Publications

Frank Cespedes is Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. He received his B.A. from the City College of New York, M.S. from M.I.T. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

At Harvard, he has developed and taught a variety of MBA and executive... View Details

November 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

BrightStar Care: The Evolution of a Leadership Team

By: Boris Groysberg, Colleen Ammerman and John D. Vaughan

BrightStar Care was a rapidly growing franchise of home health care agencies. Founded by husband and wife team JD and Shelly Sun as a single agency near Chicago in 2002, BrightStar had opened nearly 300 franchises across the United States by 2016, generating over $300... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Services; Entrepreneurs; Board Of Directors; Boards Of Directors; Health Care Industry; Growth Strategy; Organizational Change; Brand Positioning; Entrepreneurial Organizations; Entrepreneurial Management; Franchising; Family-owned Business; Home Health Care; Managing Growth; Management Styles; Organizational Development; Talent Management; Women Executives; Women And Leadership; Business Startups; Family Business; Small Business; Talent and Talent Management; Governing and Advisory Boards; Health Care and Treatment; Human Capital; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Skills; Management Style; Management Succession; Management Systems; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Strategy

2023
Working Paper

Algorithm Failures and Consumers' Response: Evidence from Zillow

By: Isamar Troncoso, Runshan Fu, Nikhil Malik and Davide Proserpio

In November 2021, Zillow announced the closure of its iBuyer business. Popular media largely attributed this to a failure of its proprietary forecasting algorithm. We study the response of consumers to Zillow’s iBuyer business closure. We show that after the iBuyer... View Details

Keywords: Algorithmic Pricing; Price; Forecasting and Prediction; Consumer Behavior; Real Estate Industry

SSRN

March 2022 (Revised July 2022)
Teaching Note

Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences

By: Jill Avery

Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details

11 Feb 2015
News

For Valentine's Day, Adore Me Takes On Victoria's Secret and Other Bigger Lingerie Rivals

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

Index Connect, that would essentially allow retailers to pool customer contact data and be more competitive with Amazon. Participants must evaluate whether Index was taking the right approach to sales View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

11 Dec 2015
News

Analytics in Online Flash Sales: Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization

10 Oct 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 10, 2017

in the diabetic space, became MannKind’s marketing partner and helped launch Afrezza in February, 2015. Although the drug had a black box warning and required doctors to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2021
Article

Assortment Rotation and the Value of Concealment

By: Kris J. Ferreira and Joel Goh

Assortment rotation—the retailing practice of changing the assortment of products offered to customers—has recently been used as a competitive advantage for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers. We focus on product categories where consumers may purchase multiple... View Details

Keywords: Assortment Optimization; Retailing; Imperfect Information; Sales; Strategy; Consumer Behavior

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02 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 2, 2019

forthcoming Strategic Management Journal Threat of Platform-Owner Entry and Complementor Responses: Evidence from the Mobile App Market By: Wen, Wen, and Feng Zhu Abstract—We... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

10 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 10, 2018

forthcoming Journal of Financial Economics The Relevance of Broker Networks for Information Diffusion in the Stock Market By: Di Maggio, Marco, Francesco Franzoni, Amir Kermani, and Carlo Sommavilla... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

28 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

Unilever: Transformation and Tradition

Unilever's sales and profits performance were flat, and it was underperforming its major competitors. Unilever was sustained by strong positions in the detergents View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products

28 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 28, 2018

Energy Market No abstract available Purchase this case:https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/718051-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 816-074 InsightSquared: Developing the Sales View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

November 2012 (Revised August 2014)
Case

Cisco in 2012: Reorganizing for Efficiency and Flexibility

By: Ranjay Gulati, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Luciana Silvestri

In 2012, Cisco was under intense pressure to show results: growth in its core business was decelerating and a number of exploratory ventures and acquisitions had not proven as profitable as expected. CEO John Chambers vowed to restore the company's health in a way that... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Restructuring; Adaptation; Performance Efficiency; Emerging Markets; Information Technology Industry

January 1988 (Revised May 1992)
Case

Howard Head and Prince Manufacturing, Inc.

By: Howard H. Stevenson

Deals with the issue of an entrepreneur in a very successful company deciding whether to stay through a period of great growth or to sell. What are the entrepreneur's responsibilities to the organization, to his employees, to the public? As subtopics, the issues of... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Patents; Law; Markets; Production; Sales

April 1993 (Revised July 1994)
Case

MathSoft, Inc. (A)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

MathSoft's VP of sales has doubled the size of the company's direct field sales force to support the launch of a new, high-end workstation software product priced at almost $9,000. However, sales of the new product are far below plan. At the same time, the VP of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Communication Strategy; Salesforce Management; Marketing Channels; Advertising; Product Launch; Information Technology Industry; Industrial Products Industry; United States

March 2024
Article

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups

By: Shai Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu

Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even... View Details

Keywords: Startup Labor Market; Flight To Safety; COVID-19; Recession; Job Search; Behavior

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