Publications

December 2004 (Revised October 2005)
Case

Innovation Corrupted: The Rise and Fall of Enron (A)

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Presents a brief historical overview of Enron's rise, its strategic successes and failures, the evolution of its business model, and the organizational processes relied upon by Enron's management to drive and monitor the business. A rewritten version of an earlier... View Details

Keywords: Adaptation; Success; Business Model; Business History; Growth Management; Governance Controls; Innovation and Management; Failure; Business Processes; Energy Industry; United States

08 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Who Is the Chief Sustainability Officer?

that if you do things strategically, you can create significant value for the firm. The CSO is in the best position to change this perception, but he needs to have the data and the tight business case to communicate that." CSOs... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Manufacturing

03 Jan 2017
First Look

January 3, 2017

Winter 2017 MIT Sloan Management Review Why Big Data Isn't Enough By: Chai, Sen, and Willy C. Shih Abstract—There is a growing belief that sophisticated algorithms can explore huge databases and find... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Sustainable Development & Socially Responsible Investing: ABB in 2000

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Several investment firms and mutual funds position themselves as providers or facilitators of opportunities for socially responsible investment. This case addresses the impact of these firms on publicly traded companies. Focuses on managers at ABB, a large... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Business Strategy; Capital Markets; Management Teams; Business and Community Relations; Trade; Electronics Industry; Switzerland

March 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Governing OpenAI (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan and Will Hurwitz

In late November 2023, OpenAI’s new board of directors took stock of the situation. The company, which sought to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computer systems with capabilities exceeding human abilities—was looking to regain its footing after a chaotic... View Details

Keywords: Diversified

April 2018 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Shanda Family Office

By: Christopher Malloy, Lauren Cohen and Essie Alamsyah

Tianqiao Chen, founder and CEO of Shanda Group, has set up his family office in the U.S. in 2016 after exiting from Shanda's Internet games business in China in 2014, again pioneering an unconventional approach to the management of a family office. View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Management; Strategy; Investment; Goals and Objectives; China; United States

10 Dec 2013
First Look

First Look: December 10

a comprehensive approach to understanding the drivers of firm location choices by modeling not only the impact of location and firm heterogeneity, but also the strategic interaction among firms. August 2013 Harvard Business Review How... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Aug 2010
News

H-P Board Sued on Hurd Exit

September 1988 (Revised September 1993)
Case

Mrs. Fields Cookies

By: James I. Cash Jr.

Mrs. Fields Cookies is a small company selling freshly baked goods through privately owned specialty stores (each store sells only Mrs. Fields products). The company has about 8,000 employees worldwide and less than 150 information systems people for a unique leverage... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Information Management; Organizational Structure; Customer Relationship Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Networks; Internet and the Web; Food and Beverage Industry; Information Technology Industry

23 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Corporate Sustainability Reporting: It’s Effective

sample of 42 others that didn't. The researchers focused on several measures that capture socially responsible management practices including the social responsibility of business leaders, sustainable... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

29 Apr 2014
News

4 Components Required to Sustain Innovation

14 Mar 2020
News

U.S. Economic Outlook Under Coronavirus Hinges on Layoff Decisions

19 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Inexperienced Investors and Market Bubbles

joining a bubble. In the recent paper, "Inexperienced Investors and Bubbles," Harvard Business School's Robin Greenwood and Stanford's Stefan Nagel compared the returns of young and older mutual fund View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

09 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Cultural Disharmony Undermines Workplace Creativity

assuming all members of the team are pulling in the same direction. But what if they aren't? Can being exposed to intercultural conflicts and tensions have an impact even on observers who are not directly involved in these disharmonies? Harvard View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

May 2018
Article

Nowcasting Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

By: Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca

Data from digital platforms have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification and enable new measures of how neighborhoods change in close to real time. Combining data on businesses from Yelp with data on gentrification from the Census, Federal Housing... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting Models; Simulation Methods; Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, And Changes; Geographic Location; Local Range; Transition; Analytics and Data Science; Measurement and Metrics; Economic Growth; Forecasting and Prediction

Find at Harvard

13 Nov 2014
News

Going Against the Flow: Michelle Zatlyn, Cofounder of CloudFlare

January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

LOLA: Do You Know What's in Your Tampon?

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia

LOLA is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. What started as a company to provide women with organic and transparent material-labeled tampons via a subscription model, had, by 2019 evolved to include additional menstrual and sexual wellness products.... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Channels; Disruption; Business Model; Brands and Branding; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Retail Industry; United States; Canada

June 2021
Teaching Note

Amazon: Cult or Culture?

By: Boris Groysberg, Kerry Herman and Amy Klopfenstein

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 421-008. Amazon was one of the first entrants in e-commerce. Under the leadership of founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon had expanded beyond books to manufacturing and selling a wide range of products and services globally. Bezos had built a... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Organizational Culture; Growth Management; Information Technology; Human Resources; Talent and Talent Management; Retail Industry; Technology Industry