Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(7,611)
- Faculty Publications (1,187)
- July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Propel
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra
In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Govtech; Food Stamps; EBT; Mobile App; User Research; Financial Services Referrals; Grocery Marketing; Customer Discovery; Social Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Model; Research; Social Enterprise; Poverty; Welfare; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; United States
- Article
Managing Climate Change: Lessons from the U.S. Navy
By: Forest Reinhardt and Michael W. Toffel
The U.S. Navy operates on the front lines of climate change. It manages tens of billions of dollars in assets on every continent and on every ocean, which take many years to design and build and then have decades of useful life. This means that it needs to understand... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Environment; Military; Disaster Relief; Refugees; Environmental Impact; Environmental Strategy; Sustainability; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Sources; Energy Generation; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Supply Chain; Operations; Logistics; Infrastructure; Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Service Industry
- July 2017
- Article
The Four Stages to Becoming an Excellent Front-Line Sales Manager
Sales occupations account for more than 10% of the total U.S. labor force, and that official estimate is almost certainly low: In an increasingly service economy, many people who do business development for a living are not listed as “sales” for reporting purposes.... View Details
Keywords: Salesforce Management
- June 2017
- Case
Veolia: Resourcing the World
By: Gautam Ahuja, Tarun Khanna, Kristina Maslauskaite and Vincent Dessain
In March 2016, Antoine Frérot, CEO of Veolia, a global environmental services provider, was undergoing an important transformation of the company. In 2013, Frérot presented a growth strategy that focused on increasing the share of industrial clients, enhancing growth... View Details
- June 2017 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
Signet Jewelers: Assessing Customer Financing Risk
By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos, Suraj Srinivasan and Monica Baraldi
Marc Cohodes, a renowned short seller, has identified weaknesses in Signet's business strategy, which he argues is heavily reliant on providing loans to customers with subprime credit scores. He believes that the company accounts for its receivables portfolio using... View Details
- 2017
- Book
Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship
By: Geoffrey Jones
This book explores whether profits and environmental sustainability are compatible through the lens of a global history of green entrepreneurship between the nineteenth century and today. It tells the story of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who... View Details
Keywords: Environmental Entrepreneurship; Green Business; Sustainability; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Business History; Religion; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America; Oceania
- June 2017
- Case
MIA: Profit at the Base of the Pyramid
By: Lynda M. Applegate, José Antonio Dávila Castilla, Sarah Mehta and Aldo Sesia
In January 2016, Guillermo Jaime had just returned home to Mexico City after attending a Harvard Business School executive education program. Jaime was the founder and CEO of Mejoramiento Integral Asistido (MIA), a company providing affordable housing to low-income... View Details
- Summer 2017
- Article
Measuring Consumer Preferences for Video Content Provision via Cord-Cutting Behavior
By: Jeffrey Prince and Shane Greenstein
The television industry is undergoing a generational shift in structure; however, many demand-side determinants are still not well understood. We model how consumers choose video content provision among over-the-air (OTA), paid subscription to cable or satellite, and... View Details
- May 2017
- Case
CNS Worldwide
By: Robert J. Dolan and Karthik Easwar
CNS Worldwide has long been the market share leader in the IaaS cloud server market, yet it has remained unprofitable for years. Industry capacity utilization is low, and prices have declined over 70% over the last decade. CNS is considering withdrawing from the market... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Many production processes are subject to inspection to ensure they meet quality, safety, and environmental standards imposed by companies and regulators. Inspection accuracy is critical to inspections being a useful input to assessing risks, allocating quality... View Details
- April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin
Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details
- April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
- Supplement
edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (B)
By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin
Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details
- March 2017
- Case
SKS Microfinance (Abridged)
By: Shawn Cole and Theresa Chen
Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised March 2019)
- Case
Ant Financial (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Ying Zhang, Krishna G. Palepu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai
Headquartered in Hangzhou (China), Ant Financial has grown into a fintech “Unicorn.” The fintech empire that the company established spanned verticals such as mobile and online payment (Alipay), money market fund (Yu’e Bao), wealth management (Ant Fortune),... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems? (with video links)
By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Kelly McNamara
As the case opens in 1999, several key leaders at BlackRock, Inc., then a relatively small asset management firm, are trying to convince CEO Larry Fink and others that the firm should begin to offer Aladdin—its proprietary analytics and trading platform—to other asset... View Details
- March 2017
- Case
Swagbucks
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble
In early 2016, Chuck Davis, chairman and CEO of Prodege LLC, parent company of the brand promotion business Swagbucks, and Josef Gorowitz, Prodege’s founder and president, must decide whether to acquire MyPoints, a competitor to Swagbucks, after the company’s... View Details
Keywords: Loyalty Management; Scaling; Scale; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Leading Change; Growth Management; Religion; Technology; Online Technology; Internet; Transition; Leadership; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry; United States
- February 2017
- Teaching Note
The Tate's Digital Transformation
By: Jill Avery
John Stack was the visionary Head of Digital Transformation at the Tate, a collection of four major art galleries in the UK, including Tate Modern, the most visited gallery devoted to modern and contemporary art in the world. Stack was the architect of the Tate’s... View Details
Keywords: Digital; Ecommerce; Experience; Customer Experience; Customer Relationship Management; Channel Management; Museums; Arts Marketing; Nonprofit; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Digital Marketing; Digital Strategy; Social Media; E-commerce; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Fine Arts Industry; England; United Kingdom; Europe
- February 2017
- Case
Yemeksepeti: Growing and Expanding the Business Model through Data
By: William R. Kerr, Gamze Yucaoglu and Eren Kuzucu
In October 2016, Nevzat Aydin, co-founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti, the Turkish online food-ordering company, was looking over the company's quarterly results and projections for the upcoming year with his management team. It had been almost a year and a half since Aydin... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurial Ventures; Turkey; Big Data; Customer Focused Organization; Service Management; Continuous Improvement; Data Analysis; Internet; Growth Strategy; Technological Change; Information Systems; Entrepreneurship; Corporate Strategy; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Customer Focus and Relationships; Emerging Markets; Service Operations; Competitive Advantage; Performance Improvement; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Information Technology; Value Creation; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey
- January 2017
- Supplement
Hello Alfred: Come Home Happy — Operating the Business Model Exercise
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Christopher Payton
On a mission to "automate the on-demand economy," Harvard Business School classmates Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck launched Hello Alfred in 2013 to provide subscribers with an "Alfred" to complete various chores for a monthly fee. In early 2016, the company has built... View Details
- January 2017
- Supplement
Intrapreneurship at DaVita HealthCare Partners: Cash Flow Tool
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Christopher Payton
DaVita Healthcare Partners Inc. (DaVita) is one of the U.S.'s leading dialysis providers, a process whereby persons with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are connected to a machine that performs the functions of a healthy kidney. Kent Thiry, DaVita's CEO, has expanded... View Details