Publications

07 Apr 2022
Blog Post

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

Battalion. While at HBS and SEAS (the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Weston built his own video game, Regent, and honed his product management and entrepreneurial skillset. He is also Co-President of the HBS Show Club and the Admissions... View Details

Kristin W. Mugford

Kristin Mugford is the Melvin Tukman Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Finance Unit at the Harvard Business School and the Senior Associate Dean for Culture and Community. She previously served as Faculty Chair for field-based learning and... View Details

Article

Currency Unions, Product Introductions, and the Real Exchange Rate

By: Alberto Cavallo, Brent Neiman and Roberto Rigobon

We use a novel dataset of online prices of identical goods sold by four large global retailers in dozens of countries to study good-level real exchange rates and their aggregated behavior. First, in contrast to the prior literature, we demonstrate that the law of one... View Details

Keywords: Currency Union; Law Of One Price; International Prices; Global Firm; Currency Exchange Rate; Price; International Finance

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October 2024
Case

Reed Group and Succession in a Family Business: An Impossible Job to Fill?

By: Lauren H. Cohen and Tonia Labruyere

James Reed had taken over Reed Group, the recruitment and career services company his father had founded and built, in 1994. He was now reflecting on succession planning and other challenges that lay ahead: with no obvious choice among his family members, he needed to... View Details

Keywords: Charity; Succession Planning; Family Business; Values and Beliefs; Management Succession; Mission and Purpose; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Family and Family Relationships; Recruitment; AI and Machine Learning; Employment Industry; United Kingdom; London

05 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software

employees on company time to make updates and edits to the software for community use that could be used by competitors? New research by Assistant Professor Frank Nagle, a member of the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, shows that... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Computer

21 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

The Pandemic Conversations That Leaders Need to Have Now

means closeness, and while social distancing remains important to mitigating the spread of COVID-19, psychological proximity—interpersonal trust, alignment on values and strategy, shared understanding of key facts—has never been more... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams, and Katherine Connolly Baden

17 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

Amazon, Whole Foods Deal a Big Win for Consumers

Source: 400tmax Editor's Note. Online retailing behemoth Amazon announced June 16 that it would acquire upscale grocery chain Whole Foods Market in a deal valued at more than $13 billion. Though the company has dabbled with the idea of a brick-and-mortar footprint in... View Details

Keywords: by Jose Alvarez and Len Schlesinger; Retail

September 2018
Article

Religious Shoppers Spend Less Money

By: Didem Kurt, J. Jeffrey Inman and Francesca Gino

Although religion is a central aspect of life for many people across the globe, there is scant research on how religion affects people’s non-religious routines. In the present research, we identify a frequent consumption activity that is influenced by religiosity:... View Details

Keywords: Religion; Spending; Consumer Behavior; Values and Beliefs

October 2009 (Revised January 2010)
Case

The Joslin Diabetes Center

By: Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg and Scott Wallace

The Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts is a leading center for diabetes care, clinician training, and research. The incidence of diabetes is rising precipitously worldwide, challenging quality of life with its complications and rapidly accelerating health... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Service Delivery; Medical Specialties; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Corporate Finance; Health Industry; Boston

02 Jun 2003
What Do You Think?

What Can Aspiring Leaders Be Taught?

ethics and values in isolation from the functional areas of study needed for business success." While suggesting at times that a stand-alone course in ethics and values... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2022
Article

Improving Efficiency and Reducing Costs of MRI-Guided Prostate Brachytherapy Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

By: Nikhil G. Thaker, Rajat J. Kudchadker, James R. Incalcaterra, Tharakeswara K. Bathala, Robert S. Kaplan, Ankit Agarwal, Deborah A. Kuban, Benjamin D. Frank, Prajnan Das, Thomas W. Feeley and Steven J. Frank

Integrated quality improvement (QI) and cost reduction strategies can help increase value in cancer care. We applied standard QI and TDABC methods to improve workflow efficiency and reduce costs for MRI-guided prostate brachytherapy. We constructed process maps,... View Details

Keywords: Brachytherapy; Quality Improvement; Prostate; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Cost Accounting; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Efficiency; Health Industry

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January 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Finova Group, Inc. (A), The

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Perry Fagan

Finova Group, a $14 billion commercial finance company, filed for Chapter 11 in early March 2001, in what was one of the largest U.S. bankruptcy filings of all time and the largest corporate bond default since the Great Depression. While in Chapter 11, Finova became... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Startups; Borrowing and Debt; Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Debt Securities; Price; Crisis Management; Bids and Bidding; Partners and Partnerships; Strategy; Valuation; Financial Services Industry; United States

17 Apr 2006
Research & Ideas

Resisting the Seductions of Success

Icarus, which F. Scott Fitzgerald uses to describe Monroe Stahr, may be the most famous example. We can understand that Icarus was carried away in an exuberant moment, but what about the men and women who have the time to see what they... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.; Entertainment & Recreation; Information; Publishing

31 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Distressed Employees? Try Resilience Training

times more likely to experience work-related problems than employees with chronic physical illnesses like diabetes or heart disease. So why do many companies fail to help their workers battle mental health disorders? “There’s a silence... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health

July–August 2025
Article

How to Identify the Perfect Cofounder

By: Julia Austin

One of the first and most important decisions entrepreneurs make is whether to go it alone or bring on cofounders. Many investors favor startups with multiple founders, believing that a team reduces business risk by diversifying skills, sharing responsibilities, and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Experience and Expertise

Article

Small States in an Age of Empires: The Duchy of Parma's Colonial Moment, 1750–1770

By: Arnaud Orain and Sophus A. Reinert

Often thought of as the "Athens of Italy" during the Enlightenment, and as a microcosm of the Italian peninsula and of the eighteenth century alike, the Duchy of Parma played a unique role in the culture and politics of the age. This essay focuses on its "colonial... View Details

Keywords: Duchy Of Parma; French Empire; Internal Colonization; Enlightenment; Political Economy; Small States In World Markets; Guillaume Dutillot; Étienne-François De Choiseul

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February 2005 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Haier's U.S. Refrigerator Strategy

By: Pankaj Ghemawat, Thomas M. Hout and Jordan I. Siegel

Haier, the first Chinese consumer durable brand in the United States, succeeded in the compact refrigerator, freezer, and air conditioner markets and then built a U.S. factory to enter the full-size market. Issues include the value of a local entrepreneur to the Asian... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Market Entry and Exit; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; China; United States