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March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
Case

MTN: Unlocking Value While Driving Socioeconomic Progress

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha

On March 10, 2021, Ralph Mupita the new CEO of MTN Group, Africa's largest telecommunications company, presented the group’s 2020 annual results and unveiled a new strategy to “drive growth and unlock value.” Despite MTN’s leadership in most of its markets, the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Valuation; Emerging Markets; Business Strategy; Financial Management; Information Technology; Corporate Finance; Telecommunications Industry; Africa; South Africa; Ghana; Nigeria

May 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Case

H-Soft Mumbai

By: Ramana Nanda

Siddharth Kapoor, the Founder and CEO of H-Soft Mumbai reflected on his meeting as he walked out of VC Ventures' offices in Mumbai. After a few months of intensely pitching his startup to several different investors, he finally had a term sheet in hand. Despite this... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Venture Capital Term Sheet; India; Business Startups; Investment; Venture Capital; Contracts; Partners and Partnerships; Entrepreneurship; Negotiation Offer; Decision Making

October 2009
Article

Managing Risk in the New World

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Anette Mikes, Robert Simons, Peter Tufano and Michael Hofmann Jr.

Five experts gathered recently to discuss the future of enterprise risk management: Kaplan, the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, who with his colleague David Norton developed the balanced scorecard; Mikes, an assistant professor at HBS who studies... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Capital Structure; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Risk Management

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2006
Working Paper

Managing Functional Biases in Organizational Forecasts: A Case Study of Consensus Forecasting in Supply Chain Planning

To date, little research has been done on managing the organizational and political dimensions of generating and improving forecasts in corporate settings. We examine the implementation of a supply chain planning process at a consumer electronics company, concentrating... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Business or Company Management; Supply Chain Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Planning; Electronics Industry

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24 Jul 2007
First Look

First Look: July 24, 2007

backdated stock options, insufficiently independent corporate board members, poor responsiveness to shareholders concerns, and a lack of transparency in the activities and decisions of boards. The AFL-CIO believes that such problems were... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

09 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Andy Grove: A Biographer’s Tale

edge. So these are all parts of Intel culture. Disagree and then commit. In other words, we'll listen to you. Let chaos reign and then reign in chaos. In other words, get as many ideas as you can—but once you do, come to a decision and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Computer

January 2023
Supplement

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details

December 1991 (Revised October 1998)
Case

Eli Lilly and Co.: Manufacturing Process Technology Strategy--1991

By: Gary P. Pisano, Steven C. Wheelwright and Jonathan West

Outlines the evolution of Lilly's corporate manufacturing strategy over the past decade. The corporate vice president of manufacturing must decide on the next phase of Lilly's strategy for the early 1990s, as well as to what extent and what role process development... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Management Practices and Processes; Industry Structures; Product Development; Production; Research and Development; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Manufacturing Industry

31 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 31, 2017

and raises questions facing key decision makers at the time. The cases ask readers to weigh choices and consequences and wrestle with momentous decisions, provoking them to rethink which factors made the difference between constructive... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

10 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 10

techniques for improving operating decisions during retail store liquidations and by demonstrating the performance of these methods in the field. February 2015 Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective Making the Business... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

24 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Do National Security Secrets Hold Back National Innovation?

research is unlikely to influence managers’ day-to-day decisions about whether to apply for patents. Indeed, many companies already attempt to have it both ways, as patent attorneys can use obfuscating language in patent applications in... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

05 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

What Companies Should Not Do in the Next Banking Crisis

difficult decisions over what investments to keep and what investments to cut. How they made those choices and what effect they had on business and national recovery in the long run hasn’t been well understood, however. Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Banking

16 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

How to Compete Like a Judo Strategist

"If you're going to have to face the music eventually, why wait?" Pottruck and his team made the tough decision to cannibalize their successful discount brokerage business in favor of Internet trading and ultimately integrated... View Details

Keywords: by David B. Yoffie & Mary Kwak

07 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 7, 2017

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53441 forthcoming Operations Research Letters Orienteering for Electioneering By: Kallenbach, Jonah, Robert Kleinberg, and Scott Duke Kominers Abstract—In this paper, we introduce a combinatorial optimization problem that... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

19 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 19

financial-statement users increase and contribute significantly toward the country's decision to adopt IFRS. We find that perceived network benefits increase the degree of IFRS harmonization among countries, and that smaller countries... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2019
Case

GRIT Fitness

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Olivia Hull

In December 2018, GRIT Fitness was a growing chain of boutique fitness studios offering a variety of workout classes, including weightlifting, high intensity interval training, and cardio dance. With 400 members and three Dallas studios, CEO Brittani Rettig believed... View Details

April 2010 (Revised March 2011)
Case

The Auction for Travelport (A)

By: Andrei Hagiu and Misha Sanwal

A senior Blackstone director is deciding how aggressively to bid for Travelport, a travel distribution business containing several key services and platforms. Travelport's most important properties were Galileo, one of the top 3 global distribution systems (GDSs),... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Product Positioning; Cost vs Benefits; Private Equity; Leveraged Buyouts; Competitive Advantage; Auctions; Industry Structures; Travel Industry

March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Teaching Note

Ransomware Attack at Springhill Medical Center

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan (Jason) Ni

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 123-065. In July, 2019, Springhill Medical Center (“SMC”) in Mobile, Alabama fell prey to a malicious ransomware attack that crippled the hospital’s internal network systems and public-facing web page. While the hospital rushed to... View Details

January 2024
Supplement

Frank Cornelissen: The Great Sulfite Debate (B)

By: Tiona Zuzul and Susan Pinckney

In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world’s leading natural wine vineyards. Its founder, Frank Cornelissen, faced weather related conditions that forced him to have to decide between staying true to the tenets of the natural wine... View Details