management focus - Publications - Faculty & Research

September 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Supplement

Keroche (D): Transforming the Core Business

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding

This case describes Keroche co-founder Tabitha Karanja’s decision to exit the wine business following the Kenyan government’s 2007 increase in excise taxes on wine. In August 2007, Keroche introduced the vodka drink Viena Ice as a replacement for its fortified wines,... View Details

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September 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Supplement

Keroche (C): The Excise Tax Increase

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding

This case discusses the Kenyan government’s decision to increase excise taxes on wines in 2007. The tax increase would cause an average increase in price of 367% on Keroche’s fortified wines. Meanwhile, Keroche’s competitor EABL had effectively lobbied the government... View Details

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30 Nov 2017
News

Happy Meals (Are Here Again)

means there was a complaint—about the food, about the service, some negative thing that had escalated to the point that a manager had been called on to straighten things out. Or at least, that’s what it used to mean. In fall 2016,... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; photographed by Saverio Truglia

20 Feb 2006
HBS Case

Oprah: A Case Study Comes Alive

excitement generated by the public source case made Koehn's team even more committed to filling in the gaps with personal feedback from Harpo management and, ideally, from Winfrey herself. Finally, events began to move very fast. The... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Media & Broadcasting; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation

16 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

The Times Captures History of American Business

with us and explained more about the drivers of The Story of American Business and the book's implications for managers and leaders. Martha Lagace: Please give us a bit of backstory to this project. Nancy F. Koehn: The New York Times... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Journalism & News

01 Jun 2016
News

How Do We Win the Cyberwar?

language, it wouldn’t focus on hosting Mountain Dew–fueled, all-night hackathons, she says. “That’s not appealing to everybody. But if you say, ‘Let’s try to find innovative solutions to bringing lights to rural villages,’ and it happens... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; illustrations by Victo Ngai

01 Dec 2015
News

Golden State of Mind

him are heroes, plain and simple, because they have the capacity to change the world for the better. “Tim recognizes the difficulty of effecting change, and the need to celebrate the people who do that work,” says Jennifer Fonstad (MBA 1997), a View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

01 Dec 2008
News

A Force for Good

Management and HBS. They stood on the Weeks Footbridge and, on the spot, decided on Harvard. Despite his obvious talents, life at HBS wasn’t necessarily easy for the young Canadian student. He arrived in class the first day wearing a... View Details

Keywords: Jeffrey L. Cruikshank; Construction of Buildings; Construction; Monetary Authorities-Central Bank; Finance; Hospitals; Health, Social Assistance; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information; Wood Product Manufacturing; Manufacturing; Rail Transportation; Transportation

30 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 30

practices of their portfolio firms. Prior research documents that PE firms create economic value in portfolio firms through effective governance, financial, and operational engineering. Given PE firms' focus on value creation, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

A Message from Dean Srikant Datar | About

After having an appointment at Carnegie Mellon University and having taught back at Stanford, I came to HBS in 1996. My intellectual interests evolved in what many would say are pretty surprising ways, from a focus on governance and... View Details

15 Jun 2018
News

Skydeck Live: The Science of a Meaningful Life

up, and Susan is going to disagree with him because there's like something weird going on there, and then I'm going to jump in and win the meeting as they're fighting with each other. This act of building more robust stories in our heads, it tends to allow us to pay... View Details

27 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes

each of these indices of safety and performance, they were exemplars of the company's efforts to create a new kind of offshore operating environment. Our discussions with senior managers led us to believe that organizational features of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

01 Mar 2009
News

Model Patient

serious illness and its attendant financial insecurity could one day focus instead on a brighter, healthier future. A Cornell graduate who holds an MBA from Boston College, Rhenisch was for years well employed and enjoyed excellent... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Health, Social Assistance

01 Sep 2022
News

Your Family, Your Work, Your Way

with some of firms’ highest-achieving employees often ended with questions about how to manage the demands of parenting and work. Much of the information she found was long on platitudes and short on practical, actionable advice—so she... View Details

10 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Celebrating 'The Men and Women of the Corporation' 40 Years Later

Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Because ideas move the world, and I wanted to move the world. I have a PhD in sociology, with a focus on social psychology and organizational behavior. Being a thought leader is a form of leadership, and I'm... View Details

Keywords: by Robin J. Ely

01 Dec 2016
News

Vive la Madeleine!

of the company, training on new equipment and executing recipes with a focus on local, fresh ingredients and luxury flavors ranging from Tahitian vanilla to rose raspberry to yuzu, all masterminded by pastry chef and consultant Philippe... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; illustrations by Natalya Balnova

20 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

US Competitiveness at Risk

sequencing and a sustained effort, you don't make progress. Our single-issue focus lately works against us. There's also a tremendous mismatch between the time horizons of politics and of competitiveness. Most things that matter for... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael E. Porter & Jan W. Rivkin

13 Sep 2019
News

Hollywood Ending

lighthouse shows sit at the top of the company’s content pyramid. In the middle section, with budgets closer to $50,000 a minute, Quibi is building a tier of unscripted material—reality and game shows, documentaries, and the like—with a View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; photo by Christina Gandolfo

17 Jun 2020
Blog Post

Black MBA Students Pen Letters to the HBS Community: Letter 2/5

focus on what they are doing completely avoids exploring the why. The hopelessness and desperation that one must have to walk through a broken glass window, risking their lives and freedom in an already intensified moment, to get some... View Details

13 Feb 2020
News

Not Throwing Away My Shot

equal is the law of the land. So those are the constraints in this entrepreneur's life. He's the grandson of a slave, son of a teamster. And we don't know much about his early life, but sometime by the middle 1890s he's managed to find... View Details

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