Strategy For Multi-business Firm - Publications - Faculty & Research

January 2025
Case

Apax Partners: Deciding Whether to Bid for Trader Corp.

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer

Apax Partners’ investment committee was scheduled to meet on March 21, 2011, to decide whether to invest in Trader Corporation, a Canadian classified advertising business for used automobiles with both print (magazines) and digital (website) distribution. What made... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

April 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Techint: Strategic Choices for Community Impact

By: Lauren Cohen, Virak Prum, Kenneth Charman, Pedro Levindo and Mariana Cal

In early 2024 Erika Bienek, Chief Community Relations Officer at Techint, had to decide whether to invest in a new company-owned and operated technical school in Veracruz, Mexico, or invest instead in strengthening the city’s public education system. Techint, a global... View Details

Keywords: Technical Institutes; Community Relations; Social Impact; Argentina; Mexico; Brazil; Conglomerate; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Community Impact; Philanthropy; Business Conglomerates; Business Subsidiaries; Business Headquarters; Family Business; Decision Making; Private Sector; Public Sector; Education; Curriculum and Courses; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Teaching; Training; Learning; Energy; Engineering; Construction; Values and Beliefs; Geography; Global Range; Local Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Recruitment; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge; Resource Allocation; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Creativity; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Construction Industry; Education Industry; Energy Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Europe; Italy; Latin America; North and Central America; Mexico; North America; United States; South America; Argentina; Buenos Aires; Brazil

Citation

Educators

Research Summary

Clinical Trials as a setting for Health Policy and Management Research

The clinical trial marketplace is in flux. A decade ago, pharmaceutical firms almost exclusively conducted the study of their novel drug compounds within major academic medical centers. But today, industry-sponsored clinical trials are increasingly using community... View Details

16 Aug 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

HBS Introduces Marketing Analysis Tools for Managers

purchasing life. The CLV formula incorporates metrics that capture the outputs of three key customer strategies that firms employ: asset acquisition (attracting new customers to the firm); asset maximization... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

November 2022
Article

A Language-Based Method for Assessing Symbolic Boundary Maintenance between Social Groups

By: Anjali M. Bhatt, Amir Goldberg and Sameer B. Srivastava

When the social boundaries between groups are breached, the tendency for people to erect and maintain symbolic boundaries intensifies. Drawing on extant perspectives on boundary maintenance, we distinguish between two strategies that people pursue in maintaining... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Machine Learning; Natural Language Processing; Symbolic Boundaries; Organizations; Boundaries; Social Psychology; Interpersonal Communication; Organizational Culture

Citation

Find at Harvard

Purchase

08 Apr 2015
What Do You Think?

Are Technology Companies Ripe for Disruption?

competitors locked into a product development strategy calling for growth through product obsolescence and more and more largely unused but expensive bells and whistles. We're told that the typical user of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Computer; Technology

November 2007
Article

A Model of Consumer Learning for Service Quality and Usage

By: Raghuram Iyengar, Asim Ansari and Sunil Gupta

In many services, e.g., the wireless service industry, consumers choose a service plan based on their expected consumption. In such situations, consumers experience two forms of uncertainty. First, consumers may be uncertain about the quality of their service provider... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Customer Value and Value Chain; Learning; Price; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Service Delivery; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Service Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

Read Now

15 Nov 2021
News

Research: Customers Will Reward Companies for Smaller Gender Pay Gaps

01 Sep 2008
News

Is Market Capitalism Headed for Trouble?

appropriate to try to understand what major problems might lie ahead for market capitalism. By market capitalism we mean a system where decisions about what to produce and at what price are made by private View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

01 Mar 2010
News

Rx for Too Big to Fail

taxpayers on the hook when things went bad. The upshot is that the nation’s largest financial institutions now live in a “heads I win, tails you lose” world of moral hazard. No wonder calls to end too big to fail have hit a fever pitch. At present, there are two... View Details

Keywords: David Moss; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Finance; Administration of Economic Programs; Government

August 1997 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Unilever's Butter-Beater: Innovation for Global Diversity

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Jorg Zobel

Unilever, one of the world's largest food product manufacturers, has achieved impressive growth in Europe, primarily by acquiring local food companies. Initially Unilever allowed each acquired company to manage its own product development in a way that was tailored to... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Mergers and Acquisitions; Local Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Marketing Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Innovation and Management; Food; Conflict Management; Food and Beverage Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Europe

Citation

Educators

Purchase

06 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

The Best Place for Retirement Funds

and Harold Zhang, set out to derive rules for optimal asset location behavior for investors with these individually managed retirement accounts. Two results came out of this work: First, the optimal View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

29 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

For Entrepreneurs, Blown Deadlines Can Crush Big Ideas

for a startup founder, according to research by Andy Wu, assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at HBS, and HBS doctoral candidate Aticus Peterson. “As entrepreneurs gain experience, they get worse at... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

24 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Five Questions for Debora L. Spar

innovation work? A: There are many. Recent decisions against Napster and other file-sharing firms, for example, confirm that property means are by no means dead online. On the contrary, both citizens and View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

07 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Market Investors Pay More for Resilient Companies

The steep market drop in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis is being used as a laboratory to study the importance of companies investing in stakeholder relations with their employees, suppliers, and customers, and how those investments could be strategic resources... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Financial Services

May 1995 (Revised September 1997)
Case

Internationalizing the Cola Wars (A): The Battle for China and Asian Markets

By: David B. Yoffie

Analyzes the strategies pursued by Coke and Pepsi in the emerging Asian soft drink market. Analyzes the tactical battle of the cola giants in China specifically. View Details

Keywords: Trade; Emerging Markets; Corporate Strategy; Competition; Globalized Firms and Management; Food and Beverage Industry; China; Asia

Citation

Educators

Purchase

July 2012 (Revised April 2014)
Case

Research In Motion: The Mobile OS Platform War

By: Alan MacCormack, Brian Dunn and Chris F. Kemerer

The case describes competition in the market for smart phones in the US, and the position of one player, Research In Motion (RIM) who manufacture the popular Blackberry line of products. Early in 2011, RIM is in trouble. Its stock price has plummeted, amidst poor... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Product Development; Technology Strategy; Platform Strategy; Software; Hardware; Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Digital Platforms; Applications and Software; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry; Canada; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

18 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Your Best Employees Are Burning Out: A Framework for Retaining Talent

Burnout, retention, and renewed labor organization are critical challenges for leaders, especially amid COVID-19 and a looming recession. Leaders must ask themselves: What is it about my organization’s culture that is contributing to such... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and MaShon Wilson

July 2017 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Upwork: Creating the Human Cloud

By: Dylan Minor and David Yoffie

Stephane Kasriel, the new CEO of Upwork, the leading platform for freelance labor, needs to decide on how to redesign its business model. While the firm has been growing rapidly since the merger of Odesk and eLance, the newly combined firm continues to face problems of... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Platform; Platform Businesses; Technology; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Labor

Citation

Educators

Purchase