Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,672)
- Faculty Publications (81)
- August 2017
- Case
Hacking Heroin
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah Mehta
"Hacking Heroin" was the first hackathon that Annie Rittgers, founder of Cincinnati-based 17a, had organized or even attended. "There will continue to be a lot of preventable overdose deaths and wasted potential if the opioid crisis continues unabated," she said.... View Details
- March 2017 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Interline Brands: Don't Stop Believing
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Ricardo Andrade
Interline Brands, a leading distributor of residential housing maintenance and repair parts and equipment in the U.S., had just held its November 2014 board meeting. The meeting had been productive but not without some soul searching for both the company’s management... View Details
- January–February 2017
- Article
Buying Your Way into Entrepreneurship
By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
An increasingly popular route to success as a small business owner is “acquisition entrepreneurship”—buying and running an existing operation. If you’re considering such a path, the authors offer practical advice for each stage of the process. Think it through. Do you... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
ASICS: Chasing a 2020 Vision
By: Elie Ofek, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno
In early 2016, Motoi Oyama, president and CEO of ASICS, a major sports apparel and footwear manufacturer based in Japan, lays out his company’s growth plan for the upcoming 5 years. The new plan set ambitious goals in terms of revenue and profit increases. At the heart... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; Sports Apparel; Competitive Positioning; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Retail Formats; Lifestyle Brands; Information Technology; Competition; Brands and Branding; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Platforms; Product Positioning; Marketing Channels; Sports; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry
- October 2016 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson
By: Anita Elberse
In June 2016, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is planning for the upcoming launch of an endeavor that is a first for a Hollywood actor with superstar status—a digital channel. The channel (named “Seven Bucks Digital Studios”) will be a new part of film and television... View Details
Keywords: Entertainment; Film; Motion Picutres; Superstar; Innovation; Creative Industries; Talent; General Management; Celebrities; Management; Information Technology; Strategy; Talent and Talent Management; Creativity; Marketing; Personal Development and Career; Film Entertainment; Innovation and Invention; Digital Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry
- April 2016 (Revised February 2017)
- Supplement
Eastman Kodak Company: Restructuring a Melting Ice Cube
By: Stuart C. Gilson, John D. Dionne and Sarah L. Abbott
In May 2013, senior managers of GSO Capital Partners, an $80 billion credit-oriented investment firm owned by The Blackstone Group, are considering what to do next with their investment in the senior secured debt of Eastman Kodak Company. Once a great company and an... View Details
- September 2015 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?
By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble
Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015 to 200 stores by the end of 2016, and while the two believed that MOD could manage... View Details
- August 2015 (Revised October 2023)
- Case
Eastman Kodak Company: Restructuring a Melting Ice Cube
By: Stuart C. Gilson, John D. Dionne and Sarah L. Abbott
In May 2013, senior managers of GSO Capital Partners, an $80 billion credit-oriented investment firm owned by The Blackstone Group, are considering what to do next with their investment in the senior secured debt of Eastman Kodak Company. Once a great company and an... View Details
- January 2015 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
CJ E&M: Creating a K-Culture in the U.S.
By: Elie Ofek, Sang-Hoon Kim and Michael Norris
Buoyed by the success of K-pop music and K-drama television shows in Asian countries, Chairman Jay Lee, of the South Korean conglomerate CJ Group, believed that the time was ripe for taking Korean cultural content to the West. One initiative, carried out by the Group's... View Details
Keywords: Cultural Consumption; Media Businesses; International Marketing; Event Marketing; Creative Industries; Cross-cultural Adaptation; Ethnic Marketing; South Korea; Marketing Strategy; Entertainment; Global Strategy; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States; South Korea
- July–August 2014
- Article
The Crisis in Retirement Planning
By: Robert C. Merton
Corporate America began to really take notice of the looming retirement crisis in the wake of the dot-com crash, when companies in major industries went bankrupt in large part because of their inability to meet their pension obligations. The result was an acceleration... View Details
- January 2014
- Case
Maricopa, Inc.: Finding the Right Treatment for Growth
The founders of Maricopa, Inc., a startup that sold proprietary hair-care products directly to salons, were preparing a board presentation to address the young company's inability to meet financial projections. While the products had caught on with customers, the... View Details
- December 2013
- Article
Land Politics and Local State Capacities: The Political Economy of Urban Change in China
By: Meg Rithmire
Despite common national institutions and incentives to remake urban landscapes to anchor growth, generate land-lease revenues, and display a capacious administration, Chinese urban governments exhibit varying levels of control over land. This article uses a paired... View Details
- 2013
- Book
Democracy and Its Elected Enemies: American Political Capture and Economic Decline
By: Steven Rosefielde and Daniel Quinn Mills
Democracy and Its Elected Enemies reveals that American politicians have usurped their constitutional authority, substituting their economic and political sovereignty for the people's. This has been accomplished by creating an enormous public service sector... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
NBC and the 2012 London Olympics: Unexpected Success
By: Stephen A. Greyser and Vadim Kogan
"The 2010 Vancouver Winter Games lost $223 million, astonishing for a 17-day event. Next year's London Summer Games, which cost a record Olympic rights fee of $1.18 billion, are expected to lose at least as much..." wrote Richard Sandomir in The New York Times. "NBC... View Details
- 2013
- Dissertation
Designing Freemium: A Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics
By: Clarence Lee, Vineet Kumar and Sunil Gupta
Abstract. Over the past decade "freemium" (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised April 2015)
- Case
Affinity Labs: Valuing Customer Growth
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Elizabeth Kind
In November 2006, Chris Michel left Military.com, which he founded in 1999, to start Affinity Labs, a global network of online communities. That month, Michel raised a Series A round of venture funding and established a partnership with Monster, which he had sold... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Business-driven Research at IBM Research India
By: Willy Shih, Margaret Pierson, Pankaj Agarwal, Diego Medicina and Juan Prajogo
What is the right mix between business-driven and pure research? This case considers the question in the setting of IBM Research India, where a management push for balance between exploratory research and the fulfillment of business needs meets some resistance from... View Details
- October 2011 (Revised January 2012)
- Case
PepsiCo, Performance with Purpose, Achieving the Right Global Balance
- June 2011 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
Patagonia Sur: For-Profit Land Conservation in Chile
By: Arthur I Segel, Nicolas Ibanez and Jay Verjee
Warren Adams founded Patagonia Sur in 2007 as one of the world's first for-profit land conservation businesses. His goal was to purchase over 100,000 acres of land in southern Chile and to run a variety of sustainable businesses to generate annual returns for... View Details
- April 2011 (Revised July 2011)
- Case
Renewing GE: The Africa Project (A)
By: David A. Thomas and Stephanie J. Creary
This case profiles the evolution of General Electric's African American Form (AAF), an employee affinity group, and its efforts to increase the company's involvement in Africa. The AAF formed in 1991 to help advance GE's recruitment, retention and development of black... View Details