Publications

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Strategy Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

MBA/Executive education from the Strategic Management Division of the Academy of Management. Maria P. Roche : Runner-up for the Best Paper in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the 2024 Industry Studies Association Annual Conference for... View Details

Web

Online Business Strategy Course | HBS Online

Highlights Predicting Competition in Local Markets Competing Against Dominant Platforms Platforms in Your Value Chain Serial Acquirers Show Hide Details Concepts Understanding Network Effects Which Markets Will Tip Strategies for... View Details

August 2018 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Lexoo: Building a Long-Lasting Platform

By: Chiara Farronato and Elena Corsi

Daniel van Binsbergen, Lexoo’s CEO, and web developer Chris O’Sullivan, CTO, had set up Lexoo, a UK legal marketplace, to help small and medium enterprises (SME) find legal advice at low prices. Lexoo had recently invested in a new vertical focused on larger companies.... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Legal Services; Growth Strategy; Technology Ventures; Service Operations; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Growth and Development Strategy; Legal Services Industry; United Kingdom

June 2015 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

By: Jill Avery and Jim Rosenberg

Digital was on Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Programs Bridget Coughlin's mind these days. DMNS had been dabbling in digital for the past few years, but had never fully committed to it. The time had come to establish a strategic vision, and to decide... View Details

Keywords: Digital; Nonprofit; Arts; Education; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Media; Education Industry; North America; United States

July 2015 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Horst Dassler, Adidas, and the Commercialization of Sport

By: Geoffrey Jones, Michael Norris and Sophi Kim

The case focuses on the career of Horst Dassler, the son of the founder of the German-based sports shoe manufacturer Adidas. The origins of the firm were in the interwar years, and it rose to public prominence after it provided spikes for Jesse Owens, the famous... View Details

2008
Book

Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage

By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Joe Wheeler

Hundreds of large organizations worldwide have used the groundbreaking Service Profit Chain to improve business performance. Now The Ownership Quotient reveals the next generation of the chain: customer and employee "owners" of your business. Employee-owners exhibit... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Customer Ownership; Employee Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

January 2020 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines

August 2023
Teaching Note

Huawei: A Global Tech Giant in the Crossfire of a Digital Cold War

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 320-089. By 2020, Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei, had transformed the small telephone switch manufacturer he founded in 1987 into a $120 billion telecommunications company poised to lead the lucrative rollout of fifth-generation (5G)... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitical Units; Business and Government Relations; International Relations; Communication Strategy; Telecommunications Industry; China

2020
Working Paper

How to Build Enduring Brands in the Digital Age

By: David J. Collis and William Collis

What makes a brand last? It’s a deceptively simple question, but its answer separates sustainable success from eventual obscurity. Almost every company devotes significant resources to defining their brand. But few ask the more important question: how to... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Adaptation; Strategy

Read Now

September 2019
Case

Netflix: A Creative Approach to Culture and Agility

By: Ranjay Gulati, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

By 2018, Netflix had been credited for revolutionizing how viewers consumed entertainment—shifting from ad-fueled linear network programming to a highly personalized, on-demand, all-you-can-consume, ad-free model. The company was riding a long wave of revenue and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Technologies; Streaming; Video On Demand; International Expansion; Leadership; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Style; Management Style; Organizational Culture; Entertainment; Media; Change Management; Expansion; Technology Industry; United States

August 2018 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Tailor Brands: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Branding

By: Jill Avery

Using proprietary artificial intelligence technology, startup Tailor Brands set out to democratize branding by allowing small businesses to create their brand identities by automatically generating logos in just minutes at minimal cost with no branding or design skills... View Details

24 Apr 2014
News

Improving the service experience requires excellence—but not in everything

Everyone knows what bad service feels like—and that’s something Frances Frei, Professor at HBS, wants to fix. Making the service experience better for everyone, from customers to employees, begins with... View Details

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Big Messages, Small Screens, Many Choices

In the land of the digitally connected, the mobile device is king. The majority of digital media consumption happens on mobile devices, with smartphone and tablet activity... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Advertising

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Freeing Patient Data to Enable Innovation

customer experience is so poor across the health care industry. "Employers do. So there's no real driver for quality." Hsiang (HBS MBA 2010), a health data advisor for the White House's US Digital Service... View Details

Keywords: Re: Karim R. Lakhani; Health

March 2013
Supplement

Equitas Microfinance (B): Response to the Andhra Pradesh Crisis

By: V.G. Narayanan, V. Kasturi Rangan and Vidhya Muthuram

Keywords: Business Model; For-profit Firms; Microfinance; Growth And Development Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; Financial Services Industry; Social Enterprise; India

February 2021
Case

Yellow Digital Retailers: Providing Solar Electricity to Transform Rural Africa

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Frank V. Cespedes and Michael Norris

In 2020, Mike Heyink and Maya Stewart, co-founders of the Pay-as-you-Go Solar company Yellow were considering how to grow their startup. They had achieved some success in their first market, Malawi, and had recently entered Uganda, where business was slower. What did... View Details

Keywords: Solar Energy; Business Model; Business Startups; Developing Countries and Economies; Alternative Energy; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Green Technology; Salesforce Management; Diversification; Expansion; Energy Industry; Africa; South Africa; Malawi; Uganda