Publications

04 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

Should You Outsource Your Marketing?

Most companies already outsource a portion of their marketing function—advertising. But what about direct-mail management, lead management, or customer analytics? Increasingly, expertise in these and other View Details

Keywords: by Poping Lin

2014
Working Paper

Eclipsed and Confounded Identities: When High-Status Affiliations Impede Organizational Growth

By: Daniel Malter

I propose that an organization's growth potential may suffer if its identity is eclipsed by or confounded with the organizations with which it collaborates and competes. Using status as a salient feature of identity, I devise two network measures to capture the degree... View Details

Keywords: Distinctiveness; Status; Networks; Resource Acquisition; Growth; Venture Capital; Status and Position; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity; Growth and Development Strategy

SSRN

May 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Cotopaxi: Managing Growth for Good

By: Andy Wu and Laura Huang

Cotopaxi, an innovative outdoor gear business targeting millennials, focuses on profit and social impact. This registered benefit corporation was formed by Davis Smith who coalesced his experiences as a Wharton MBA student along with professional knowledge from an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Venture; Benefit Corporation; B-Corp; Retail; Consumer Products; Apparel; Social Impact; Social Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Product Positioning; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry

November 2000 (Revised October 2005)
Case

TiVo

TiVo is a digital video recorder that allows viewers to watch what they want, when they want to watch it. Fourteen months into the launch, sales are very disappointing. Brodie Keast, VP of marketing and sales, wants to combine a catchy communications campaign, product... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Communications; Product Launch; Television Entertainment; Innovation and Invention; Electronics Industry

03 Jan 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Banking Deregulation, Financing Constraints and Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by William Kerr & Ramana Nanda; Banking

2017
Working Paper

Management as a Technology?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain firm and national productivity, or do they simply reflect contingent management styles? We collect data on core management practices from over 11,000 firms in 34 countries. We find large cross-country... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices; Productivity; Competition; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity

SSRN

April 2012
Case

Renesas Electronics and the Automotive Microcontroller Supply Chain (A)

By: Willy Shih and Margaret Pierson

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan in March 2011 caused extensive damage to Renesas Electronics wafer fabrication facility, a critical link in the global automotive supply chain. Many OEMs sole-sourced customized microprocessors from the fab, so its... View Details

Keywords: Natural Disasters; Crisis Management; Supply Chain Management; Production; Strategy; Semiconductor Industry; Auto Industry; Japan

September 2019 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose

By: Mark R. Kramer, Myriam Sidibe and Gunjan Veda

Unilever subsidiary Dove soap became a "brand with a purpose" and created shared value when the company decided to launch a Campaign for Real Beauty to combat the artificial media-driven stereotype of female beauty that causes appearance anxiety in women and girls... View Details

Keywords: Stereotype; Body Image; Female; Self-Esteem; Brands and Branding; Mission and Purpose; Advertising Campaigns; Gender; Resource Allocation

June 2009
Article

How Concepts Affect Consumption

By: Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

Duke behavioral economist Ariely and Harvard Business School professor Norton explore how our consumption of concepts influences physical consumption, both positively and negatively. View Details

Keywords: Spending; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Power and Influence

Find at Harvard

Research Summary

Selection, Reallocation, and Spillover: Identifying the Sources of Gains from Multinational Production (with Maggie Chen)

By: Laura Alfaro

Quantifying the gains from multinational production has been a vital topic of economic research. Positive productivity gains are often attributed to knowledge spillover from multinational to domestic firms. An alternative, less stressed explanation is firm selection... View Details

Keywords: Gains From Multinational Production; Firm Selection; Knowledge Spillover

May 1992 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Richardson Sheffield

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Ashish Nanda

The case traces Bryan Upton’s 20-plus years as managing director of a Sheffield-based cutlery company and describes the strategic and organizational actions he took to raise sales and earnings at more than 25% annually, even as the local industry was in steep... View Details

Keywords: Human Resource Management; Human Resource Practices; General Management; Human Resources; Management; Leadership; Strategy; United Kingdom

March 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Corey Thomas and the IPO

By: Steven Rogers and Derrick Collins

Corey Thomas, the African American CEO of the company Rapid7, must decide if it is the right time to take the 15-year-old company public, as it stood poised to capitalize on what appeared to be the next frontier for digital technology markets—cybersecurity. In spite of... View Details

Keywords: Business Finance; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Internet and the Web; Initial Public Offering; Decision Making; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States

06 Feb 2013
What Do You Think?

Is ‘Conscious Capitalism’ an Antidote to Income Inequality?

with a new name The ideas are feel good and to be desired but will fail in the market place which gives capital the primary (and therefore only) stake in the outcome of social human enterprise." Jan Fersubg said, "Whole Foods (an example... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Forthcoming
Article

Arbitrage Capital of Global Banks

By: Alyssa G. Anerson, Wenxin Du and Bernd Schlusche

We show that the role of unsecured, short-term wholesale funding for global banks has changed significantly in the post-financial-crisis regulatory environment. Global banks mainly use such funding to finance liquid, near risk-free arbitrage positions—in particular,... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Banks and Banking; Interest Rates; Financing and Loans

February 2015 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Delhaize Group: Developing Leaders

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

Delhaize Group, the Belgian-based global food retailer, was focused on competing in the food retailing industry by developing leading positions in key markets via localized retailing strategies. Delhaize was committed to offering its customers superior value while... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Organizational Alignment; Talent Management; Leadership Development; Globalized Firms and Management; Human Capital; Talent and Talent Management; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Belgium

September 2024
Case

Barbie: Reviving a Cultural Icon at Mattel (Abridged)

By: Elie Ofek, Ryann Noe and Sarah Mehta

The 2023 release of live-action film Barbie, and its accompanying marketing blitz, incited a worldwide Barbie craze. Suddenly Barbie was everywhere, a celebrated icon reinstated at the forefront of cultural conversation. This goodwill stood in contrast to decades of... View Details

Keywords: Gender; Intellectual Property; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Public Opinion; Business Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry