Publications

February 2023
Supplement

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (A) Courseware

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield

In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America

2008
Book

Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage

By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Joe Wheeler

Hundreds of large organizations worldwide have used the groundbreaking Service Profit Chain to improve business performance. Now The Ownership Quotient reveals the next generation of the chain: customer and employee "owners" of your business. Employee-owners exhibit... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Customer Ownership; Employee Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

December 2005 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Brighter Smiles for the Masses--Colgate vs. P&G

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis Yao and Filipa Azevedo Jorge

In 2000, Procter & Gamble Co. introduced Crest Whitestrips, a new, revolutionary product that allowed consumers to whiten their teeth at home. With Whitestrips, P&G created an entire new category in oral care, worth $460 million in 2002. Whitestrips sent P&G's main... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Advertising; Product Launch; Patents; Price; Performance Effectiveness; Consumer Products Industry

February 2017
Case

Shang Xia: The Creation of a Chinese Luxury Lifestyle Brand

By: Anat Keinan, Sandrine Crener, Jing Xu, Janet Borgerson, Jonathan Schroeder and Zhiyan Wu

The case traces the birth of Shang Xia, a joint venture between the Hermès Group and Chinese designer Jiang Qiong Er. Launched in 2009 in Shanghai, the new brand's core mission is to revive and promote China’s 5,000-year-old cultural heritage and leverage Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Luxury; China

Research Summary

The State of Small Business Lending: Credit Access During the Recovery and How Technology May Change the Game

Small businesses are core to America's economic competitiveness. Not only do they employ half of the nation’s private sector workforce—about 120 million people—but since 1995 they have created approximately two-thirds of the net new jobs in our country. Yet in... View Details

February 2025
Supplement

Align Partners and SM Entertainment: Korean Shareholder Activism Meets K-Pop (B)

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Billy Chan

Supplements the (A) case, HBS No. 125-065. For years, institutional investors had experienced very limited success in influencing the management of listed companies through shareholder activist campaigns in Korea. The common practice of circular ownership and public... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Public Equity; Stocks; Investment Activism; Music Entertainment; Corporate Governance; Success; Business and Shareholder Relations; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; South Korea

17 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

wouldn’t otherwise do, and good incentive systems create a market of sorts inside companies with a series of pressure points, Hall says. Whether it’s raising your hand for extra work, prioritizing innovative... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Should You Sell Your Digital Privacy?

in a recent working paper, Market Solutions to Privacy Problems? And what would consumers get in return for their personal information? Money perhaps, or price discounts, better customer service, maybe products tailored specifically to... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls & Sean Silverthorne; Advertising

03 Feb 2018
Op-Ed

How to Heed BlackRock's Call for Corporate Social Responsibility

Larry Fink recently created a shockwave. As cofounder, chairman, and CEO of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest global asset management firms, in an open letter to CEOs he caught the attention of financial View Details

Keywords: by Julie Battilana

31 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Marketing’s Conventional Wisdom

advertising; if you want to reach a narrow audience, you do niche advertising. But these marketers realized the best way to create cachet for a young audience was to make it inaccessible and let the kids... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Service

02 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

The lightning-fast ascent of generative AI isn’t the only sea change on the horizon for businesses in the new year. The global economy is in flux as war, climate change, trade issues, and infrastructure problems demand attention. Many companies continue to struggle to... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

25 May 2010
First Look

First Look: May 25

provides students an opportunity to discuss how entrepreneurs create markets for novel products, and how they can consolidate their position. Purchase this... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2006 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Codon Devices

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron

In December 2005, 40-year-old John Danner was about to make his first presentation to the board of directors of Codon Devices, a one-year-old biotechnology start-up based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a month as the company's CEO, Danner was prepared to lay out... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Venture Capital; Intellectual Property; Governing and Advisory Boards; Genetics; Competitive Advantage; Science-Based Business; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Cambridge

Find at Harvard

March 2023
Article

Giving-by-proxy Triggers Subsequent Charitable Behavior

By: Samantha Kassirer, Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki

How can we foster habits of charitable giving? Here, we investigate the potential power of giving-by-proxy experiences, drawing inspiration from a growing trend in marketing and corporate social responsibility contexts in which organizations make charitable... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Behavior

Read Now

March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
Case

MTN: Unlocking Value While Driving Socioeconomic Progress

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha

On March 10, 2021, Ralph Mupita the new CEO of MTN Group, Africa's largest telecommunications company, presented the group’s 2020 annual results and unveiled a new strategy to “drive growth and unlock value.” Despite MTN’s leadership in most of its markets, the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Valuation; Emerging Markets; Business Strategy; Financial Management; Information Technology; Corporate Finance; Telecommunications Industry; Africa; South Africa; Ghana; Nigeria

2022
Working Paper

Product2Vec: Leveraging Representation Learning to Model Consumer Product Choice in Large Assortments

By: Fanglin Chen, Xiao Liu, Davide Proserpio and Isamar Troncoso

We propose a method, Product2Vec, based on representation learning, that can automatically learn latent product attributes that drive consumer choices, to study product-level competition when the number of products is large. We demonstrate Product2Vec’s... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Choice; Consumer Behavior; Competition; Product Marketing

SSRN

Read Now

April 2015
Case

Carolinas HealthCare System: Consumer Analytics

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

In 2014, Dr. Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research and head of the Dickson Advanced Analytics (DA2) group at Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), successfully unified all analytics talent and resources into one group over a three year... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Segmentation; Big Data; Management Information Systems; Hospital Management; Health Care and Treatment; Marketing; Segmentation; Analytics and Data Science; Information Management; Information Technology; Health; Health Industry; United States

April 2024
Supplement

RHI Magnesita (B): Brick by Brick—Diversification?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, David M Wagner, Oliver Gassmann and Jordan Mitchell

In Part A, as of April 2017, Austria’s RHI, a backward integrated refractory company is still within the midst of merging with the next biggest competitor, Brazil’s Magnesita, while weighing options for future growth. Should the company pursue organic growth options... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Growth and Development Strategy; Diversification

2013
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins

After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company, Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz, sought to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes. Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide consumers with more accessible and interpretable... View Details

Keywords: Nutritional Information; Obesity; Weight Loss; App Development; Business Startups; Nutrition; Health; Information; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Information Technology Industry; Health Industry