Publications

July 2018 (Revised January 2021)
Case

RunKeeper

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

The case examines the focus of an early stage company and how venture capital can distort a founder’s view. It encompasses issues such as financing, understanding the founders’ definition of success/failure, defining and pivoting a business model, and determining the... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage Funding; Pivot; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Business Model; Health Industry

01 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Immigrant Innovators: Job Stealers or Job Creators?

specifically for beneficiaries who have received advanced degrees in the United States.) "It's a lightning rod for a very heated debate," says William Kerr, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies how immigration affects... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology

February 1985 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Health Stop (A): What Type of Innovation Is It? And Six Factors Alignment

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Joyce Lallman, Nancy Kane, Jefferson C. Grahling and James Wallace

How can we evaluate if innovative health care ventures can do good—benefit society—and do well—become financially viable? This question is the topic of the first module in the Innovating In Health Care course book. This note and case series enables readers to conduct... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Strategy; Valuation; Health Industry; Retail Industry

24 Jan 2025
News

The Network Effect

Karan Mathur (left) and Dina Model (Illustration by Gisela Goppel) When Dina Model and Karan Mathur (both MBA 2015) met through mutual friends during their first year at HBS, neither was envisioning a future business deal. “We didn’t realize that we had shared... View Details

14 Oct 2014
First Look

First Look: October 14

Business School Case 615-009 American Airlines in 2011 (A) The "American Airlines in 2011" case set was developed to provide a setting for the comparative analysis of two very different business... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 24, 2006

Course MaterialsCellular Service Harvard Business School Case 707-424 Background on cellular service technology and "friends and family" plans as foundation for discussing network effects. Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2025
Supplement

Negotiating a Legacy at Sustainable Harvest (B)

By: Jillian Jordan, Julian Zlatev, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter

The specialty coffee importer Sustainable Harvest was the first certified B Corp in the coffee industry due to its investments in building coffee farmers’ capacity and livelihood. But in 2022, after coffee prices plummeted and the company’s bank declined to extend its... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Trust; Ethics; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Volatility; Futures and Commodity Futures; Social Enterprise; Valuation; Business Model; Credit; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Europe

30 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 30, 2007

Government in the Global Economy Author:Richard H. K. Vietor Publication:Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007 Abstract As the world globalizes, countries compete for the markets, technologies, and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Aug 2006
First Look

First Look: August 1, 2006

(and omitted) race as a key factor. We ask a critical question within this review: what do we know about the intersection of mentoring and race in organizations? Finally, we explore some of the unfinished business concerning race and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 8, 2008

from Dice-K in the 2007 season? And finally, how does the signing fit into the greater strategic context of competing with the much-better funded Yankees? Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

14 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 14, 2007

stimulates greater use for a given buyer). We find that higher prices screen out those who use the product less. The amount paid does not have a psychological effect on use, but there is some evidence that the act of paying increases use. We use our data to estimate an... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

06 Mar 2007
First Look

First Look: March 6, 2007

multi-sided business, its technology offering and early business model, its efforts to shift to a new model based on media distribution, and its chief competitors in that market space. Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

04 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 4

characterize the quality of governance. We propose that this methodology can produce the wrong answer unless one takes into account the different ways in which firms compete (that is, their business... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 2025
Case

Negotiating a Legacy at Sustainable Harvest (A)

By: Jillian Jordan, Julian Zlatev, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter

The specialty coffee importer Sustainable Harvest was the first certified B Corp in the coffee industry due to its investments in building coffee farmers’ capacity and livelihood. But in 2022, after coffee prices plummeted and the company’s bank declined to extend its... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Trust; Ethics; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Volatility; Futures and Commodity Futures; Social Enterprise; Valuation; Business Model; Credit; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Europe

January 2021
Supplement

Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California

14 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 14, 2010

leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine the business model to use for its new chemical-free cleaning technology. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative, environmentally... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2010
Article

Are You a High Potential?

By: Douglas A. Ready, Jay A. Conger and Linda A. Hill

Some employees are more talented than others, and nearly every company has its method for identifying their high-potential managers. So how can you get on your company's high-potential list? Douglas A. Ready, of the talent-management research center ICEDR; Jay A.... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employees; Leadership Development; Personal Development and Career; Personal Characteristics

Find at Harvard

25 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: July 25, 2017

global poverty; their target is to donate 10% of their profits, but as a new capital-intensive business they give 2% of their revenue. Their income streams are mainly direct-to-consumer sales along with corporate sales and a special... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March–April 2025
Article

Strategy in an Era of Abundant Expertise: How to Thrive When AI Makes Knowledge and Know-How Cheaper and Easier to Access

By: Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, John Corwin, Yang Li and Karim R. Lakhani

The AI era is in its early stages, and the technology is evolving extremely quickly. Providers are rapidly introducing AI "copilots," "bots," and "assistants" into applications to augment employees' workflows. Examples include GitHub Copilot for coding, ServiceNow... View Details

Keywords: AI; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Productivity; Experience and Expertise; Technology Adoption