Publications

The New Rules for Bringing Innovations to Market, Harvard Business Review, March 2004

It's tough to get consumers to adopt innovations--and it's getting tougher all the time. That's because more and more markets are taking on the characteristics of networks. The interconnections among today's companies are so plentiful that often a... View Details

13 Jan 2023
Blog Post

Video: Introduction to the Harvard MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences

in this program, which go through the design fundamentals and the process of launching a new high-tech venture. And it covers the whole process from the initial need discovery process, through developing the idea, fleshing out the product... View Details

Research Summary

How Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Economic Growth? Exploring the Effects of Financial Markets on Linkages (with Areendam Chanda, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and Selin Sayek)

By: Laura Alfaro

The empirical literature finds mixed evidence on the existence of positive productivity externalities in the host country generated by foreign multinational companies. We propose a novel mechanism, which emphasizes the role of local financial markets in enabling... View Details

July 2015
Case

Uncharted Play (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Ali Huberlie

The case recounts the process of launching an early stage venture, from idea conception through initial efforts to validate the concept, followed by product launch, and fund raising. It emphasizes the Customer Value Proposition of the business model, and asks – Who is... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage; Female Protagonist; Value Proposition; Team Building; Founders' Agreements; Start-up; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Business Startups; Sports; United States; North America; Nigeria; Africa

03 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Transforming Manufacturing Waste into Profit

It's been said that "one man's trash is another man's treasure." HBS Assistant Professor Deishin Lee, however, has taken that old adage a step further in her recent working paper Turning Waste into By-Product by showing how it's possible for companies to turn... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

1 Mar 2013 - 2 Mar 2013
Conference Presentation

The Value of Flexibility in Baseball Roster Construction

By: Timothy Chan and Douglas S. Fearing

Drawing inspiration from the theory of production flexibility in manufacturing networks, we provide the first optimization-based analysis of the value of positional flexibility (the ability of a player to play multiple positions) for a major league baseball team in the... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Design; Production; Resource Allocation; Groups and Teams; Adaptation; Sports

January 2015
Case

The Blonde Salad

By: Anat Keinan, Kristina Maslauskaite, Sandrine Crener and Vincent Dessain

In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni... View Details

January 2024
Case

Sprouts Farmers Market

By: Rajiv Lal, Forest L. Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred

Sprouts Farmers Markets (Sprouts) is a Phoenix, Arizona-based chain of 400-plus natural foods stores in 23 U.S. states and $6.4 billion in sales as of 2022. In its product assortment, brand image, and store environment, Sprouts emphasizes freshness, health, innovation,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Strategic Planning; Sales; Business Strategy; Expansion; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Competition; Retail Industry; United States; Arizona

December 1988 (Revised March 1989)
Case

Pabst Brewing Co.

At the end of 1984 the Pabst Brewing Co. was the object of a takeover contest for the second time in three years. Nearly two years after a reorganization in early 1983 Pabst still suffered from low margins and high debt service costs. This case describes the takeover... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Restructuring; Bids and Bidding; Acquisition; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

2024
Working Paper

Patent Hunters

By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Katie Moon and Paula Suh

Analyzing millions of patents granted by the USPTO between 1976 and 2020, we find a pattern where specific patents only rise to prominence after considerable time has passed. Amongst these late-blooming influential patents, we show that there are key players (patent... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Product Launch; Product; Innovation and Invention

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August 2008 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Concha y Toro

By: Rohit Deshpande, Gustavo A. Herrero and Ezequiel Reficco

Chile's largest wine producer faces a price versus value positioning problem. Its highest quality wines are not priced competitively at retail because "Made in Chile" connotes great value and low price. View Details

Keywords: Price; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Value; Food and Beverage Industry; Chile

Trading Volume Manipulation and Competition Among Centralized Crypto Exchanges

How competition affects manipulation by firms of information about important attributes of their products and how such information manipulation impacts firms’ short-term and long-term performance are open empirical questions. We use a setting that is especially... View Details

Research Summary

Global Supply Chains: The Looming “Great Reallocation”

By: Laura Alfaro

Global supply chains have come under unprecedented stress as a result of US-China trade tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and geopolitical shocks. We document shifts in the pattern of US participation in global value chains over the last four decades, in terms of... View Details

Research Summary

Do Prices Determine Vertical Integration?*

By: Laura Alfaro

What is the relationship between product prices and vertical integration? While the literature has focused on how integration affects prices, this paper provides evidence that prices can affect integration. Many theories in organizational economics and industrial... View Details

September 2014 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Sustainability at IKEA Group

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Michael W. Toffel, Vincent Dessain and Jerome Lenhardt

By 2014, IKEA Group was the largest home furnishing company, with EUR28.5 billion of sales, and planned to reach EUR50 billion by 2020, mainly from emerging markets. At the same time, IKEA Group had adopted in 2012 a new sustainability strategy that focused the... View Details

Keywords: Furnishing; Sustainability; Supply Chain; Wood; Customer Value and Value Chain; Supply Chain Management; Environmental Sustainability; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

31 Mar 2022
HBS Seminar

John Paul MacDuffie, Wharton

August 2012 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Elia Nuqul and the Making of a Middle Eastern Business Group (A)

By: Geoffrey Jones and Lana Ghanem

The case is concerned with Elia Nuqul, the founder of Jordanian-based Nuqul Brothers, a large diversified business group. It shows how Nuqul, a Christian Palestinian whose family was forced to flee to Jordan after the creation of Israel in 1948, built a business in his... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Entrepreneurship; Globalization; History; Government and Politics; Global Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Middle East