Publications

01 Sep 2004
News

Joe Toplyn (MBA 1979)

and I started to learn what it takes to manage an unwieldy production process and to please the fickle consumer. Business school made sense to me because I liked to hatch ideas and make them happen. After HBS I went to work in consumer... View Details

Keywords: comedy writing; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Arts, Entertainment; Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries; Information

March 2025
Teaching Plan

Wasabi Technologies (A) and (B)

By: N. Louis Shipley and Stacy Straaberg

Teaching Plan for HBS Case Nos. 823-021 and 825-035. Set in 2019, the “Wasabi Technologies (A)” case centers on Wasabi Technologies (Wasabi), a successful hot cloud storage company based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founder and CEO David Friend is ready to scale the... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Product Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Divisions; Business Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Information Technology Industry; United States; Massachusetts; Boston

Forthcoming
Article

The Institutional Sources of Economic Transformation: Explaining Variation in Energy Transitions

By: Jared Finnegan, Phillip Lipscy, Jonas Meckling and Florence Metz

Why are some governments more effective in promoting economic change than others? We develop a theory of the institutional sources of economic transformation. Institutions can facilitate transformation through two central mechanisms: insulation and compensation.... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Business and Government Relations; Supply and Industry; Demand and Consumers; Transformation; Economic Systems; Climate Change

Find at Harvard

November 2010 (Revised July 2011)
Case

FreshTec: Revolutionizing Fresh Produce

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Ryan Johnson

Entrepreneurial produce packaging firm, which has developed a disruptive technology that keeps fresh produce and flowers fresh for significantly longer, faces strategic growth decisions. CEO Bob Wright must decide how best to bring his company's unique packaging... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Disruptive Innovation; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Launch; Supply Chain; Value Creation; Service Industry

September 1999 (Revised June 2001)
Case

eBay, Inc.

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Kelley Porter

eBay was the world's largest and most popular person-to-person trading community on the Internet. In early 1999, the company was doing very well and seemed to have solved many of its early problems. However, on March 30, 1999, Amazon.com announced that it was entering... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Planning; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Retail Industry; Web Services Industry

02 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 3, 2008

cultivators, especially on public lands. This reduced the costs of tenure insecurity. Political constraints prevented the government from subsidizing land reforms to a greater degree. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-023.pdf Quality View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Sep 2016
News

The Taxi Wars of Jakarta

almost the size of Kuwait. What’s clear, though, is that while this city is rich relative to the rest of the country , its city managers were miserly when it came to building the ribbons of roads and rail needed to bind its residents... View Details

Keywords: Jeffrey Hutton; Illustrations by Josh Cochran

05 Aug 2008
First Look

First Look: August 5, 2008

may not be a pure-strategy equilibria. In the standard case where marginal costs are weakly positive, there is no pure strategy where the lower quality B firm obtains positive market share. We also consider the case where A has negative... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

10 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Entrepreneurship in Europe

in the world is crazy." It's evident in labor markets, where the case of India and the software industry is just one example of how incredibly active things are right now. "Of course, the idea market is what scares us all,"... View Details

Keywords: by Kenneth Liss

20 Jun 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Fame, Faith, and Social Activism: Business Lessons from Bono

(about Martin Luther King Jr.). Savvy From The Start U2's business savvy in the earliest days serves as a lesson for any MBA student. In an industry notorious for its focus on short-term hits and for taking control of an artist's work and profits, the band members and... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Entertainment & Recreation

Web

Tough Tech Ventures - Course Catalog

strategies and tactics for managing risk vs. reward. Historically, most entrepreneurship courses (at HBS, and elsewhere) disproportionately focus on consumer- and /or software-centric business model and product experimentation tools... View Details

October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Technical Note

Design and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions

By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei (David) Huang

Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Analysis; Design; Business Strategy; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; Telecommunications Industry

Web

Strategy and Technology - Course Catalog

for technology-intensive businesses. What are effective strategies for winning in markets with network effects? How can technology be leveraged to build multisided platforms? How can firms create and capture the value from intellectual... View Details

01 Dec 2022
News

Case Study: Your Call Is Important to Us

the next decade, so I guess if you want to blame the system, blame me! The problem may be more nuanced. In 1984, I met with a senior manager at AT&T who said they had done market research and concluded,... View Details

Keywords: Computer Systems Design and Related Services; Professional Services

February 1996
Case

Chadwick, Inc.: The Balanced Scorecard (Abridged)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The pharmaceutical division of a diversified company has been asked to develop a Balanced Scorecard. Research and development projects take about ten years to bring a new product to the marketplace and the division depends on good relations and active feedback from its... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Research and Development; Product Launch; Commercialization; Consumer Behavior; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Evaluation; Pharmaceutical Industry