Publications

September 2020 (Revised May 2021)
Case

The Indian Premier League, 2020

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

Since its founding in 2008, the Indian Premier League (IPL), India’s eight-week Twenty20 (T20) cricket competition, had become one of the most popular and lucrative sporting leagues in the world. In 2019, the IPL attracted 462 million TV viewers and 300 million digital... View Details

Keywords: Sports; Organizational Structure; Marketing; Health Pandemics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth and Development Strategy; Sports Industry; India

September–October 2017
Article

Managing Our Hub Economy: Strategy, Ethics, and Network Competition in the Age of Digital Superpowers

By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

A small number of digital superpowers—Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others—have become “hub firms” because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Strategic Planning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

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19 Sep 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Isn't Business Research More Relevant to Business Practitioners?

journals. “Academic research can be helpful, but it tends to be overly complex, hard to digest, and not backed by real quantitative insights from customer populations or engagements,” says Neale-May, executive director of the Chief... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

Business Model Innovation and Competitive Imitation: The Case of Sponsor-Based Business Models

This paper provides the first formal model of business model innovation. Our analysis focuses on sponsor-based business model innovations where a firm monetizes its product through sponsors rather than setting prices to its customer base. We analyze strategic... View Details

October 2014
Case

Progressive, 2007-2013

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2013, Progressive was the fourth largest player in the auto insurance market, having lost the third position to GEICO in 2008. As the industry shifted from agency to online sales, GEICO's direct selling model positioned it strongly for growth. Progressive's direct... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Insurance Companies; Insurance; Strategy; Insurance Industry; North America

06 Sep 2022
Blog Post

To Go-Go: A Foodtech Startup Serves Up Scale in Latin America

For all their variety, restaurants have two things in common: a kitchen where food is prepared and a dining area where customers consume it. But what if you could use technology to ditch the dining area and just keep the kitchen, trimming... View Details

October 2013
Article

The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care

By: Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee

In health care, the days of business as usual are over. Around the world, every health care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality, despite the hard work of well-intentioned, well-trained clinicians. Health care leaders and policy makers have tried... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Value; Customer Focus and Relationships; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

Article

Megastudies Improve the Impact of Applied Behavioural Science

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Pepi Pandiloski, Yeji Park, Aneesh Rai, Max Bazerman, John Beshears, Lauri Bonacorsi, Colin Camerer, Edward Chang, Gretchen Chapman, Robert Cialdini, Hengchen Dai, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach, James J. Gross, Samantha Horn, Alexa Hubbard, Steven J. Jones, Dean Karlan, Tim Kautz, Erika Kirgios, Joowon Klusowski, Ariella Kristal, Rahul Ladhania, Jens Ludwig, George Loewenstein, Barbara Mellers, Sendhil Mullainathan, Silvia Saccardo, Jann Spiess, Gaurav Suri, Joachim H. Talloen, Jamie Taxer, Yaacov Trope, Lyle Ungar, Kevin G. Volpp, Ashley V. Whillans, Jonathan Zinman and Angela L. Duckworth

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens’ decisions and outcomes. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time... View Details

Keywords: Policy Making; Behavioral Science; Behavior; Change; Decision Making; Policy

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July 2014
Article

Second-Opinion Pathologic Review is a Patient Safety Mechanism That Helps Reduce Error and Decrease Waste

By: Lavinia Middleton, Thomas W. Feeley, Heidi W. Albright, Ronald Walters and Stanley Hamilton

We have a crisis in health care delivery, originating from increasing health care costs and inconsistent quality-of-care measures. During the past several years, value-based health care delivery has gained increasing attention as an approach to control costs and... View Details

Keywords: Pathology; Diagnostic Errors; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; North and Central America

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June 2008
Journal Article

Strategic Alliances: Bridges Between 'Islands of Conscious Power'

By: George P. Baker, Robert Gibbons and Kevin J. Murphy

Strategic alliances range from unstructured collaborations, through consortia and joint ventures that superimpose new governance structures on existing firms, to transactions that restructure firm boundaries and asset ownership. In this paper, we draw on detailed... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Alliances; Strategy; Theory

23 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Break Your Addiction to Service Heroes

your customers value most, you must underperform on dimensions they value less. This means you must have the stomach to do some things badly. The concept can seem immoral at... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Service

July–August 2020
Article

Price Bargaining and Competition in Online Platforms: An Empirical Analysis of the Daily Deal Market

By: Lingling Zhang and Doug J. Chung

The prevalence of online platforms opens new doors to traditional businesses for customer reach and revenue growth. This research investigates platform choice in a setting where prices are determined by negotiations between platforms and businesses. We compile a unique... View Details

Keywords: Business-to-business Marketing; Platform Competition; Two-Sided Markets; Price Bargaining; Daily Deals; Structural Model; Digital Platforms; Competition; Price; Negotiation

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Teaching Interest

Strategy

By: Jan W. Rivkin

The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy, and provides an understanding of:

A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
How to generate superior value for... View Details

October 1991 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Becton Dickinson & Company: VACUTAINER Systems Division (Condensed)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Frank V. Cespedes

Becton Dickinson, a phenomenally successful company with an 80% market share in the blood collection needles and syringes market faces a change in the customer buying environment (cost containment pressures at hospitals). This forces a reevaluation of the company's... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Customer Satisfaction; Demand and Consumers; Market Participation; Distribution Channels; Success; Corporate Strategy; Value Creation; Health Industry

TeachingInterests

MBA Required Curriculum—Strategy

By: Benjamin C. Esty

The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:

A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
How to generate superior... View Details

18 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Excerpt: Manufacturing Morals

Editor's note: Building and landscape design can do much more for an organization than provide an inspirational headquarters or appealing work spaces. At Harvard Business School, the leafy, orderly, community setting helps reinforce a set of beliefs and View Details

Keywords: Education

July 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Pricing at Netflix

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and Amy Klopfenstein

Since its launch in 1998 as “the Amazon.com of DVDs,” Netflix had evolved from a DVD rental company to a video streaming platform and producer of original films and television shows. As the company matured, it regularly increased prices and adjusted its product... View Details