Year Up - Publications - Faculty & Research

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

Instead, when the company wouldn’t pay them for their lunch hour, they intentionally scheduled deliveries to show up midday, when there wasn’t anyone working to receive them, sabotaging the project. “Top management have to be willing to... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

06 Feb 2012
Research & Ideas

Kodak: A Parable of American Competitiveness

line and realized that all the significant pieces used to make Kodak's digital cameras—lens, shutters, electronic screen displays—were manufactured far from the factory floor in Rochester, New York, largely because American companies had ceded much of the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Manufacturing

06 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Updating a Classic: Writing a Great Business Plan

about access to capital. Many great ventures in the Internet era (pre-1999) ended up failing because they assumed they would have continued access to cheap capital. Many of those businesses failed, though the underlying idea was sensible.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

03 May 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, 1880-1930

Keywords: by Latika Chaudhary, Aldo Musacchio, Steven Nafziger & Se Yan

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

Citation

Educators

Purchase

18 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 18, 2009

School Case 809-009 To help her finance her aggressive expansion plans, Genevieve Thiers plans to raise venture capital for the first time. She has spent the last six long years building Sittercity into the nation's leading babysitting... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

03 May 2024
Research & Ideas

How Much Does Proximity Influence Startup Innovation? 20 Meters' Worth to Be Exact

COVID-19 pandemic. Four years after the pandemic sent workplaces into lockdown, organizations continue to weigh the benefits of collaboration from time together against the focus gained remotely. “The reality today is, we are unlikely to... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

Few companies in the past few years have rocketed to success faster than Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy, which together have transformed the way we hail a cab, plan a vacation, and shop for handmade gifts, respectively. In a previous HBS Working... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

11 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas and Research, July 11

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52838 July–August 2017 Harvard Business Review Stop the Meeting Madness: How to Free Up Time for Meaningful Work By: Perlow, Leslie, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Eunice Eun Abstract—Many... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Apr 2024
In Practice

Why Progress on Immigration Might Soften Labor Pains

for skilled and unskilled labor. Either way, immigration will be a critical issue during the US election season. The carefully negotiated bipartisan bill that failed in the House of Representatives earlier this year highlights the thorny... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

07 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 7, 2017

justice and national liberation, a fateful step in light of the transformation of the world wrought by decolonization. As capitalism stumbles through yet another global crisis today, what parts of Lenin’s fevered vision remain relevant 100 View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

18 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Central Banks Missed Inflation Red Flags. This Pricing Model Could Help.

model, which assume firms change prices at fixed intervals or with a constant probability. However, these frameworks are unable to keep up with the rapid increase in pricing decisions triggered by large shocks like the pandemic, says... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services; Banking

10 May 2021
Research & Ideas

Who Has Potential? For Many White Men, It’s Often Other White Men

workplace equality. The partners took a hard look at the firm’s internal culture, and what they discovered was a roadblock to equity that trips up many companies: When challenging assignments for important clients cropped up, the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

15 Aug 2023
HBS Case

(Virtual) Reality Check: How Long Before We Live in the 'Metaverse'?

virtual-reality future yet to materialize as hoped by its biggest proponents. Chief among its backers: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who two years ago went so far as to change his social media company’s name to Meta and vowed to spend... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Technology; Computer; Information Technology

02 Jan 2024
What Do You Think?

Do Boomerang CEOs Get a Bad Rap?

boomerang CEO? Other competitors in the industry? Other organizations in general? Performance expectations? Critics of the notion of bringing back a former CEO can back up their arguments with a large-scale research study by a team led by... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Feb 2020
Book

Open Your Organization to Honest Conversations

they tend to remain silent, fearful that speaking up could put their careers at risk. “A CEO might be trying to execute this corporate strategy and everybody in the organization knows it’s off the rails, but no one wants to be the bearer... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

27 Jan 2009
First Look

First Look: January 27, 2009

innovations that allow local sectors to catch up with frontier technology. In poor countries, catching up requires the cooperation of a foreign investor who is familiar with the frontier technology and a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

24 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

How Kayak Users Built a New Industry

with users. This makes sense when you think about it—users are the direct beneficiaries of better products. And it's users' willingness to pay for better products that makes innovation profitable for firms. I became interested in user innovation about three View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Entertainment & Recreation

17 Jan 2024
HBS Case

Psychological Pricing Tactics to Fight the Inflation Blues

Many consumers recovering from the worst inflation in 40 years continue to closely watch their spending—they want to know that every expense is worth it. Now companies must confront a major challenge: gauging how much, if any, of their... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Consumer Products; Retail

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

decision-making” as one of the most critical success factors in the digital era, judgment—an analog skill—is still required. Digitally mature companies have employees up and down the hierarchy who can look at data critically, knowing that... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

Publications