Publications

May 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Cotopaxi: Managing Growth for Good

By: Andy Wu and Laura Huang

Cotopaxi, an innovative outdoor gear business targeting millennials, focuses on profit and social impact. This registered benefit corporation was formed by Davis Smith who coalesced his experiences as a Wharton MBA student along with professional knowledge from an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Venture; Benefit Corporation; B-Corp; Retail; Consumer Products; Apparel; Social Impact; Social Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Product Positioning; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry

October 1991 (Revised December 1993)
Case

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream, Inc.: Keeping the Mission(s) Alive

Ben & Jerry's is an anti-establishment, values-driven company that has become a successful venture. The dominant founder, Ben Cohen, is not an effective manager, but he brings creative marketing and product skills that have been important to the company's success. He... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Entrepreneurship; Compensation and Benefits; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

a same-day reply by phone or email. The rules aren’t mission statements, but rather a way to make learning experiences easier to adopt and follow. McDonald adds, “Even simple rules can outlive their usefulness.” 6. Make the new look... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

Decision Rights: Who Gives the Green Light?

extraordinarily difficult and controversial management task." And therein lies a big problem, because how effective an organization is at making high-quality decisions consistent with its mission and objectives, the experts note, is... View Details

Keywords: by Peter Jacobs

April 2021
Case

Etsy: Crafting a Turnaround to Save the Business and Its Soul

By: Ranjay Gulati, Luciana Silvestri and Monte Burke

Etsy, the online seller of handmade goods, was founded in 2005 on an almost utopian ideal—a responsible, caring company that offered individual crafters a place to sell their wares, a wholesome alternative to companies that sold mass-manufactured products. The company... View Details

Keywords: Turnaround; Organizational Culture; Financial Condition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mission and Purpose; Transformation; Leadership

20 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

Rocket-tunity: Can Private Firms Turn a Profit in Space?

to launch the first private mission to land on the moon, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission will use a lander to study the moon’s magnetic field. “One could imagine a trip like this becoming not... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Wallask; Aerospace; Tourism; Transportation

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

he was crazy to risk his reputation on something so novel. But he told himself, “It’s not about me.” It’s about the mission and the people and communities to be served. So he took the risk and is now getting ready to scale his model,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

04 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

How a Juicy Brand Came Back to Life

the Triarc team used. In most corporations, brand marketing sounds like a form of warfare. Consumers are targeted, campaigns are planned, products are positioned and launched, waves of advertising are flighted, and then market research does the reconnaissance to say... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Food & Beverage

August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
Case

PayPal: The Next Chapter

By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb

Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Finance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Entrepreneurship; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry

September 2015 (Revised February 2017)
Case

MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?

By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble

Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015 to 200 stores by the end of 2016, and while the two believed that MOD could manage... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Service Industry; United States

January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Uncle Nearest: Creating a Legacy

By: Hise Gibson, Archie L. Jones, Nicole Gilmore and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Fawn Weaver, as a Black woman and industry outsider in a capital-intensive, highly regulated, competitive and male-dominated spirits industry, successfully overcame numerous obstacles to launch a premium American whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest in 2017, which became the... View Details

June 2020
Case

What IKEA Do We Want?

By: Juan Alcácer, Cynthia A. Montgomery, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Dessain

In 2018, Swedish furniture maker IKEA was undergoing a significant transformation. Challenged by the rise of online shopping and changing consumer behavior, and mourning the death of its founder, the Company's top executives knew they had to step out of their comfort... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Transformation; Leading Change; Mission and Purpose; Business Model; Emerging Markets; Customer Focus and Relationships; Organizational Culture; Disruption; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Europe; Netherlands; Sweden; China; India; United States

20 Aug 2008
Op-Ed

The Time is Right for Creative Capitalism

examples of where global capitalism is going. (RED) integrates the power of big business, new customer priorities, and the interconnected agents of social change, in the form of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The animating View Details

Keywords: by Nancy Koehn

October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Investing at Pivotal Ventures

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Emily R. McComb and Eren Kuzucu

Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Management; Mission and Purpose; Venture Capital

31 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

It’s Not All About Pay: College Grads Want Jobs That ‘Change the World’

make a difference to the business itself. “Investing in prosocial missions actually will help you attract candidates,” Zhang says. “You can get quality candidates even when lowering your wage if you're a prosocial employer." Policymakers... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

August 2021
Case

Danone S.A.: Becoming a Mission-Driven Company (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Emilie Billaud

Emmanuel Faber became CEO of Danone SA, the French food and beverage company, in 2014. Right from the start, he ran the company with a dual commitment to both profit and purpose (i.e., ESG objectives). In fact, in 2018, he said, “It’s time to make sustainable business... View Details

Keywords: Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Environmental Sustainability; Goals and Objectives; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; France; Europe

March 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Module Note

The Social Purpose of the Firm

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau

The Social Purpose of the Firm (SPF) is a short module designed to explore how, and under what circumstances, business leaders can harness the power of capitalism and markets to “make a difference in the world” – that is, to address a significant societal problem as a... View Details

Keywords: Social Accounting; Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; United States; Sweden; Kenya; Netherlands

January 2004 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Johnson & Johnson's Corporate Credo

By: Thomas R. Piper

No corporate credo is better known than that of Johnson & Johnson. Describes the history of the credo, including the credo challenge initiated by the CEO, James Burke, in 1975 and the role the credo played during the Tylenol poisoning crisis. View Details

Keywords: History; Mission and Purpose; Goals and Objectives; Corporate Accountability; Reputation; Crisis Management; Corporate Governance; Management Teams