Publications

December 2011 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Bananas (A)

By: Eric Van den Steen

As owner and CEO, Wim Van der Borght had grown Bananas in 8 years from a 4.5 million euro company into a 40 million euro group of companies with a range of field marketing activities in Belgium and the Netherlands. The core of the group consisted of two companies —... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Competitive Advantage; Growth Strategy; Strategic Analysis; PVA; Culture As Commitment; Competitive Advantage; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Belgium

April 2009 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Barack Obama: Organizing for America 2.0

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Laura Winig and Aaron Smith

Less than a week before Barack Obama was due to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Obama for America (OFA), the president-elect's official campaign organization, announced the formation of a post-election organization, Organizing for America. The... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Political Elections; Marketing Communications; Power and Influence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet

December 1999 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Hunter Business Group: TeamTBA

By: Das Narayandas and Elizabeth R. Caputo

The Hunter Business Group (HBG), a direct marketing consulting firm specializing in reorganizing the sales and marketing efforts of industrial firms, uses integrated customer contact technologies (including field sales, telephone, and mail) as a means of... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Marketing Communications; Marketing Reference Programs; Marketing Strategy; Market Participation; Sales; Value Creation; Consulting Industry

03 Oct 2023
What Do You Think?

Do Leaders Learn More From Success or Failure?

on a wealth of field experience, is an argument for failure—intelligent failure. She defines intelligent failure as having four key attributes: “ it takes place in new territory; the context presents a credible opportunity (in relation to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

22 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 22, 2007

this case: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=807157 PSI: Social Marketing Clean Water Harvard Business School Case 507-052 Senior management at PSI, arguably the world's largest and most successful social marketer with impressive... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Bridgit: Persevere or Pivot?

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

In late 2012, Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake, two young women in their final year of college, founded Bridgit, a technology startup that developed solutions to simplify vital but laborious processes within the construction industry. In the Fall of 2013, after months... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Founder; Co-founders; Women Executives; Pivot; Startup; Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Product Launch; Research and Development; Competition; Construction Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Canada

December 2016
Article

Deal Process Design in Management Buyouts

By: Guhan Subramanian

Management buyouts (MBOs) are an economically and legally significant class of transaction: not only do they account for more than $10 billion in deal volume per year, on average, but they also play an important role in defining the relationship between inside and... View Details

Keywords: Management Buyout; Deal Structuring; Acquisition; Design; Fairness

Article

No Team is an Island: How Leaders Shape Networked Ecosystems for Team Success

By: Inga Carboni, Robert Cross and Amy C. Edmondson

Today’s organizations rely on networks of dynamic systems of “agile” teams to get work done. Teams are distributed, transient, and loosely bounded in service of responsiveness and innovation. The key to this new way of doing work is managing the networked ecosystem in... View Details

Keywords: Cross-functional Teams; Teams; Interviews; Leadership; Groups and Teams; Networks

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July 1994 (Revised April 1995)
Case

San Francisco Bay Consulting

By: George P. Baker III and Karin B Monsler

San Francisco Bay Consulting leads the field of economic consulting and litigation support in the application of powerful computers and cutting edge software to manipulate and analyze large data sets. The transfer pricing system, used to facilitate the purchasing and... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Profit; Marketing; Fluctuation; Consulting Industry; Computer Industry

January 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

HourlyNerd

By: Jill Avery and Joseph Fuller

HourlyNerd, a two-sided marketplace platform for matching freelance consultants with small companies looking for help, struggles to define a growth plan for the future. The company, started as a class project in HBS' FIELD 3 course, is assessing three growth paths:... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Lean Startup; Two Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Consulting Industry; United States

Research Summary

Other research activities

Apart from my dissertation research on the EU ETS, I am interested in topics such as foreign direct investment, global strategy, institutions and sustainability. I am currently working with several faculty members at Harvard Business School on issues ranging from... View Details

Research Summary

Management Control Issues of International Ventures

William J. Bruns, Jr. is conducting (with Sharon M. McKinnon of Northeastern University) a field study of control issues that arise in international ventures between U.S. and European companies. Bruns' research is aimed at answering questions raised by earlier... View Details

Article

Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization

By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri

We present the results from a field experiment on team diversity. Individuals working as door-to-door canvassers for a non-profit organization were randomly assigned a teammate, a supervisor, and a list of individuals to canvass. This created random variation within... View Details

Keywords: Ethnic Diversity; Organizational Behavior; Labor Management; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Performance

December 2020
Article

Consumer Reactance to Promotional Favors

By: Marco Bertini and Aylin Aydinli

Promotional favors are an increasingly popular but seldom researched form of price promotion where the receipt of the saving by consumers depends on an action on their part that is nonmonetary in nature, such as completing a questionnaire, posting a review, or making a... View Details

Keywords: Promotional Favors; Conditional Discounts; Psychological Reactance; Price Promotions; Pricing; Marketing; Price; Consumer Behavior

August 8, 2017
Article

Buying Time Promotes Happiness

By: A.V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Paul Smeets, Rene Bekkers and Michael I. Norton

Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse samples... View Details

Keywords: Time; Money Funds; Well-being; Money; Happiness; Satisfaction

2014
Chapter

The Language of Global Management

By: Tsedal Neeley

Over the last two decades, organizations seeking global expansion have been mandating an English lingua franca, or common language to facilitate global collaboration regardless of the country location of their headquarters. This article explains why stipulating a... View Details

Keywords: Language; Lingua Franca; Networks; Governance; Information Technology; Management; Ethics; Emerging Markets; Innovation and Invention

2014
Working Paper

The Psycho-Social Benefits of Access to Contraception: Experimental Evidence from Zambia

By: Nava Ashraf, Marric Buessing, Erica Field and Jessica Leight

In a field experiment in Lusaka, Zambia, married couples in the catchment area of a family planning clinic were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (N=503) or a control group (N=768). Those in the treatment group received vouchers guaranteeing free and... View Details

Keywords: Contraceptive Access; Mental Health; Zambia