Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,203)
- Faculty Publications (78)
- April 2021
- Case
Codecademy: Where to Next?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman
In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with his Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for computer science literacy and... View Details
Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Business Model; Change Management; Venture Capital; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Teams; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Network Effects; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; United States
- March 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
ALDDN: Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria
By: Meg Rithmire and Debora L. Spar
In 2020, Ndidi Nwuneli, founder and CEO of Sahel Consulting in Nigeria, faced a thorny set of problems. Her firm partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a large project to develop the local dairy industry as a way to facilitate equitable growth and... View Details
- March 4, 2021
- Article
Are Your Managers in Sync with Your Change Strategy?
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Bill Theofilou
According to new research conducted by the authors, C-suite executives and upper management often don’t agree on how their organizations need to remake themselves for a post-COVID world. As a result, when CEOs and their teams begin implementing their plans, they are... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
ByteDance: TikTok and the Trials of Going Viral
By: William C. Kirby and John P. McHugh
In 2020, TikTok became the most valuable start-up ever. The short-form, video-sharing social media platform emerged as the crown jewel of the Chinese technology firm ByteDance, realizing 850 million monthly users and an estimated worth of $180 billion. However, a... View Details
Keywords: China; Technology; Startup; Start-up; International Strategy; Global Strategy And Leadership; Innovation; Political Risk; Regulations; Trump; Foreign Policy; Foreign Investment; Chinese Internet Market; Global Strategy; Crisis Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Entrepreneurship; Globalized Economies and Regions; Government Legislation; Innovation and Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Internet and the Web; Social Media; Technology Industry; China; United States
- November 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Roll-Ups and Surprise Billing: Collisions at the Intersection of Private Equity and Patient Care
By: Trevor Fetter and Kira Seiger
This case describes the increasing investment by private equity (PE) firms in patient care and other healthcare services. The case focuses on investments in physician staffing firms and roll-up strategy investments in physician practice management (PPM). Included in... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Change; Disruption; Fluctuation; Trends; Customers; Customer Value and Value Chain; Ethics; Fairness; Finance; Equity; Insurance; Private Equity; Geography; Geographic Scope; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Industry Structures; Ownership; Ownership Type; Private Ownership; Relationships; Agency Theory; Business and Community Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Networks; Strategy; Competition; Consolidation; Expansion; Integration; Horizontal Integration; Vertical Integration; Value; Value Creation; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; United States
- October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Investing at Pivotal Ventures
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Emily R. McComb and Eren Kuzucu
Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women... View Details
- Article
Sustainability, Business, and Health
By: George Serafeim, Amanda M. Rischbieth and Howard K. Koh
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has demonstrated that response demands involvement from every sector of society. As a major example, some businesses have stepped up in ways previously unimaginable. Garment companies have repurposed production to face... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Wachtell Lipton: Focused Excellence
By: Ashish Nanda and Margaret Cross
For years, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz—a small, New York City law firm—has consistently boasted the highest profits per partner and one of the highest “prestige” ratings among U.S.-based law firms. The firm has remained loyal to a distinctive strategy ever since its... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Bill Connors and The Farm, a Comcast NBCUniversal Innovation Hub (Powered by Boomtown)
By: Linda A. Hill and Eric Mankin
In 2017, Bill Connors, the President of Comcast’s Central Division, launched a startup accelerator in Comcast’s new Atlanta Regional headquarters. Comcast was America's largest cable and internet service provider, having built a profitable business bundling television... View Details
- 2019
- Chapter
Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona
N.S.B. Gras, the father of business history in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier... View Details
- March 2019
- Article
The New Silk Road: Implications for Higher Education in China and the West?
By: William C. Kirby and Marijk C. van der Wende
Recent geopolitical events, such as Brexit and the retreat from multilateral trade and cooperation by the USA, have created waves of uncertainty, especially in the field of higher education, regarding international cooperation. Meanwhile, China is publicly seeking to... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Rural Taobao: Alibaba's Expansion into Rural E-Commerce
By: Tarun Khanna, Ryan Allen, Adam Frost and Wesley Koo
Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China’s remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed “1.0” and “2.0,” Alibaba had partnered with local businesses... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Business Growth; Ecommerce; Corporate Social Responsibility; Business And Government; Emerging Market; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Emerging Markets; Rural Scope; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Decision Making; E-commerce; China
- August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Chateau Winery (A): Unsupervised Learning
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
This case follows Bill Booth, marketing manager of a regional wine distributor, as he applies unsupervised learning on data about his customers’ purchases to better understand their preferences. Specifically, he uses the K-means clustering technique to identify groups... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi
In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details
- June 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Renegotiating NAFTA
By: Laura Alfaro, Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason and Sarah Jeong
January 1, 2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Twenty-five years after the landmark trade pact was signed by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, considerable debate surrounded it. Trade and trade agreements were a... View Details
- Article
Administrative Costs Associated with Physician Billing and Insurance-Related Activities at an Academic Health Care System
By: Phillip Tseng, Robert S. Kaplan, Barak D. Richman, Mahek A. Shah and Kevin A. Schulman
The federal government mandated adoption of certified electronic health record systems (EHR), at least in part, to reduce administrative costs for physicians. This study used time-driven activity-based costing to determine the administrative costs associated with... View Details
- January–February 2018
- Article
More than a Paycheck: How to Create Good Blue-Collar Jobs in the Knowledge Economy
By: Dennis Campbell, John Case and Bill Fotsch
Fifty years ago a good blue-collar job was with a large manufacturer such as General Motors or Goodyear. Often unionized, it paid well, offered benefits, and was secure. But manufacturing employment has steadily declined, from about 25% of the U.S. labor force in 1970... View Details
- Article
The IT Transformation Health Care Needs
By: Nikhil R. Sahni, Robert S. Huckman, Anuraag Chigurupati and David M. Cutler
In recent years, health care organizations have made sizable investments in information technology. They’ve used their IT systems to replace paper records with electronic ones and to improve billing processes, thereby boosting revenue. But so far, IT has been of little... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona
N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier... View Details
- August 2017 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
The Oakland Athletics: Strategy & Metrics for a Budget
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
This case considers Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane’s data driven and, in baseball circles unconventional, approach to winning games over the duration of the long Major League Baseball season. Beane’s critical approach to crafting strategy within his... View Details