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February 1995 (Revised September 1995)
Case

The Bourland Companies

By: William J. Poorvu and John H. Vogel Jr.

Michael Bourland, the president of the Bourland Companies, needs to refinance two properties, an office building in southern New Hampshire and a retail property in Massachusetts. He is considering three alternatives: a renewal of a bank mini-perm, a 15-year mortgage... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Property; Mortgages; Family Business; Financial Management; Family Ownership; Real Estate Industry; Massachusetts; North and Central America

September 2023
Teaching Note

Shad Process Flow Design Exercise: Kick-Off Class

By: Willy C. Shih

The Shad Process Flow Design Exercise is a simulation designed to help students cement what they learn in the process fundamentals section of the RCTOM course by giving them the opportunity to translate classroom concepts into actual physical processes and experience... View Details

Keywords: Production; Business Processes; Manufacturing Industry; United States

January 2010 (Revised May 2012)
Case

TopCoder (A): Developing Software through Crowdsourcing

By: Karim R. Lakhani, David A. Garvin and Eric Lonstein

TopCoder's crowdsourcing-based business model, in which software is developed through online tournaments, is presented. The case highlights how TopCoder has created a unique two-sided innovation platform consisting of a global community of over 225,000 developers who... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Two-Sided Platforms; Motivation and Incentives; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Software; Technology Industry

July–August 2023
Article

What Smart Companies Know About Integrating AI

By: Silvio Palumbo and David Edelman

AI has the power to gather, analyze, and utilize enormous volumes of individual customer data to achieve precision and scale in personalization. The experiences of Mercury Financial, CVS Health, and Starbucks debunk the prevailing notion that extracting value from AI... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Customization and Personalization; Integration; Technology Adoption

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March 2020
Supplement

Poppy (B)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Scott Duke Kominers, Jeff Huizinga and Allison Ciechanover

Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Poppy, an online marketplace for on-demand childcare, revisits the venture's final months, and discusses the steps she took in the wake of the shutdown. This case explores experiments the company conducted to refine its original... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Marketplace Matching; Business Model; Business Exit or Shutdown; Personal Development and Career; United States

January 2020
Case

Lunchclub: Algorithmic Networking

By: Scott Duke Kominers and George Gonzalez

Algorithmic networking startup Lunchclub coordinates in-person meetings between professionals who would have been unlikely to meet. The company faces marketplace design, growth, and monetization challenges: The executive team has to refine Lunchclub's marketplace... View Details

Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Networking; Business Startups; Marketplace Matching; Market Design; Growth and Development Strategy; Information Industry

October 1987 (Revised July 1991)
Case

Tiffany & Co.

By: Samuel L. Hayes III

This premier retail jewelry company was bought from its parent, Avon, by a group of investors led by its own management in 1984. The company was highly leveraged, financially, and had to scramble to meet the cash flow and earnings requirements laid down by its lenders.... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Borrowing and Debt; Cash Flow; Price; Going Public; Apparel and Accessories Industry

July 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Mary Kay Inc.: Enriching Women's Lives while Embracing Change

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Julia Kelley

In December 2020, Mary Kay Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green considered several strategic dilemmas. Founded in 1963 by Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay was a direct sales company whose Independent Beauty Consultants purchased its beauty and cosmetics products at... View Details

March 1999
Case

City of Charlotte (B)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

This case shows how two operating departments-transportation and police-translate the high-level corporate scorecard for the city into departmental balanced scorecards. The transportation department follows a highly structured approach designed to link initiatives... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Global Strategy; National Security; Balanced Scorecard; Organizational Design; Technology Adoption; Public Administration Industry; Transportation Industry

March 2024
Case

From “BIG” Ideas to Sustainable Impact at ICL Group (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

In the summer of 2023, Eduard (“Eddie”) Croitoru, Vice President (VP) of ICL Group (“ICL”) Corporate Initiatives, was reflecting on ICL’s internal ideation program, the Business Innovation for Growth (BIG) Accelerator. When Raviv Zoller became the CEO of ICL in 2018,... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Platform Information Provision and Consumer Search: A Field Experiment

By: Lu Fang, Yanyou Chen, Chiara Farronato, Zhe Yuan and Yitong Wang

Despite substantial efforts to help consumers search in more intuitive ways, text search remains the predominant tool for product discovery online. In this paper, we explore the effects of visual and textual cues for search refinement on consumer search and purchasing... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Decision Choices and Conditions; Learning; Internet and the Web

March 2023
Case

Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

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 about $4.4 million at the time) in... View Details

February 2004 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Apax Partners and Xerium S.A.

By: Josh Lerner, G. Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon

In 2002, Apax Partners had to decide whether to accept a less-than-perfect offer for one of its portfolio companies or to refinance it. This company, a maker of paper industry consumables with a global presence, had been purchased in 1999 and performed extremely well... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Globalized Markets and Industries; Business Exit or Shutdown; Borrowing and Debt; Investment; Cash Flow; Pulp and Paper Industry

September–October 2024
Article

Should a Family Business Accept a Returning Daughter’s Radical Proposal?

By: John D. Macomber

A family-owned and controlled conglomerate in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, has to decide what titles and authority to give to a daughter who is being courted to leave a promising career in Europe to come back and join the business. The choices of role range from an... View Details

Keywords: Succession Planning; Power Grid; Family Business; Management Succession; Emerging Markets; Business Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Côte d'Ivoire

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August 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Background Note

A Note on Ethical Analysis

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

To engage in ethical analysis is to answer such questions as “What is the right thing to do?” “What does it mean to be a good person?” “How should I live my life?” Ethical analysis, on its own, is often not adequate for doing the right thing or being a good... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Framework; Decision Making; Prejudice and Bias

December 2002 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Commerce Bank

By: Frances X. Frei and Corey B. Hajim

Commerce Bank has become one of the fastest growing banks in the country, despite having defied conventional wisdom about how to grow deposits. Banks historically have grown either by competing on deposit rates or through acquisitions that expand their deposit base.... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Design; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Competition; Banking Industry

Article

Trust and Collaboration in the Aftermath of Conflict: The Effects of Contract Structure

By: Deepak Malhotra and Fabrice Lumineau

Leveraging a longitudinal dataset concerning 102 inter-firm disputes, we evaluate the effects of contract structure on trust and on the likelihood of continued collaboration. We theoretically refine and empirically extend prior research by (a) distinguishing between... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Contract Structure; Contracts; Design; Trust; Conflict and Resolution

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Article

Seize the Power

By: Stefan Thomke

A company’s ability to create and refine its products, customer experiences, processes, and business models—in other words, to compete—is deeply affected by its ability to experiment. Digital giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Booking.com have found... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; Competitiveness; Competition; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation

2021
Article

Fair Algorithms for Infinite and Contextual Bandits

By: Matthew Joseph, Michael J Kearns, Jamie Morgenstern, Seth Neel and Aaron Leon Roth

We study fairness in linear bandit problems. Starting from the notion of meritocratic fairness introduced in Joseph et al. [2016], we carry out a more refined analysis of a more general problem, achieving better performance guarantees with fewer modelling assumptions... View Details

Keywords: Algorithms; Bandit Problems; Fairness; Mathematical Methods

October 2004 (Revised October 2005)
Case

ORIX KK: Incentives in Japan

In the context of Japan's struggling economy of the 1990s, ORIX, a leading Japanese financial services company, implemented a new performance evaluation and compensation system. At the time, many higher-paying western firms were entering the Japanese market and... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Compensation and Benefits; Financial Services Industry; Japan

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