Publications

September–October 2022
Article

Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price

By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant

Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers. In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details

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13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Making Biotech Work as a Business

is ever going to leap ahead. The main barrier, according to Pisano, is the lack of integration among costs, rules, technologies, and disciplines. In a presentation at the Harvard Business School Alumni Healthcare Conference, held last... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Biotechnology; Health; Technology

17 Dec 2015
News

Addressing Gender Equity In Business And Society

broadly through Harvard Business Review, the online research forum HBS Working Knowledge, the annual “HBS Gender and Work Symposium,” academic journals, and national media. The Gender Initiative is... View Details

Web

Impact Investing | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

impact investing has emerged as a new, fast-growing category of private investing, so too has the awareness of the stark disparity between access to capital among small business owners. The course will help students understand why certain... View Details

June 2015
Case

Beacon Group of Hong Kong: Finding Light in the Shadow Education Industry

By: Christopher Marquis, Qi Li and Guy Leung

After more than 25 years of operation, Beacon Group had grown from having 3 small classrooms on the fourth floor of a commercial building, to a network of 21 centers across Hong Kong with over 60,000 students enrolled per year. The key long-term challenge for the... View Details

Keywords: Online Education; Education; Tutoring; Incentives; Hong Kong; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Family Business; Education Industry; Hong Kong

05 Jun 2018
News

Harvard Business School's HBX Offers Developing Yourself as a Leader, a New Leadership Development Program Offered via the HBX Live Virtual Classroom

Web

For Organizations | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

four courses, which can be taken independently or completed together in any order to earn a comprehensive certificate. Business in Society Courses at HBS Online Discover how to align purpose with profit and... View Details

18 Aug 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Business Plan Contest: 15 Years of Building Better Entrepreneurs

the past fifteen years of the contest, it's extraordinary." The Art Of The Pivot A few common experiences filter to the surface in conversations with past contest participants, whether their venture sells crème brûlée or online video... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

05 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

It’s Alive! Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research

A large amusement park. A long line at an airport. A children's summer camp in Italy. What do these places have in common? Surprisingly, all are settings for serious research by Harvard Business School faculty. There's a sea change afoot... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

16 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

Reintroducing Intellectual Ambition to the Study of Business History

The 85-year-old Business History Review, published quarterly by Harvard Business School, is the acknowledged leading peer-reviewed journal in the field. (BHR has recently been made available View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones & Walter Friedman

29 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business Press Is a Watchdog that Bites

When tales of financial fraud hit the newsstands, business people and academics usually assume that it was analysts or auditors who brought the wrongdoing to light. Journalists, they believe, are only repeating what they've been told.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Journalism & News; Publishing

03 Feb 2009
News

How Business Can Help Untangle the Mess

27 Jul 2019
Op-Ed

Does Facebook's Business Model Threaten Our Elections?

business strategy, part of Facebook’s business model since at least 2010. That’s when Facebook opened up its Graph application programming interface (API) to advertisers, giving them access to user data... View Details

Keywords: by George Riedel

29 Oct 2008
News

Harvard Business School researchers look to NFL

01 Mar 2012
News

Learning to Speak the Language of Business

companies with a commanding presence in their home markets. But to call Mikitani’s company, Rakuten, the Amazon.com of Japan would overlook fundamental differences for customers and merchants alike. “We created a real online marketplace... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; e-commerce; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Namrata Arora

Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet, aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered the nascent market and immediately enjoyed an uptick in consumer spending fueled by the strength of Nigeria’s oil-based economy. By... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Marketplace; Inventory; Ecommerce; Funding; Business Ecosystem; Business Ecosystems; Competition; Business Model; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Logistics; Competitive Strategy; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India; Nigeria; Africa

November 2021 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place

By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as... View Details

Keywords: Business Ethics; Homelessness; Business And Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Corporate Accountability; Urban Development; Society; Information Technology; Ethics; Technology Industry; Seattle; United States; North America

March 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Emeritus: Achieving Impact, Providing Access (A)

By: Ashish Nanda and Zack Kurtovich

In June 2019, Emeritus cofounders Ashwin Damera (HBS MBA 2005) and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu were thrilled with the rapid growth of Emeritus. Damera and Kalipatnapu believed that Emeritus, established in July 2015 to offer online executive education, was only in the early... View Details

Keywords: Education Technology; Professional Service Firm; Startup; Digital Strategy; Global Business; Global Firm; Platform Business; Business Startups; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Executive Education; Strategy; Education Industry; India