Publications

August 2019 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Baroo (A): Pet Concierge

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Susie L. Ma

Baroo CEO Lindsay Hyde was facing unrest from the board of her pet services startup in August 2017. One board member (and lead investor) was alarmed that Baroo’s growth was slowing while its appetite for funding was accelerating. Hyde wanted to hit the gas and continue... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Outcome or Result; Failure; Business and Shareholder Relations; Venture Capital; Governing and Advisory Boards; Opportunities; Strategy; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

Failure to get that pricing right inevitably leads to decline. You can see examples in businesses like ridesharing. The first player in the space was a company called Sidecar that never was able to figure... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Understaffed and Overworked: What Now?

Meet Cheryl Andrus: Manager. Survivor. A vice president responsible for corporate and product marketing at FranklinCovey in Salt Lake City, Andrus was asked in August 2002 to also take charge of one of the company's business lines. Along... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

17 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Dispensing Justice: The Case for Legalizing Cannabis Nationally

Recreational marijuana is legal in 18 states. Scant attention has been paid, however, to the profound impact that federal legalization would have on the cannabis market. Essentially, it would squeeze out the illicit cannabis market, along with all its concomitant ills.... View Details

Keywords: by Ashish Nanda and Tabatha Robinson

12 Aug 2008
First Look

First Look: August 12, 2008

foreknowledge and/or control. Experiment 4 indicates that effects of indirect agency result from a failure to automatically consider the potentially dubious motives of agents who cause harm indirectly. Download the paper:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2002 (Revised June 2003)
Case

Abelli and Saviotti at Banca Commerciale Italiana (A)

By: Tiziana E. Casciaro, Kathleen L. McGinn and Massimiliano Belingheri

In 1999, a powerful struggle amidst complex corporate and interpersonal networks led to the failed merger between Banca Commerciale Italiana and Unicredito Italiano--two of Italy's largest banking groups. This case analyzes the actions of Abelli and Saviotti, co-CEOs... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Networks; Banks and Banking; Business Strategy; Power and Influence; Crisis Management; Government and Politics; International Finance; Failure; Banking Industry; Italy

02 Jun 2010
What Do You Think?

How Do You Weigh Strategy, Execution, and Culture in an Organization’s Success?

hope the comments were as helpful and thought-provoking to you as they were to me. Those of you willing to venture to place weights on the determinants of success gave the nod to culture by a wide margin. As Mouaz AlZayyat put it, "Growth plans and articulated... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

26 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

The Office of Strategy Management

"Why is there such a persistent gap between ambition and performance?" ask Robert Kaplan and David P. Norton in "The Office of Strategy Management" in the October 2005 Harvard Business Review. "The gap arises, we... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

08 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Knowledge Transfer: You Can't Learn Surgery By Watching

analogy for vicarious learning is the photocopier,” says Christopher G. Myers, assistant professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. The idea: Watch what other people do, make copies of the good things and dispose of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

07 Feb 2019
Book

How Big Companies Can Outrun Disruption

“Larger companies are rarely seen as fountains of innovation,” says Harvard Business School professor Gary Pisano. Yet scale, if properly exploited, can still be an engine for transformation. In his new book Creative Construction: The DNA... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Web

In the News - Creating Emerging Markets

In the News 18 Feb 2023 New Books Network Geoffrey Jones, "Deeply Responsible Business A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership" (Harvard University Press, 2023) In this episode of New Books Network, Professor Geoffrey Jones discusses... View Details

December 2021 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Troverie (A)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham

Six months after the August 2018 launch of Troverie, a U.S.-based online retailer of luxury watches, the average cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than originally projected, and the startup is incurring a substantial loss on each sales transaction. Could... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Luxury Goods; Customer Acquisition; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Luxury; Failure; Internet and the Web; Revenue; Fashion Industry; United States

25 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 25, 2018

operations. Product failures are, therefore, likely to impact firms’ subsequent innovation activities. Using 13 years of Food and Drug Administration data, we examine the effects of firm and competitor medical device recalls on subsequent... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

March 2023
Teaching Note

Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 123-069. On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth... View Details