Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,344)
- Faculty Publications (623)
- September 2009 (Revised August 2011)
- Case
Root Capital
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee
Founded in 1999, Root Capital had loaned $150 million to nearly 250 small and growing businesses, mainly in Latin America. In 2009, as the organization launched a five-year, $55 million capital campaign, it had to determine a strategic path going forward in keeping... View Details
- September 2009 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
VIZIO, Inc.
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Elizabeth A. Kind
William Wang, CEO of VIZIO, Inc., was proud of his company's success in providing affordable flat screen TVs. Since its founding in 2002, VIZIO had grown to over $2 billion in revenue and was one of the top three flat panel TV brands, along with Samsung and Sony. Faced... View Details
- August 2009 (Revised August 2010)
- Case
Calera Corporation
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Thomas J. Steenburgh and Lauren Barley
Brent Constantz, founder, CEO, and president of Calera Corporation, felt a surge of optimism as he gazed at the recently commissioned prototype flue gas processing line at Calera's R&D facility in Moss Landing, California. It was late May 2009, and Calera was an... View Details
- 2009
- Book
High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage
By: Michael Beer
Integrating knowledge from strategic management, performance management, and organization design, strategic human resource expert and Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer outlines what the high-commitment, high-performance organization looks like and provides... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Self-regulatory Institutions for Solving Environmental Problems: Perspectives and Contributions from the Management Literature
By: Andrew A. King and Michael W. Toffel
Scholars of management have long considered how institutions can help resolve market imperfections and thereby improve human welfare. Most previous research has emphasized the use of for-profit firms. Such institutions cannot effectively address many environmental... View Details
- July 2009 (Revised January 2014)
- Case
Sustainability at Millipore
By: Michael W. Toffel and Katharine Lee
This case describes Millipore Corporation's approach to becoming a more environmentally sustainable company. As he prepared for his quarterly meeting with the CEO, the Director of Sustainability needed to develop positions on several issues. Tactically, he needed to... View Details
- July – August 2009
- Article
Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance
By: Sebastian Raisch, Julian Birkinshaw, Gilbert Probst and Michael Tushman
Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a new research paradigm in organization theory, yet several issues that are fundamental to this debate remain controversial. We explore four central tensions here: Should organizations achieve ambidexterity through... View Details
- June 2009 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
Cirque du Soleil -- The High-Wire Act of Building Sustainable Partnerships
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Maxime Aucoin
The case describes the history and business model of Cirque du Soleil (CdS). The case allows for a rich discussion and analysis of Cirque du Soleil's business model with an emphasis on how it interacts with that of MGM Mirage. Le Cirque and MGM's business models... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Principles that Matter: Sustaining Software Innovation from the Client to the Web
By: Marco Iansiti
Economic analysis often reviews the role of principles—such as respect for intellectual property rights—in driving innovation. Given the interdependent nature of innovation in information technology, three core principles have emerged that work together to ensure that... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
- Case
Linden Lab: Crossing the Chasm
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
In early 2008, managers at Linden Lab, creator of the virtual world Second Life, faced decisions about the company's growth strategy. Despite profound initial skepticism about demand for a user-generated virtual world that was not a traditional game, Second Life had... View Details
- April 2009
- Journal Article
Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma
By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter
For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
The Guardian: Transition to the Online World
By: David J. Collis, Peter W. Olson and Mary Furey
The Guardian had been an early innovator in online newspapers and had not only become the leading U.K. newspaper web site, but was making strides with audiences outside of the U.K. However, The Guardian had been losing money since 2000, and, in spite of the relative... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised April 2011)
- Supplement
Mistry Architects (C)
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Robert G. Eccles and Mona Sinha
This case is a follow-up to "Mistry Architects: Innovating for Sustainability (A)" (Case 609-044) and (B) (Case 609-064). In Case (A) Sharukh and Renu Mistry founded and run an architectural firm dedicated to being both client-oriented and environmentally responsible.... View Details
- February 5, 2009
- Comment
In Praise of Marketing
By: John A. Quelch
Many dismiss marketing as manipulative, deceptive, and intrusive. Marketing, they argue, focuses too much of our attention on material consumption. More recently, Benjamin Barber, in his 2007 book Consumed, claims that marketing is "sucking up the air from every other... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Consumer Loyalty; Local Vs. Global Branding; Multi-national Brands; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Globalized Economies and Regions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning
- January 2009
- Case
Marks and Spencer: Plan A
By: David E. Bell, Nitin Sanghavi and Laura Winig
Marks & Spencer initiated a comprehensive approach to sustainability (reduction of waste, carbon emissions, fair trade) called Plan A. Does it offer a competitive advantage? View Details
- December 2008 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
Arcadia Biosciences: Seeds of Change
By: Arthur A. Daemmrich, Forest L. Reinhardt and Mary Louise Shelman
Arcadia Biosciences is an entrepreneurial California agricultural biotech company seeking to earn carbon credits by modifying commodity crops for use in China and India. Eric Rey, Arcadia's CEO, faced a strategic inflection point in early September 2008. The company... View Details
- 2008
- Book
On Competition
By: M. E. Porter
Competition is one of society's most powerful forces for making things better in many fields of human endeavor. The study of competition and the creation of value, in their full richness, have preoccupied me for several decades. Competition is pervasive, whether it... View Details
- November 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
South Pole Carbon Asset Management-Going for Gold?
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Jost Hamschmidt and Mikell Hyman
In late 2008, Christoph Sutter, CEO of South Pole Carbon Asset Management, reflects on his firm's early success at originating carbon credits in developing nations and selling them to governments and firms that seek to offset their greenhouse gas emissions voluntarily... View Details
- October 2008 (Revised October 2009)
- Case
Shaklee Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility
By: Christopher Marquis, V. Kasturi Rangan and Alison Comings
Having bought Shaklee Corporation from Yamanouchi, Roger Barnett, its owner and CEO, wrestled with the question of how to grow the company and its reputation for environmental sustainability. In addition to preserving the "network marketing" nature of its sales channel... View Details
- October 2008
- Article
Organizational Responses to Environmental Demands: Opening the Black Box
By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
This paper combines new and old institutionalism to explain differences in organizational strategies. We propose that differences in the influence of corporate departments lead their facilities to prioritize different external pressures and thus adopt different... View Details