Publications

September 2014
Article

Structural Models of Complementary Choices

By: Steven T. Berry, Ahmed Khwaja, Vineet Kumar, Andres Musalem, Kenneth C. Wilbur, Greg Allenby, Bharat Anand, Pradeep K. Chintagunta, W. Michael Hanemann, Przemyslaw Jeziorski and Angelo Mele

Complementary choices are important and pervasive yet occasionally elusive. Single consumers make complementary choices in purchase decisions (e.g., chips and salsa), product inter-operabilities (smartphones and networks), and dynamic decisions (current exercise and... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior

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June 2020
Case

Agile Consumer Product Innovation with Alibaba's Tmall Innovation Center

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Consumer products companies were beset by changes on all sides during the 2010s. Customers were increasingly turning to ecommerce platforms rather than shopping in-store. Meanwhile, nimble, digitally-savvy competitors were gaining market share by capitalizing on the... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Retail; Ecommerce; Alibaba; Consumer Products; Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; China

November 2012 (Revised August 2014)
Case

Cisco in 2012: Reorganizing for Efficiency and Flexibility

By: Ranjay Gulati, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Luciana Silvestri

In 2012, Cisco was under intense pressure to show results: growth in its core business was decelerating and a number of exploratory ventures and acquisitions had not proven as profitable as expected. CEO John Chambers vowed to restore the company's health in a way that... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Restructuring; Adaptation; Performance Efficiency; Emerging Markets; Information Technology Industry

March 2004 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Akamai Technologies

By: Benjamin Edelman, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Eric J. Van den Steen

As the leading content delivery network, Akamai helps Internet companies deliver Web site content to end users with fewer delays and lower costs. Describes the strategic management challenges facing Akamai in early 2004. The company is poised to offer its next... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Partners and Partnerships; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure

Nitin Nohria served as the tenth dean of Harvard Business School from 2010-2020. He previously served as co-chair of the Leadership Initiative, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development, and Head of the Organizational Behavior unit.

As Dean, building on... View Details

March 2010
Case

Target: Responding to the Recession

By: Ranjay Gulati, Rajiv Lal and Cathy Ross

Within 10 months of Gregg Steinhafel's taking over as CEO at Target, the U.S. was mired in the most significant economic downturn in 50 years. Top competitor Wal-Mart had positioned itself well for the crisis, while Target's same store sales began to slide. While... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Strategy; Operations; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Competition; Retail Industry; United States

22 Jan 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space

Keywords: by Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta & Mikołaj Jan Piskorski

18 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Breaking Through a Growth Stall

and reach their espoused financial goals. And you can see why: strategic direction is essential for sales effectiveness, and sales knowledge of actual customer behavior is... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

March 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Designing the Future of Work: Atlassian's Distributed Work Practices

By: Ashley Whillans and Gabriel Rondón Ichikawa

In early 2020, the software company Atlassian made a bold commitment: employees could work from anywhere—forever. While many tech peers reversed course on remote work, Atlassian worked to optimize their fully distributed model across 13 countries. This case follows... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Working Conditions; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Organizational Culture; Business Strategy; Employees; Technology Industry

23 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Break Your Addiction to Service Heroes

your biggest buckets of cost and rethinking those strategically in ways that give your customers something they value," notes Frei, the UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Service

February 2019 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Sales Force Management at Nobel Ilac

By: Doug J. Chung and Gamze Yucaoglu

Nobel Ilac was a Turkish generic pharmaceutical company marketing more than 100 drugs in 20 countries and, as of 2017, had over 2,500 employees worldwide. Nobel had implemented a transformation strategy—more specifically, a customer segmentation plan—whereby the sales... View Details

Keywords: Sales Strategy; Compensation; Employee Retention; Recruiting; Pharmaceuticals; Salesforce Management; Strategy; Organizational Design; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Retention; Recruitment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Turkey

August 2002 (Revised February 2005)
Case

Gillette Company (B): Leadership for Change

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and James Weber

Describes the actions and behavior of a new CEO in his first days and weeks as he sets expectations for his top management team and introduces processes and disciplines to begin the turnaround of a global consumer products company. View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Policy; Change Management; Leading Change; Motivation and Incentives; Strategic Planning; Retail Industry

Article

Financial Shame Spirals: How Shame Intensifies Financial Hardship

By: Joe J. Gladstone, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Adam Eric Greenberg and Adam D. Galinsky

Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110)—including data from customer bank account histories and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Hardship; Financial Decision-making; Shame; Guilt; Personal Finance; Financial Condition; Decision Making; Emotions

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05 Jun 2007
First Look

First Look: June 5, 2007

brand mix that would be carried. Results from the pilot store (a remodeled hypermarket in Beijing) were encouraging, with revenues and profits up and customers spending more on each visit. The company must decide how quickly to roll out... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

August 2014 (Revised August 2015)
Supplement

Opening the Valve: From Software to Hardware (B)

By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats

Valve, one of the world's top video game software companies, has also become an iconic example of an organization with virtually no hierarchy. A 400-person organization, Valve's unique organizational form (described in detail in the case and accompanying employee... View Details

August 2006 (Revised February 2009)
Case

Tanishq: Positioning to Capture the Indian Woman's Heart

By: Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman

The firm has to choose between an established brand, Tanishq, and a new skunkworks brand, GoldPlus, to go after the Indian plain gold jewelry market: Tanishq, initially targeted at a western customer, has undergone strategic retooling and has currently been... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Segmentation; Apparel and Accessories Industry; India