Publications

September 2011
Case

Vibco Industrial Vibrators

By: Das Narayandas, Kerry Herman and Matthew Preble

Karl Wadensten, president of Vibco Vibrators, was deciding whether to grow his small company through a marketing push for one of two technologies that he believed could launch his company to the next level of sales, or if he should continue to grow his company through... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Marketing; Product Launch; Customization and Personalization; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry

05 Jul 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work

Keywords: Re: William R. Kerr; Retail; Consumer Products

January 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

The New Carolina Initiative

By: Michael E. Porter and Jorge Ramirez-Vallejo

The New Carolina Initiative case explores the process of fostering competitiveness in the subnational region, South Carolina, one of the poorest states in the United States. The case has been developed primarily for use in the course "Microeconomics of... View Details

Keywords: Public Sector; Poverty; Competitive Strategy; Private Sector; Economic Growth; South Carolina

12 Mar 2007
Research & Ideas

The New Real Estate

decreasing vacancies) coupled with continuing low interest rates. During the last year, we saw four big stories in real estate that underscore this continuing-to-boom market: record prices, new capital market instruments, and growing... View Details

Keywords: by Arthur I. Segel; Construction; Real Estate

06 Mar 2016
News

From the Net to the Masses

24 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 24

invest in platform quality in open-source and proprietary two-sided platforms. Open platforms have open access, and developers invest to improve the platform. Proprietary... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Teaching Interest

MBA Required Curriculum-- Strategy Course

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:

A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
How to generate superior value for customers... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage

Research Summary

Overview

By: Rajiv Lal

Developing a course for our MBA students on the opportunities and challenges in Building a Business around Smart Connected Products/IoT View Details

26 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

humans. “People were solving everything faster; self-orientation doesn’t seem to exist at all for AI,” De Freitas says. How does the technology need to improve? Developers still need to figure out how and... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

Spring 2013
Article

China's Quest to Adopt Electric Vehicles

By: Christopher Marquis, Hongyu Zhang and Lixuan Zhou

The Chinese government's effort to create an electric vehicle industry is a bold experiment in local and system-level innovation. It also provides a window into understanding the promise and peril of economic development policies, both for China and for the rest of the... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Development Economics; Emerging Markets; Green Technology Industry; Auto Industry; China

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Spring 2021
Article

Whose Job Is It Anyway? Co-Ethnic Hiring in New U.S. Ventures

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We explore co-ethnic hiring among new ventures using U.S. administrative data. Co-ethnic hiring is ubiquitous among immigrant groups, averaging about 22.5% and ranging from <2% to >40%. Co-ethnic hiring grows with the size of the local ethnic workforce, greater... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Job Creation; E-Verify; Immigration; Selection and Staffing; Ethnicity; Entrepreneurship

July 2023 (Revised July 2023)
Background Note

Generative AI Value Chain

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can create new content (e.g., text, image, or audio) in response to a prompt from a user. ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude are examples of text generating AIs, and DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are... View Details

Keywords: AI; Artificial Intelligence; Model; Hardware; Data Centers; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Analytics and Data Science; Value

February 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

What's the Deal with LivingSocial?

By: Michael I. Norton, Luc Wathieu, Betsy Page Sigman and Marco Bertini

Tim O'Shaughnessy, the 29-year-old CEO of LivingSocial, is growing a revolutionary worldwide business of "daily deals"—in which retailers offer a heavily-discounted product or service available for purchase for brief (often 24-hour) windows. The case explores the... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Innovation and Invention; Advertising; Brands and Branding; Management; Web Services Industry

12 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

How Can Financial Advisors Thrive in Shifting Markets? Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

collaborated with Dimensional Fund researchers Wei Dai, Kaitlin Hendrix, Wiebke Lamping, Savina Rizova, and Trey Roberts. To understand the growth drivers, the researchers compared firms’ service offerings,... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Financial Services

September 2006 (Revised December 2007)
Case

Go Red For Women: Raising Heart Health Awareness

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Marie Bell

In 2003, the $654 million American Heart Association (AHA) approached Cone, Inc. (a brand and communications agency) to develop a corporate sponsorship strategy that would raise $75 million over three years. Within 12 months, the AHA launched the highly successful Go... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Marketing Communications; Social Marketing; Nonprofit Organizations; Social and Collaborative Networks

May 3, 2023
Article

What Top-Performing Sales Managers Do Differently

By: Mike Schultz and Frank V. Cespedes

Sales managers hire reps, influence their training, provide (we hope) feedback and so reinforce good selling behaviors, and are key in the execution of growth and change initiatives. In a study of more than 1,000 sales managers and sellers across industries, we found... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Sales; Performance Effectiveness

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April 1991 (Revised November 1993)
Supplement

Cat Fight in the Pet Food Industry (D)

By: David J. Collis

Describes important developments in the pet food industry in 1989, 1990, and 1991, focusing on competitive dynamics among the industry's major players. View Details

Keywords: Competition; Food and Beverage Industry

December 1999 (Revised June 2000)
Case

Smithfield Foods, Inc.

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and David Lane

Smithfield has become the number-one pork producer and processor in the world--given all the changes in the global agribusiness industry. How does the company develop its future strategy? A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: Economy; Globalized Economies and Regions; Agribusiness; Globalization; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry