Publications

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18 Jul 2023
Interview

Jeffrey Rayport on Product Market Fit, Profit Market Fit and Whiplash, and More

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Doug Levin

This episode of "Lessons from Startup Life" podcast features Jeffrey Rayport, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Jeffrey specializes in teaching and researching growth-stage technology ventures and their scalability. Prior to... View Details

Keywords: Scaling And Growth; Start-up; Diversity; Equity; Inclusion; Technology; Business Startups; Product Marketing; Business Growth and Maturation

June 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Sony

By: Stefan Thomke, Atsushi Osanai and Akiko Kanno

Sony used to be synonymous with "innovation" and "cool products." The case reveals how the company lost its edge and describes the leadership initiatives to restore its former glory. In 2012, Kazuo (Kaz) Hirai becomes CEO and successfully transforms Sony, including a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Product Differentiation; Transformation; Leadership Style; Technology Adoption; Leading Change; Electronics Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Video Game Industry; Japan

01 Nov 2021
What Do You Think?

How Long Does It Take to Improve an Organization’s Culture?

(iStockphoto/skynesher) Most CEOs recognize the power of organizational culture and the impact that it can have on the bottom line. They acknowledge the importance of shared values and behaviors that influence the way an organization... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

10 May 2019
News

Bringing Art to the People It Depicts

Kasseem Dean (OPM 50, 2017), known in the music world as Swizz Beatz, was used to seeing Gordon Parks’ photographs in meetings with business partners and at the homes of friends who were not African American. It was far more unusual to... View Details

Keywords: photography; Gordon Parks; Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar Institutions; Arts, Entertainment

24 Apr 2014
News

A reformed fiscal policy is vital to renewing US productivity

marketplace while its people enjoy a high and rising standard of living. Vietor, with HBS collaborator Matthew Weinzierl, associate professor of Business Administration, and Marvin Bower Fellow, has found that US fiscal policy is eroding... View Details

07 Apr 2022
Blog Post

Product Management at HBS: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Learn by Doing

a mobile base building game called Regent, and by taking a series of elective courses across multiple disciplines, from artificial intelligence to data science to business strategy. The Product Management 101 class taught by Professor... View Details

01 Jun 2016
News

Making It Possible to Explore and Grow

doctorate, I started out as a biologist with an interest in biofuels,” he says. “Then I began working half-time on the science and half-time on business development. I discovered that building the narrative around the company’s products... View Details

November 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Disrupting the Meat Industry: Tissue Culture Beef

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Matthew G. Preble

Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product—made entirely from muscle grown in his lab—to give it the same taste, texture and appearance of a traditional beef hamburger. A previous iteration of this product had... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Beef Production; Environmental Impacts Of Food Production; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Netherlands; United States; United Kingdom

May 2017
Case

Four Products: Predicting Diffusion (2017)

By: John Gourville

One job of product managers, marketers, strategic planners, and other corporate executives is to predict what the demand will be for a new product. This task is easier for certain classes of new products than for others. For new consumer package goods, for instance,... View Details

Keywords: Diffusion Processes; Product Adoption; Forecasting and Prediction; Product; Product Launch; Marketing

02 Jun 2011
What Do You Think?

Is it Time for a National Bankruptcy?

dissolves the social contract between people and government." Phil Clark commented that "Those who go bankrupt lose sight of personal principle and beliefs. A country going bankrupt undermines itself and demonstrates its... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

2021
Book

The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta

Trust is the most powerful force underlying the success of every business. Yet it can be shattered in an instant, with a devastating impact on a company’s market cap and reputation. How to build and sustain trust requires fresh insight into why customers, employees,... View Details

October 2017
Article

American Danger: United States Empire, Eurafrica, and the Territorialization of Industrial Capitalism, 1870–1950

By: Sven Beckert

During the last third of the nineteenth century, a debate emerged in a number of European countries on the “American danger.” Responding to the rapid rise of the United States as the world’s most important economy, some European observers feared their nations’... View Details

Keywords: Atlantropa; Colonial Expansion; Economic Nationalism; Second Great Divergence; Economics; Global Range; History; United States; Europe; Africa

Find at Harvard

August 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Essential Explorations at MUJI

By: Tomomichi Amano, Das Narayandas, Naoko Jinjo and Akiko Kanno

Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had expanded significantly by 2019 to more... View Details

Keywords: Product Portfolio Management; Brands and Branding; Product; Management; Change Management; Mission and Purpose; Retail Industry; Japan

2024
Book

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity

By: Karen G. Mills

The second edition of Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, builds on the groundbreaking 2019 book with new insights on how technology and artificial intelligence are transforming small business lending. This ambitious view covers the significance of... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; AI; AI and Machine Learning; Small Business; Economy; Technology Adoption; Credit; Financing and Loans; Analytics and Data Science