Publications

Find at Harvard

October 2001 (Revised June 2004)
Case

Harrah's Entertainment Inc.

By: Rajiv Lal and Patricia Carrolo

Describes a situation facing Philip Satre, chairman and CEO of Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. Satre was reading a May 2000 Wall Street Journal story that discussed the company's marketing success in targeting low rollers, the 100% growth in stock price and profits in the... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Marketing; Marketing Reference Programs; Performance Evaluation; Motivation and Incentives; Competitive Strategy

April 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Economics of Retail Banking Note

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Explains the financial operations of retail banking, highlighting profitability challenges facing the industry. For U.S. banks, it is quite common for more than half of the customer base to be unprofitable and to have relatively few customers make up the vast majority... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Economics; Cost; Banks and Banking; Profit; Revenue; Service Operations; Banking Industry; United States

15 Jan 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets

Keywords: by Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev, and Josh Lerner; Banking; Financial Services

2002
Case

New York Times Digital

By: Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble

In 1995, the New York Times launched New York Times Digital, a new venture dedicated to building a profitable business focused on distributing news context in multimedia format online. In implementing the venture, the company created a unit that was quite distinct... View Details

Keywords: Online Technology; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Newspapers; Business Startups; Journalism and News Industry; Publishing Industry

Read Now

20 May 2022
News

Big Tech Is Getting Clobbered on Wall Street. It’s a Good Time for Them.

22 Mar 2021
News

A Harvard Professor Brings 5G to M.B.A. Students

04 Feb 2012
News

Using Business Tools To Combat The World's Big Problems

February 2008 (Revised April 2010)
Case

The Globalization of East Asian Pop Music

By: Jordan Siegel and Yi Kwan Chu

This case on the globalization of East Asian pop music is useful for teaching concepts of regional business strategy and also of cultural arbitrage. Music companies in the case must examine why certain markets are clearly more profitable than others. They must also... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Globalization; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Business Strategy; Expansion; Music Industry; East Asia

March 2007
Case

Hallstead Jewelers

By: William J. Bruns Jr.

A retail jeweler has relocated to a larger store and is experiencing losses for the first time. Sales and costs have increased along with the breakeven point. Changes in pricing and promotion must be explored. Alternative actions to return to profitability can be... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Transition; Marketing Channels; Outcome or Result; Performance Evaluation; Opportunities; Commercialization; Apparel and Accessories Industry

19 Jun 2014
News

How Companies Can Use World Cup Social Media Boom

31 Oct 2019
Video

Anu Aga

Anu Aga discusses the decision India-based engineering company Thermax took in 1996 to devote a specific share of profits to social spending, and to focus explicitly on education, supporting schools and the... View Details

17 Mar 2021
News

Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper

Winter 2013
Article

How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes, James P. Dougherty and Ben S. Skinner III

How can businesses achieve profitable growth so that their costs don’t grow faster than sales? This article focuses on scaling a venture’s sales process and provides a methodology for identifying core customers and some implications for governance criteria and... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Growth Management; Sales

Find at Harvard

11 Sep 2014
News

America’s top execs seem ready to give up on U.S. workers

05 Dec 2013
News

Are U.S. Companies Risking Their Own Future By Not Investing At Home?

October 1995 (Revised September 1996)
Case

Dell Computer Corporation

By: Das Narayandas and V. Kasturi Rangan

Traces the evolution of the personal computer industry over the last 20 years and uses this as a backdrop to look at how Dell Computer Corp. grew from a small start-up to a multi-billion-dollar company in a decade. Dell is now faced with a set of decisions on the... View Details

Keywords: Industry Growth; Competitive Strategy; Profit; Computer Industry

2007
Working Paper

Competition in Modular Clusters

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard

The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated "clusters," "networks," or "ecosystems" of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, distribution, and system integration may be split up among hundreds or even thousands... View Details

Keywords: Price; Profit; Digital Platforms; Industry Clusters; Competition; Horizontal Integration; Vertical Integration