Publications

June 2004 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Zara: IT for Fast Fashion

In 2003, Zara's CIO must decide whether to upgrade the retailer's IT infrastructure and capabilities. At the time of the case, the company relies on an out-of-date operating system for its store terminals and has no full-time network in place across stores. Despite... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customer Value and Value Chain; Information Management; Infrastructure; Supply Chain Management; Information Technology; Retail Industry

Web

The Intersection of Public Relations and Photography | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture , 1884–1929 . “Businesses, especially manufacturing and communications industries at the forefront of both labor activism and welfare capitalism, responded... View Details

05 Feb 2019
News

The First Five Years: Karan Shah (MBA 2016)

further acquisitions to take PCL to the next level! With the ever-changing industry that we operate in, I look forward to the new challenges along this journey.” Can you tell us about MAYU and what motivated you and your wife to launch... View Details

30 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 30

innovative activity across borders and to allow U.S. multinationals to form new affiliates abroad without the support of local joint venture partners. Thus, this paper points out that immigration can enhance the competitiveness of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Sep 2023
News

End Game

Illustration by James Steinberg In the 1960s and 1970s, as the environmental movement dawned in the United States, a new generation of activist-minded entrepreneurs appeared. Among them were companies like Body Shop, Aveda, Tom’s of Maine, and Whole Foods—all founded... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

17 Jun 2015
Lessons from the Classroom

Excellence Comes From Saying No

through a new course for MBA students, Why You Should Care: Creating the Conditions for Excellence, co-taught with Senior Lecturer and venture capital guru Amy Schulman. Together, they created a course... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

27 Oct 2015
News

Sweet Success

spent much of his post-HBS career in energy finance, corporate finance, and public and private equity investment. In 2001, he cofounded ArcLight Capital Partners, LLC, a private equity firm focused on the North American energy sector,... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg

Web

Get Involved - Entrepreneurship

Venture Competition to receive early written feedback from investors and entrepreneurs in related industry sectors on their ideas. Reviewers are matched to one or more (if desired) participants and provide... View Details

27 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

The Dynamics of Standing Still: Firestone Tire & Rubber and the Radial Revolution

independent. "Firestone's historical excellence and disastrous response to global competition and technological innovation," writes Sull, "posed a paradox for industry observers: Why had the industry's best managed company... View Details

Keywords: by Donald N. Sull; Manufacturing; Transportation

December 2023
Case

Raízen: Helping to Decarbonize the World?

By: Gunnar Trumbull, Pedro Levindo, Daniel Tong and Rafaella Mazza

Raízen, the world’s largest sugar and ethanol producer, strived to find ways to expand the second-generation ethanol (E2G) market, which it pioneered. The company planned to invest R$24 billion (around $4.6 billion) in 20 production plants, with a total capacity to... View Details

Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Renewable Energy; Environmental Sustainability; Production; Expansion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Energy Industry; Brazil; Europe; North America; United States; Argentina; Paraguay

2022
Working Paper

An Anatomy of Performance Monitoring

By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo

Performance monitoring is a mainstay management tool in most organizations. Yet we still know little about whether—and why—better monitoring yields better performance in practice. To shed light on these questions, we study the introduction of a performance monitoring... View Details

Keywords: Performance Monitoring; Worker Skills; Skill Depreciation; Managerial Inattention; On-the-job Training; Productivity; Multitasking; Quick Serve Restaurants; Performance Evaluation; Employees; Competency and Skills; Training; Performance Productivity; Management; Information Technology; Food and Beverage Industry; Puerto Rico

Read Now

October 2009 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture

By: Frances X. Frei, Robin J. Ely and Laura Winig

On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its board of directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Choices and Conditions; Governing and Advisory Boards; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry

July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Pattern Brands

By: Sunil Gupta, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley

In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies—such as inability to scale and... View Details

April 2015 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Transformation of NCR

By: David Collis, Raffaella Sadun and Matthew Shaffer

During his tenure as CEO since 2005, Bill Nuti had moved NCR Corporation (originally National Cash Register) from its historical competence in hardware to become a provider of hardware and software for managing transactions across a range of industries and payments... View Details

Keywords: NCR; Hardware; Software; Acquisitions; Financial Services; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Transformation; Acquisition; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

2018
Working Paper

Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit

By: Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca

We study the impact of the minimum wage on firm exit in the restaurant industry, exploiting recent changes in the minimum wage at the city level. We find that the impact of the minimum wage depends on whether a restaurant was already close to the margin of exit.... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Business Exit or Shutdown; Food and Beverage Industry

SSRN

Read Now

Web

Technology & Operations Management Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Winner of the 2021 Ralph Gomory Best Industry Studies Paper Award from the Industry Studies Association for "Technological Leadership (de)Concentration: Causes in Information and Communication Technology... View Details

Web

ICIC - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

Promote a dynamic urban marketplace powered by diversity, creative enterprise, and untapped competitive advantages Determine the industry clusters with the highest market opportunity for inner city business growth and job creation Teach... View Details

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea – helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details