Publications

September 2018
Article

Assembling the Sales Team

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Data and analytical tasks have lengthened productivity ramp-up times in many sales contexts, making each hire a bigger sunk cost for a longer time. Most companies adopt two common practices: They hire on the basis of “experience” and/or look at their best reps and try... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Selection and Staffing

October 2024
Background Note

Outsourcing Primer

By: Willy C. Shih

This note provides some background on one of the key resource allocation decisions managers make as they develop and produce products and services: what should they do with the walls of their own firm, and what they should depend upon suppliers or contractors to... View Details

Keywords: Outsourcing; Offshoring And Outsourcing; Manufacturing Industry; United States; Asia

August 2024
Article

The Labor Market Effects of Loan Guarantee Programs

By: Jean-Noël Barrot, Thorsten Martin, Julien Sauvagnat and Boris Vallée

We investigate the labor market effects of a loan guarantee program targeting French SMEs during the financial crisis. Exploiting differences in regional treatment intensity in a border discontinuity design, we uncover a central trade-off for such interventions. While... View Details

Keywords: Labor; Financial Crisis; Policy; France

Profile

Tiffany Pham

learning, for change. After graduating from Yale and Harvard Business School, I knew that I had to get into the industry that had impacted me as a young woman, so I could ultimately use media to impact other... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Entertainment / Media; Technology

03 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Transforming Manufacturing Waste into Profit

It's been said that "one man's trash is another man's treasure." HBS Assistant Professor Deishin Lee, however, has taken that old adage a step further in her recent working paper Turning Waste into By-Product by showing how it's possible for companies to turn... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

01 Apr 2020
News

Facebook May Be Hit Harder Than You Think by COVID-19

January 2021
Case

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

Nien-hê Hsieh is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration in the General Management Unit at Harvard Business School. His research and teaching aims at helping business leaders and organizations determine and deliver on their responsibilities. He... View Details

September 2018
Article

Knowledge Integrators and the Survival of Manufacturing Clusters

By: Giulio Buciuni and Gary P. Pisano

Over the past two decades, the greater prevalence of global supply chains has had contrasting effects on Western manufacturing clusters. While some of them dwindled, others proved resilient. Contributing to the recent literature on co-located clusters and clusters'... View Details

Keywords: Production; Industry Clusters; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Strategy; Competition

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04 Mar 2013
Working Paper Summaries

The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field

Keywords: by Timothy Gubler, Ian Larkin & Lamar Pierce; Service

November 1998 (Revised November 2001)
Case

BMW AG: The Digital Car Project (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how the German automotive firm BMW is trying to reduce its development time by half with the aid of computer-aided technologies. To leverage these technologies fully in the very competitive automotive industry, BMW is faced with the challenge of changing its... View Details

Keywords: Change; Competency and Skills; Management; Time Management; Product Positioning; Product Development; Business Processes; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Technology; Auto Industry

1998
Working Paper

CEO Incentives and Firm Size

By: Brian Hall and George P. Baker

What determines CEO incentives? A confusion exists among both academics and practitioners about how to measure the strength of CEO incentives, and how to reconcile the enormous differences in pay sensitivities between executives in large and small firms. We show that... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Size; Management Systems

Read Now

Asim Ijaz Khwaja is the Director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-founder of the View Details

14 Sep 2023
Blog Post

MBAs Accelerate Their Social Enterprise Ventures

pivot into venture capital and impact investing to ensure that communities like mine – Black, queer, and disabled – have access to capital to build products and services that include us by design. However,... View Details

22 Apr 2019
HBS Seminar

Francesca Rossi, AI Ethics Global Leader, IBM

2013
Chapter

The Global and the Local in the Beauty Industry: A Historical Perspective

By: G. Jones

This chapter explores the impact of the global beauty industry on beauty ideals. It shows that as the industry internationalized from the late nineteenth century, there was a homogenization of beauty ideals and practices around the world. Western and white beauty... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Globalization; History; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Asia; Europe; Latin America; Middle East; North and Central America; South America

September 2019
Technical Note

Care Economy in the U.S. (Primer)

By: Joseph B. Fuller, William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman and Carl Kreitzberg

This case describes how caregiving responsibilities influence American employees, firms, and the broader economy. It details how sociodemographic trends in the late 20th century transformed the way that Americans balance their personal and professional lives, analyzing... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Talent and Talent Management; Demographics; Labor; Health Care and Treatment; Family and Family Relationships; Strategy; Management; United States

November 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Investor Relations at TOTAL

By: Gregory S. Miller, Vincent Marie Dessain and Anders Sjoman

Examines investor relations and financial communications in a large company with a diverse group of financial stakeholders. Total is an "energy major" based in Paris, France. The importance of its product and its impact on economies and environments combine with the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Business and Shareholder Relations; Communication Strategy; Paris