Publications

April 2006
Teaching Note

Business Plan for Room For Dessert (TN)

By: Michael J. Roberts and Joseph B. Lassiter III

Teaching Note to (899-008). View Details

Keywords: Service Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

September 2000 (Revised October 2006)
Teaching Note

Wildfire Communications, Inc. (A) and (B) (TN)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and John T. Gourville

Teaching Note for (9-396-305) and (9-396-306). View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Performance Effectiveness; Business Processes; Digital Platforms; Business Strategy; Markets

September 1999 (Revised October 2006)
Case

MarketSoft

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Diana S. Gardner

Greg Erman and Nancy Benovich-Gilby have assembled a team and selected a market for the launch of a high-potential venture based on using an Internet-based service to manage the flow of sales leads between principals and their distribution channel partners. Their... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Planning; Sales; Management; Internet; Web Services Industry

September 1999 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Juice Guys (B)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Sharon Lee Fox and Cynthia Rushmore Kuechle

The case explores who the customers are for a new beverage product, their desires as customers for this product, and their desires when ordering this product from a local specialty store location. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Commercialization; Customer Satisfaction; Food and Beverage Industry

28 Aug 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: History Matters

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions To Be Answered How can business history influence current practice? What can the work of View Details

Keywords: Re: Geoffrey G. Jones & Anthony Mayo

June 2008
Case

From xiaonei to hainei: The Quest for the Social Networking Service Market in China

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong

Wang Xing, the founder of Hainei.com, one of the fastest growing social networking service (SNS) providers in China, was preparing to raise funds from venture capitalists. Since late 2003, Wang had established several Internet startups in China. Xiaonei.com, which he... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Internet; China

Find at Harvard

October 1998 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Boston Beer Company: Light Beer Decision

By: Linda A. Cyr, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Michael J. Roberts

Boston Beer's current light-beer offering, Boston Lightship, has not been successful, and a student team is charged with investigating the problem and recommending a strategy. Highlights issues around branding, target customer selection, and cannibalization, and... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Brands and Branding; Customers; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Food and Beverage Industry; Boston

September 1999 (Revised July 2006)
Case

Juice Guys (A)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Sharon Lee Fox and Cynthia Rushmore Kuechle

The case explores who the customers are for a new beverage product, their desires as customers for this product, and their desires when ordering this product from a local specialty store location. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Commercialization; Customer Satisfaction; Food and Beverage Industry

January 1999 (Revised December 2000)
Case

Finale

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Michael J. Roberts and Matthew C. Lieb

Designed for use with "Room for Dessert" to show the changes between creating the initial business plans and starting to serve customers. Conforti and Moore have to both manage the business and deliver service to customers on a day-to-day basis in the initial location... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Business Plan; Entrepreneurship; Customer Satisfaction

29 Jul 2013
News

Opening New Markets for Black South African Winemakers

warnings that it was dangerous for foreigners to enter the township. Along with good food, camaraderie, and jazz, she discovered some fabulous wines with an added, rare distinction: they were produced by black South African vintners.... View Details

Keywords: wine; wine making; wine importing; Food Manufacturing; Manufacturing; Food and Beverage Stores; Retail Trade

04 Feb 2019
Blog Post

Presenting…an Alternative to Company Presentations: Evercore Grabs Attention with Interactive Events

When it’s on-campus recruiting time, employers feel compelled to create presentations to talk about their mission and purpose. To talk about challenges and opportunities. To talk about functions and roles. For Joanna Walker, Evercore’s Head of US Campus Recruitment,... View Details

01 Dec 2016
News

Takeaways

whatever you decide.” —Professor Joseph L. Badaracco (MBA 1978, DBA 1981), Managing in the Gray Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli photo by Allison Shelley (Getty) Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli photo View Details

Web

Speculation and Credit - Coin and Conscience – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

Brichet, after Joseph Franz von Goez (1754–1815). [Augsburg] 1784. 23.5 x 16.2 cm CE f1 x Plate twenty-eight from Exercises d'Imagination de Différents Caractères et Formes Humaines . . . Augsburg, 1784–85, of which plates one to... View Details

01 Jun 2007
News

More Faculty Honors

teaching and research. Professor Joseph Bower is the coeditor of From Resource Allocation to Strategy, which was named Best Management Book of 2006 by strategy + business magazine. A book coauthored View Details

Keywords: awards; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

February 2004
Case

WebSpective Software, Inc. (B)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Johanna Regine Naunton Blaxall

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology Industry

In 1908, with $125 borrowed from his father, Plough formed Plough, Incorporated by selling Antiseptic Heating Oil door to door. Over the next 65 years, Plough transformed his company from a small manufacturer of toiletries to a... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare

23 Oct 2019
News

Exploring Big Issues at the Intersection of Business and Society

applied to a wide range of issues,” explains Huckman, who co-chaired Viewpoints. The day opened with a keynote on “The Fragile State of the World,” by Rawi Abdelal, the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management, which... View Details

Keywords: Educational Innovation

October 2015 (Revised January 2017)
Case

UPower Technologies Inc.

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Liz Kind

The UPower founders, Jake DeWitte and Caroline Cochran, were recent graduates from MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering Department. They chose to attend Palo Alto–based Y Combinator's accelerator program to focus on building a "mini" nuclear reactor that would produce... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Power; Energy Markets; New Nuclear; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Marketing; Business ＆ Government Relations; Off-grid; Energy; Renewable Energy; Energy Generation; Energy Sources; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Business and Government Relations; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; United States

March 1998 (Revised December 2000)
Case

Siebel Systems (A)

By: Michael J. Roberts, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Nicole Tempest

The case describes the early evolution of Siebel Systems, a sales force automation software company, focusing on issues surrounding Siebel's use of systems integrators as implementation partners and the relationship between implementation and the selling function. View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Software; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Sales; Information Technology Industry