Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(8,149)
- Faculty Publications (2,211)
- August 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Luckin Coffee (A): Caffeine-fueled Growth?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the founding of Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee in 2017 and its path to surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China (by number of stores) in 2019. Unlike Starbucks stores, which were designed to be welcoming “third places” for... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Earnings; Cost; Cost Management; Financial Statements; Financial Condition; Financial Management; Stocks; Profit; Revenue; Price; Food; Business History; Employment; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; China
- August 2020
- Article
Strategies for Managing the Privacy Landscape
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
Firms use consumer personal information to improve their products and services. Personal information is open to misuse, however, and when exploited for undesired or unexpected purposes reduces consumer’s trust in the firm and their willingness to provide personal... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Workplace Knowledge Flows
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside... View Details
- July 2020
- Technical Note
Digital Natives Growing Without a Sales Force
By: Das Narayandas, Michael Norris and Amram Migdal
This brief case describes the rise of so-called digital natives (also called born-in-digital) in the 2000s and 2010s that successfully grew without a sales force. The case highlights the emergence of business-to-business Internet and cloud-based companies and their... View Details
Keywords: Government Administration; Crisis Management; Health; Health Pandemics; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Information Technology; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Information Technology Industry; Australia; North and Central America; United States; Illinois; Chicago; California; San Francisco
- July 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Gera Developments: Leadership at a Crossroads
By: Christina R. Wing and John Masko
For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for urban Indian families. Over the 2010s,... View Details
Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Construction; Geographic Location; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Housing; Leadership Style; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Urban Development; Customization and Personalization; Real Estate Industry; Maharashtra; India; United States
- July 2020
- Case
Michael Solomonov: Jerusalem in a Bowl
By: Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht and Katherine Connolly Baden
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook had begun to wonder whether it might be time to rethink their opportunistic approach to the expansion of their small restaurant empire in Philadelphia, CooknSolo. The pandemic, however, caused an... View Details
Keywords: Restaurant Industry; Entrepreneur; COVID-19; Crisis; Crisis Response Plans; Entrepreneurship; Food; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Creativity; Strategy; Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Situation or Environment; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- July 15, 2020
- Article
How to Get People to Actually Use Contact-Tracing Apps
By: Chiara Farronato, Marco Iansiti, Marcin Bartosiak, Stefano Denicolai, Luca Ferretti and Roberto Fontana
The broad adoption of contact-tracing apps would greatly help combat the spread of COVID-19. But a number of barriers—especially privacy concerns—have hindered progress in many countries that can’t or won’t mandate adoption. A solution is to start with small... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Intra-firm Geographic Mobility: Value Creation Mechanisms and Future Research Directions
This paper argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The paper presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value... View Details
- Summer 2020
- Article
Venture Capital's Role in Financing Innovation: What We Know and How Much We Still Need to Learn
By: Josh Lerner and Ramana Nanda
Venture capital is associated with some of the most high-growth and influential firms in the world. Academics and practitioners have effectively articulated the strengths of the venture model. At the same time, venture capital financing also has real limitations in its... View Details
- June 30, 2020
- Article
Bipartisan Tax-Free Solution to Health Care Financing: Coupling HRAs With a Public Option
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Richard Boxer and James Wallace
A combination of health insurance initiatives by the presumptive 2020 Democratic and Republican presidential nominees could expand health care coverage and significantly reduce costs, without raising taxes. Along the way, the combination could revitalize private... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe? (Abridged)
By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble
This is an abridged version of “MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?” HBS Case No. 416-004. Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Service Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- June 2020
- Background Note
Customer Management Dynamics and Cohort Analysis
By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
The digital revolution has allowed companies to amass considerable amounts of data on their customers. Using this information to generate actionable insights is fast becoming a critical skill that firms must master if they wish to effectively compete and win in today’s... View Details
- June 2020
- Article
Lazy Prices
By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Quoc Nguyen
We explore the implications of a subtle "default" choice that firms make in their regular reporting practices, namely that firms typically repeat what they most recently reported. Using the complete history of regular quarterly and annual filings by U.S. corporations... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Why Do User Communities Matter for Strategy?
By: Sonali K. Shah and Frank Nagle
In this essay, we explore how strategic management research and practice could benefit from considering the benefits and challenges obtainable through working with user communities. User communities represent a unique organizing structure for the exchange of ideas and... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Iterative Coordination and Innovation
By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu
Agile management practices from the software industry continue to transform the way organizations innovate across industries, yet they remain understudied in the organizations literature. We investigate the widespread Agile practice of iterative coordination: frequent... View Details
- May 2020
- Case
M-Lab: Enabling Innovation at Mitsubishi Corporation
By: Krishna Palepu and Allison M. Ciechanover
M-Lab’s founding goals were to infuse an innovation mindset into Mitsubishi Corporation; to catalyze new business opportunities; and to enable a dialogue between Japanese business and Silicon Valley. M-Lab housed representatives from each of Mitsubishi Corporation’s... View Details
- May 2020
- Teaching Note
Talismark
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 211-097. Talismark negotiated waste hauling contracts for small and medium size companies. Its owners, Charles Muszynski and Marshall Staiman, were able to grow the business by more than 30% per year since it was founded, but believed... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
MassChallenge
The case explores the strategic decision of global non-profit startup accelerator MassChallenge on whether to pursue a for-profit spinoff, discussing: (1) the costs and benefits of this decision, (2) how best to manage the risks of the decision, and (3) alternative... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Anchors Aweigh: Analysis of Anchor Limited Partner Investors in Impact Investment Funds
By: Shawn A. Cole, T. Robert Zochowski, Fanele Mashwama and Heather McPherson
This note describes results from a survey of “anchor investors” in impact funds. Anchor investors
are described as “generally the first investor to make a substantial capital commitment to a fund,”
(according to the Global Impact Investing Network, “GIIN”) and their... View Details
- May 2020
- Teaching Note
Edward Jones: Implementing the Solutions Approach
By: David J. Collis
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 719-411.Updates the classic Edward Jones strategy case as the firm shifts to a new "Solutions" business model from its previous "product" model in response to changes in the brokerage industry, technology and demographics, and its own... View Details