Publications

June 2014 (Revised March 2016)
Case

Relating to Peapod

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

Explores the relationships formed between consumers and the Peapod consumer-direct grocery delivery service, as revealed through an ethnographic study of Boston-area Peapod shoppers conducted between the Summer of 1997 and the Fall of 1999. Three representative case... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Service Industry; Boston

2007
Working Paper

Retail Market Structure and Dynamics: A Three Country Comparison of Japan, the U.K. and the U.S.

By: Jonathan Haskel, Ron S. Jarmin, Kazuyuki Motohashi and Raffaella Sadun

This paper compares structure and dynamics of the Retail Trade Sectors in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. This is done using confidential establishment and firm level data for each country. By using micro data we are able to perform much more detailed comparisons than... View Details

Keywords: Industry Structures; Market Entry and Exit; Jobs and Positions; Size; Performance Productivity; Japan; United Kingdom; United States

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February 2008 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Terumo (A)

By: David Godes, Masako Egawa and Mayuka Yamazaki

Terumo faces two challenges: how to sell its catheter products in the U.S. and its new “Solution Pack” in its domestic market, Japan. The case provides rich detail on the firm's evolution from a manufacturer of thermometers to a seller of commodity products like... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Global Strategy; Sales; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Japan; United States

July 2002 (Revised April 2003)
Case

QuickMedx Inc.

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Jonathan P Groberg

QuickMedx has created a chain of small kiosks, located in drugstores and shopping malls in the Minneapolis area, that cater to patients with a limited range of very simple primary care conditions. Service is rapid and cheap and patients wait only a few minutes to be... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Decision Making; Disruptive Innovation; Expansion; Service Delivery; Business Processes; Design; Management; Health Industry

November 1985
Case

Riverside and DEC--General Information

A negotiation exercise between Riverside Lumber Co. and the Division of Environmental Conservation about reducing the effects of effluent discharge in a river. Students are assigned to a role and receive confidential information including a scoring system detailing the... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Environmental Sustainability; Pulp and Paper Industry

23 Dec 2010
News

Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads named one of the best business books of 2010 by Strategy + Business magazine

Program

Changing the Game

investor, and other important negotiations. Details Achieve optimal results in key negotiations Realize better outcomes by increasing your effectiveness at the negotiating table Build more effective relationships with the other parties... View Details

31 Jul 2020
Blog Post

Building a DTC Brand Through COVID

blog series in which she details her trials and tribulations through starting a company. Today, she shares a special version for HBS. As my fellow HBS classmates flew off to their hometowns for their remote internships, I thought about... View Details

March 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems? (with video links)

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Kelly McNamara

As the case opens in 1999, several key leaders at BlackRock, Inc., then a relatively small asset management firm, are trying to convince CEO Larry Fink and others that the firm should begin to offer Aladdin—its proprietary analytics and trading platform—to other asset... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States

December 1992 (Revised March 1997)
Case

Peoria Engine Plant (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Amy P. Hutton

Describes the cost control system used at an automobile engine plant for labor and overhead costs. The finance staff prepares daily, weekly, and monthly variance reports against budgets. Department supervisors, finance staff, and the plant manager discuss the use and... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Cost Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Reports; Financial Reporting; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Auto Industry

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April 1996 (Revised June 1996)
Case

City Year Enterprise

City Year, a national, nonprofit, youth-service corps, decided to diversify its funding base by seeking opportunities to gain "earned income." In 1995, the initiative, dubbed "City Year Enterprise," had already launched its first project, a collaboration with the... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Partners and Partnerships; Joint Ventures; Social Entrepreneurship; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States

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25 Oct 2006
Op-Ed

Fixing Executive Options: The Veil of Ignorance

The latest corporate governance crisis is buried in the details of executive compensation contracts. Don't like the timing of the stock option grant you got or the strike price of the contract? No worries! It turns out that this is... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai & Joshua Margolis

December 2010 (Revised June 2018)
Case

The Pecora Hearings

By: David Moss, Cole Bolton and Eugene Kintgen

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee began a much-publicized investigation of the nation's financial sector. The hearings, which came to be known as the Pecora hearings after the Banking Committee's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Fairness; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Institutions; Debt Securities; Stocks; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Legislation; History; Financial Services Industry; United States

September 2020
Case

Summit Partners: Independent Vetcare

By: Victoria Ivashina and Terrence Shu

This case follows Summit Partners, a leading growth equity firm, as it evaluates an investment opportunity in IVC, a veterinary care group in the U.K. market. The case allows students to articulate and evaluate the investment thesis of this transaction. Additionally,... View Details

Keywords: Growth Equity; Investment Evaluation; Private Equity; Investment; Decision Making; Valuation

2019
Chapter

Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Xiaoyang Chen

Multinationals exhibit distinct agglomeration patterns, which have transformed the global landscape of industrial production (Alfaro and Chen, 2014). Using a unique worldwide plant-level dataset that reports detailed location, ownership, and operation information for... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firm; Economic Geography; Agglomeration; Location Fundamentals; Agglomeration Economies; Multinational Firms and Management; Geographic Location; Industry Clusters; Economics