Publications

February 2009 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Big Spaceship: Ready to Go Big?

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Big Spaceship, a digital marketing agency, faced a rather big challenge: How to scale the distinctive culture that was essential to its competitive strategy? Renowned for the cutting-edge websites that it developed to market major Hollywood movies and leading consumer... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Human Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

Research Summary

Manager Specific Human Capital Investment: A Model of Block Trading and Firm Stability

I develop a model in which workers can undertake specific human capital investments in the firm and in the manager employed by the firm. If the manager leaves the firm, a worker has to decide whether to join her in the new firm or stay in the old firm. In case of... View Details

23 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Minding the Muse: The Impact of Downsizing on Corporate Creativity

months, the downsizing changed the size of each work group differently, reports Amabile. While some units were decimated, others were only slightly affected, and still others expanded their ranks, perhaps the result of consolidation.... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

2013
Working Paper

How Major League Baseball Clubs Have Commercialized Their Investment in Japanese Top Stars

By: Isao Okada and Stephen A. Greyser

When a Major League Baseball club signs a Japanese star player, it obviously tries to commercialize its investment in the player. The initial focus is on home attendance (ticket sales) and television audiences, plus merchandise sales. These elements are similar to... View Details

Keywords: Commercialization; Sports; Revenue; Sports Industry; Japan; United States

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Article

Effects of Cultural Ethnicity, Firm Size, and Firm Age on Senior Executives' Trust in Their Overseas Business Partners: Evidence from China

By: Crystal Jiang, Roy Y.J. Chua, Masaaki Kotabe and Janet Murray

We investigate trust relationships between senior business executives and their overseas partners. Drawing on the similarity-attraction paradigm, social-categorization theory, and the distinction between cognition- and affect-based trust, we argue that executives trust... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; Culture; Management Teams; Cognition and Thinking; Networks; Globalized Firms and Management; Partners and Partnerships; Business Growth and Maturation; Size; Trust; China

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December 1999 (Revised April 2000)
Case

Franco Bernabe: Reflections on Telecom Italia (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Kristin Doughty

In November 1998, Franco Bernabe left ENI to become CEO of Telecom Italia, Italy's primary telecommunications provider. Three months later, Roberto Colaninno, CEO of Olivetti SpA, an Italian computer and telecom company one fifth the size of Telecom Italia, launched a... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Mergers and Acquisitions; Planning; Telecommunications Industry; Italy

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05 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 5, 2009

foreign countries, the model predicts growth in the number of source-country firms engaging in foreign direct investment, growth in the size of affiliates that are active in reforming countries both before and after the tariff reduction,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2024
Case

Teamworks: Tackling a Forecasting Fumble (A)

By: N. Louis Shipley and Stacy Straaberg

In late March 2018, Teamworks CEO Zach Maurides learned Q1 2018 sales were at risk for a large forecasting miss. Founded in 2004, Teamworks’s software application assisted support staff in messaging, scheduling, and sharing documents with collegiate and professional... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Cycles; Technological Innovation; Sports; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Sales; Business Strategy; Expansion; Sports Industry; Technology Industry; United States; North Carolina

24 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 24

Journal of Law & Economics Deregulation, Misallocation, and Size: Evidence from India By: Alfaro, Laura, and Anusha Chari Abstract—This paper examines the impact of the deregulation of compulsory industrial licensing in India on firm View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2024
Supplement

Teamworks: Tackling a Forecasting Fumble (B)

By: N. Louis Shipley, Stacy Straaberg and Tom Quinn

In late March 2018, Teamworks CEO Zach Maurides learned Q1 2018 sales were at risk for a large forecasting miss. Founded in 2004, Teamworks’s software application assisted support staff in messaging, scheduling, and sharing documents with collegiate and professional... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Cycles; Technological Innovation; Sports; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Sales; Business Strategy; Expansion; Valuation; Sports Industry; Technology Industry; United States; North Carolina

Article

Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood

By: Hong Luo and Laurina Zhang

Social movements have the potential to effect change in firm decision-making. In this paper, we examine whether the #MeToo movement, spurred by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, led to changes in the likelihood of Hollywood producers working with female writers on new... View Details

Keywords: Gender Inequality; Social Movement; Scandal; Creative Industries; Project Selection; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Social Issues; Film Entertainment; Projects; Change

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April 2006
Case

Nutricia Middle East: Measuring Sales Force Effectiveness

Nutricia's Middle East and African region is transitioning from a trading to a customer focus. CEO Ernest Vandenbussche must decide how to market infant milk formula most effectively in a region where the information environment is much less rich than in other... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Salesforce Management; Customer Relationship Management; Emerging Markets; Nutrition; Performance Effectiveness; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Health Industry; Middle East; Africa

28 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 28, 2010

"lean," capacity-constrained firms. As demand varies, the industry switches between symmetric and asymmetric phases, generating predictions for firm size and costs across the business cycle. Surprisingly, increasing available... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

with a diverse set of companies. "In this way, we could pool all this knowledge and distill it down to the essential principles that CIOs can generally apply, regardless of industry or size of firm, while describing 'realistic' and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Wrapping Your Alliances In a World Wide Web

new digital economy, coupled with the growing size of the EC and IT sectors within the overall economy, we can no longer afford to further postpone attention to efficient business process interfaces between supply-chain trading partners.... View Details

Keywords: by Andrew McAfee

August 2021
Case

Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare

By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria

When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Industry; Scaling; Telehealth; Health Care and Treatment; Small Business; Internet and the Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; Growth and Development Strategy; Opportunities; Mergers and Acquisitions; Health Industry

July 2019 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Acelerex

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In early 2019, Randell Johnson, Founder and Chief Executive of Acelerex, was reflecting on the company’s first year of rapid growth and the challenges of scaling the business that lay ahead. Acelerex was riding the waves of change taking place in electrical power grids... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Energy Sources; Growth Management; Expansion; Global Strategy; Cash Flow; Energy Industry; Web Services Industry; Consulting Industry