Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(9,119)
- Faculty Publications (4,199)
- January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
OhmConnect: Energizing the Future
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details
Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe
- January 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Digital Transformation at Tata Steel
By: Krishna Palepu, Das Narayandas, Radhika Kak and Rachna Tahilyani
T.V. Narendran, CEO of Tata Steel, India’s oldest steel manufacturing firm, had taken concrete business and cultural transformation steps to future-ready the firm since taking over in 2013. He had deleveraged and instilled financial discipline, acquired new businesses,... View Details
- January 2023
- Supplement
Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)
By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details
Keywords: Iphone; Encryption; Data Privacy; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Globalized Firms and Management; Government and Politics; Health; Health Pandemics; Leadership; Markets; Safety; Social Issues; Information Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States; Europe
- January 2023 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Veeva Systems and the Transformation to a Public Benefit Corporation
By: Ranjay Gulati and Allison M. Ciechanover
Peter Gassner, the co-founder and CEO of Veeva Systems, steered the company through rapid scaling from its launch in 2007 to 2022. Year after year, the company had exceeded expectations, with its market capitalization reaching $50 billion at its peak. By 2022, the... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Proday: Calling the Right Play
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that... View Details
- January 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Teaching Note
Perfect Diary (完美日记)
By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-030. View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Thomas Buberl: Refounding AXA
By: Hubert Joly, Mihir Desai and Amram Migdal
In 2022, AXA and its CEO Thomas Buberl faced new types of challenges, including systemic risks such as climate change, geopolitical instability, public health crises, and social tensions caused by economic risks. AXA was one of the world’s largest insurers. Since... View Details
Keywords: Change; Change Management; Transformation; Transition; Trends; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Insurance; Management; Management Succession; Risk Management; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Planning; Strategic Planning; Risk and Uncertainty; Society; Human Needs; Social Issues; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Insurance Industry; Europe; France; Paris
- January–February 2023
- Article
Data-Driven COVID-19 Vaccine Development for Janssen
By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Michael Lingzhi Li, Xinggang Liu, Jennings Xu and Najat Khan
The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred extensive vaccine research worldwide. One crucial part of vaccine development is the phase III clinical trial that assesses the vaccine for safety and efficacy in the prevention of COVID-19. In this work, we enumerate the first... View Details
- December 2022 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
Sword Health
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Annelena Lobb and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Virgilio “V” Bento, CEO of Sword Health—a startup that provided virtual physical therapy to patients in self-insured firms via AI and sensor technology with supervision by a physical therapist with a doctorate—considered how to increase its U.S. market share. To do so,... View Details
- December 2022 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
Applegate Farms
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
Keywords: Agribusiness; Food; Consumer Behavior; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Brands and Branding; Integration; Strategy; Change Management; Change; Organizational Structure; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States
- December 2022
- Case
Taylor Farms: Adding Value to Fresh Produce
By: José B. Alvarez, Forest L. Reinhardt, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Pedro Levindo
In October 2022, Bruce Taylor (HBS MBA, 1981), Chairman and CEO of Taylor Farms, the leading producer of salads and healthy fresh foods in the United States, wondered whether this was the right time for Taylor Farms to venture into the Controlled Environment... View Details
- Working Paper
Diversification as an Adaptive Learning Process: An Empirical Study of General-Purpose and Market-Specific Technological Know-How in New Market Entry
By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Gary P. Pisano
An enduring trait of modern corporations is their propensity to diversify into multiple lines of business. Penrosian theories conceptualize diversification as a strategy to exploit a firm’s fungible, yet “untradeable,” resources and point to redeployment of... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Institutional Emplacement and the Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Ryann Noe
This study reveals how actors leverage physical place as an asset to facilitate organizational
adaptation and industry evolution. Through a longitudinal, qualitative analysis of the U.S.
independent bookselling industry from 1995 to 2019, we outline how dispersed... View Details
- December 2022
- Case
The Magic of Marks & Spencer Food
By: David E. Bell, Natalie Kindred and Damien McLoughlin
- December 2022
- Case
Mission Produce in 2022
By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
Founded by CEO Steve Barnard in 1983, California-based Mission Produce was a leading supplier of Hass avocados with a global sourcing, marketing, and distribution network and $892 million in 2021 sales. Barnard had been influential in the global avocado trade’s... View Details
- December 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Daniel Defense: Responding to the Shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
At 11:33am on May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old man from Uvalde, Texas walked into the Robb Elementary School carrying a semi-automatic "AR-15-style” rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense and killed 19 children and two adults. Three days later, Representative Carolyn Maloney... View Details
Keywords: Gun Violence; Gun Policy; Second Amendment; Legal Liability; Government Legislation; Marketing Strategy; Business or Company Management; Product Marketing; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Moral Sensibility; Crime and Corruption; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Manufacturing Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States
- December 2022 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Iberdrola: Leading the Energy Revolution
By: Juan Alcácer and Emer Moloney
At the end of 2019, Ignacio Galán, the Chairman and CEO of the world's third largest utility, Iberdrola, reflected on his almost 20 years at the company. He managed a portfolio of three very different businesses, each with their own specific opportunities and... View Details
Keywords: Energy; Energy Generation; Energy Sources; Non-Renewable Energy; Renewable Energy; Engineering; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Timing; Industry Growth; Mission and Purpose; Strategy; Energy Industry; Energy Industry; Energy Industry; Energy Industry; Energy Industry; Spain; United Kingdom; United States; Brazil; Mexico
- December 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Cann: High Hopes for Cannabis Infused Beverages
By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne V. Wilson
Founded in 2018 by Jake Bullock and Luke Anderson, Cann sold “social tonics,” or cannabis-infused beverages. By 2022, the company had several notable celebrity investors and talent partners, had sold over 10 million beverages to consumers, was distributing in six... View Details
Keywords: Stigma; Product Innovation; Product Introduction; Product Differentiation; New Products; New Product Marketing; New Product Management; Brand Management; Branding; Packaging; Positioning; Growth Strategy And Execution; Growth; Cannabis Industry; Purpose; Purpose Brands; LGBTQ; Direct-to-consumer; DTC; Regulations; Channels Of Distribution; Product Development; Product Marketing; Product Positioning; Product; Innovation and Invention; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Channels; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Digital Marketing; Market Entry and Exit; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Canada; North America
- December 7, 2022
- Article
Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash
By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers
In the past year, crypto markets dropped from $2.9 trillion in value to around $800 billion. In the wake of the collapse, crypto lenders and exchanges have been accused of fraud and other wrongdoing. What went wrong? One factor is competition. In theory, competition... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty: Evidence from Variable Annuities
By: Mark Egan, Shan Ge and Johnny Tang
We examine the variable annuity market to study conflicts of interest and the effect of fiduciary duty in brokerage markets. Insurers typically pay brokers higher commissions for selling more expensive annuities. Our results indicate that sales are four times as... View Details