Publications

January 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Case

U.S. Steel: Proposed Acquisition by Nippon Steel

By: Willy Shih

The case setting is the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel, which elicited a great deal of controversy. The purpose of the case is to look at the history of the American steel industry since World War II and understand how the steel minimill operators... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Business History; Technological Innovation; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; United States

September 2024
Case

TechEnergy Ventures: Innovating Through Corporate Venture Capital

By: Rebecca Karp and Lena Duchene

This case examines TechEnergy Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of the Techint Group, and its role in scaling innovation within the energy sector. Founded in 2021, TechEnergy Ventures operates with a mandate to invest in disruptive technologies to... View Details

December 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Ocado

By: José Alvarez, David E. Bell and Damien McLoughlin

In 2015, U.K.-based Ocado was the world's largest pure player in the online home-delivery grocery business and was gaining a growing share of the highly competitive U.K. grocery market. Ocado had made heavy investments in technology, including a highly automated... View Details

May 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Background Note

The Gig Economy: Leasing Skills to Pay the Bills

By: Joseph Fuller, William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg

This primer provides a comprehensive exploration into the gig economy and how it is reshaping global business. It shows how the Uber driver, the freelancing programmer in India, and the independent corporate consultant are all different variants of the modern-day gig... View Details

Keywords: Gig Economy; COVID-19 Pandemic; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources; Labor; Strategy; Management; Globalization; North America; Europe; United States; United Kingdom

25 Sep 2024
HBS Seminar

Nan Clement, MIT Sloan School of Management

Teaching Interest

Harvard Business Analytics Program

By: Michael L. Tushman

The Harvard Business Analytics Program is offered through a collaboration between Harvard Business School (HBS), the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Designed for... View Details

November 2024 (Revised July 2025)
Case

Polish Agro: Where Do We Grow From Here?

By: Willy C. Shih, Lena Duchene and Daniela Beyersdorfer

By July 2024, Polish Agro had grown into one of Poland’s fastest-growing agribusinesses, with €230 million in revenue, 82 employees, and operations across Northern Poland. The company supported farmers with essential agricultural inputs like fertilizers and seeds,... View Details

July 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup

By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang

The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Governance Compliance; Accrual Accounting; Financial Services Industry; United States

August 2009
Supplement

The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (CW)

By: Willy C. Shih

When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Disruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Cost; Cost Management; Business or Company Management; Time Management; Network Effects; Production; Hardware; Manufacturing Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

Program

The Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports

acquiring and developing creative talent and teams Make optimal business arrangements with talent and talent representatives Respond to advances in digital technology Capitalize on the explosive growth of online distribution channels and social media Develop strategies... View Details

Keywords: Media & Entertainment; Media & Entertainment

January 2010 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Transforming ASUSTeK: Breaking from the Past

By: Willy C. Shih, Ho Howard Yu and Hung-Chang Chiu

What happens when an original design manufacturer (ODM) firm tries to transform itself into a branded goods seller? The case traces the evolution of ASUSTeK from a motherboard supplier, to an ODM of desktop and notebook PCs, through its split into three companies that... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Disruptive Innovation; Brands and Branding; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Computer Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Taiwan

Web

Live from Klarman Hall - Alumni

real change. Short presentations from each disruptor will be followed by discussion focused on their examples of rethinking and disrupting business-as-usual to accelerate climate solutions. Video Recording Competition or Collaboration?... View Details

Teaching Interest

Overview

Chu's teaching focuses on businesses providing goods and services to the emerging middle class and low-income sectors that constitute the market below the well-served top of the socio-economic pyramid. In developed countries such as the USA, this may be 40-50% of the... View Details

Keywords: Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Emerging Markets; Low-income; Social Impact; Microfinance; Inclusive Finance; Impact Investing

05 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

American Journal of Sociology. While artificial intelligence promises to transform the workplace and disrupt the organizational chart, Zhang’s research suggests that middle managers will still play a key role even in innovation-heavy... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

January 2025
Case

AI Meets VC: The Data-Driven Revolution at Quantum Light Capital

By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan

Ilya Kondrashov, CEO of Quantum Light Capital, was driven to harness AI for identifying high-potential scale-ups. Collaborating with Nik Storonsky, founder of Revolut, the duo observed that most venture capital (VC) decisions were heavily influenced by emotion, with... View Details

April 2017 (Revised May 2022)
Case

King Digital Entertainment

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Davide Sola, Federica Gabrieli and Elena Corsi

Riccardo Zacconi was the co-founder and CEO of King Digital Entertainment, the video game company that had quickly established itself as the world’s leading maker of casual games for mobile devices after the sensational success of its game “Candy Crush Saga.” Zacconi... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Structure; Acquisition; Decision Choices and Conditions; Video Game Industry; Europe; Sweden

December 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Blockbuster Inc. & Technological Substitution (C): The Internet Changes the Game

Investigates how the rise of the Internet as a vehicle for renting and buying movies has disrupted the video rental industry and how market leader Blockbuster Inc. can and should respond to these developments. Explores how the emergence of e-commerce affects the degree... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Risk and Uncertainty; Decisions; Technological Innovation; Competition; Change Management; Service Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry