash for electronic value... View Details

Keywords: Currency; Mobile Technology; Market Platforms; Developing Countries and Economies

SSRN

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Organizational psychologists have long held that monitoring workers saps them of their autonomy and thereby reduces their effectiveness. Yet technology has intensified such surveillance in recent years: Managers now track everything from clinicians’ handwashing to... View Details

March 2009 (Revised October 2009)
Case

CalPERS' Emerging Equity Markets Principles

By: Robert G. Eccles and Aldo Sesia

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CaIPERS)—the largest public pension fund in the U.S.—had adopted a new principles-based approach to investing in emerging market equities in November 2007. Previously, CalPERS internal and external money managers were... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Investment Return; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Emerging Markets; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Value; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; China; California

June 2014
Supplement

Chung and Dasgupta: Information for Jordan Ramirez

By: Ian Larkin and Karen Huang

The "Promotion Process at Chung and Dasgupta, LLP" set of cases explores the roles of general and firm-specific human capital in employee performance measurement, feedback, and promotion/compensation decisions. In the cases, a leading law firm must decide whether to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Appraisal; Performance Measurement; Employee Feedback; Motivation; Promotions; Human Capital; Performance Evaluation; Management Systems; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Legal Services Industry; United States; Massachusetts