Publications

12 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 12

their portfolio of brands. Results show firms shifting display promotions away from smaller revenue brands toward larger ones following periods of poor financial performance. This indicates the behavior is determined by parties above... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2010
Working Paper

Competing Complements

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Barry Nalebuff and David B. Yoffie

In Cournot's model of complements, the producers of A and B are both monopolists. This paper extends Cournot's model to allow for competition between complements on one side of the market. Consider two complements, A and B, where the A + B bundle is valuable only when... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Revenue; Monopoly; Game Theory; Competition

Read Now

Web

Entrepreneurial Management - Faculty & Research

longtime workers will balk at learning these new skills and end up quitting, causing the company to lose hundreds of years of cumulative experience. The CEO is now unsure of how to proceed. August 2025 Article Revenue Collapses and the... View Details

May 2017
Case

Promontory, Inc.

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Handlin

Promontory, Inc. is a small, privately owned firm in the promotional products (specialty advertising) industry. After starting the firm two years ago with the intention of pursuing a high-quality/high-price strategy, the CEO is seeking methods of increasing sales... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Marketing Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Business Model; Sales; Advertising Industry

May 2012
Course Overview Note

Managing Stakeholders with Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Christopher Marquis and Laura Velez Villa

This note articulates the ways in which strong stakeholder-company relationships developed through corporate social responsibility initiatives and other types of social strategies deliver bottom line benefits. The analysis follows stakeholder logic models connecting... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Social Responsibility; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Philanthropy; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Revenue

21 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

How Major League Baseball Clubs Have Commercialized Their Investment in Japanese Top Stars

Keywords: by Isao Okada & Stephen A. Greyser; Sports

December 2010 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Growing Pains at Stroz Friedberg

By: David A. Garvin and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In late spring 2009, Stroz Friedberg co-presidents Edward Stroz and Eric Friedberg had to set growth targets for 2010. The leading global consulting firm they had built specialized in managing digital risk and uncovering digital evidence and had grown very rapidly.... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Change Management; Transition; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Consulting Industry

February 2005 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Phase Zero: Introducing New Services at IDEO (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Laura Feldman

Focuses on whether world-renowned product design firm IDEO's new customer service fits with the firm's strategic position and organization capabilities. Over the course of IDEO's 13-year history, an increasing share of revenues are a result of "Phase 0"... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Service Operations; Product Design; Infrastructure; Customer Focus and Relationships; Innovation and Invention; Service Industry; Boston; United States

May 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Edward B. Berk and Nate Schwalb

In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to small telecom... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Cryptocurrency; Initial Coin Offering; ICO; Business Startups; Finance; Currency; Strategy; Decision Making; United States

June 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Supplement

CFM International (B): LEAPing Into the Future

By: Ranjay Gulati, Yves Doz and Kerry Herman

By 2017, after a long and highly successful run, the joint venture CFM’s and its parent firms’ leadership faces new challenges and must once again reconsider their commitment to the JV. CFM’s engines have come to dominate the narrow body aircraft market, but technology... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Strategy; Decision Making; Technological Innovation; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Manufacturing Industry

September 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Hitachi Rail Limited (A)

By: David J. Collis, Akiko Kanno and Nobuo Sato

Hitachi must decide whether to make a British executive, who has successfully built its European rail business from scratch, head of its global rail division even though the bulk of revenues for the unit still come from Japan. The case describes the history of Hitachi... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Leadership; Values and Beliefs; Human Resources; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Rail Industry; Japan

December 2015 (Revised September 2016)
Supplement

ANA (B)

By: Doug J. Chung and Mayuka Yamazaki

All Nippon Airways (ANA) became the largest airline in Japan in 2013. Having been designated as a domestic carrier by the Japanese government till the mid-1980s and Japan being the sixth largest domestic airline market, two-thirds of ANA’s passenger revenue came from... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Analysis; Economics; Price; Marketing Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Product; Policy; Air Transportation Industry; Japan

October 2020
Case

LifeBank Nigeria

By: Brian Trelstad, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal

The aspiration of addressing maternal deaths in Nigeria, which were mostly caused by blood shortages, led Temie Giwa-Tubosun to found LifeBank in 2015. LifeBank developed an online platform that enabled hospitals to connect and purchase blood from local blood banks and... View Details

Keywords: Systems Design; Social Business; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Health Care; Blood; Social Enterprise; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Finance; Health Industry; Transportation Industry; Africa; Nigeria

Web

Accounting & Management - Faculty & Research

economic performance, Improve resource allocation and strategy implementation within their firms, and Build accountability for performance through effective external and internal governance. Unit research, course development, and teaching... View Details

16 Nov 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Data.gov: Matching Government Data with Rapid Innovation

"Second, to explore the organizational constraints and resistance to an open-data approach. All agencies will have issues, of course, about making data available, because historically they may have not. "Third, to probe issues of View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Technology

Web

Marketing - Faculty & Research

for the 2022 John D. C. Little Award. They study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Their empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s... View Details

November 2012
Case

Sugar Bowl

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Alisa Zalosh

Shelby Givens, a recent business school graduate, returned home to Raleigh, North Carolina, to help rescue her family's ailing and outdated bowling alley, Westlake Lanes. Although she cut costs and addressed inefficiencies, moving the business from near-bankruptcy to... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Operations; Performance; Business Strategy; Corporate Finance; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Raleigh

August 2024
Case

Quickmart: Sustaining Growth in a Challenging Economic Environment

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Kuria Kamau

In July 2023, Peter Kang’iri, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Quickmart, Kenya’s second-largest retail chain, sat in his Nairobi office reviewing the company’s first half financial results before the weekly executive committee (EXCO) meeting. The company was in... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Supply Chain; Logistics; Business Strategy; Expansion; Business Earnings; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategic Planning; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Africa; Kenya; Nairobi

June 2015
Supplement

Generating Higher Value at IBM (A): EPS Forecasting Model

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield

This case analyzes IBM's financial performance and its capital allocation decisions over a 10-year period from 2004-2013, during which IBM returned more than $140B to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. During this time, CEO Sam... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Share Repurchases; Earnings Guidance; Financial Statement Analysis; Financial Ratios; Payout Policy; Earnings Per Share (EPS); Earnings Management; Change Management; Leadership; Transformation; Financial Strategy