Publications

30 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 30, 2019

Evidence from the Hospital Industry By: Dafny, Leemore S., Katherine Ho, and Robin S. Lee Abstract—We consider the effect of mergers between firms whose products are not viewed as direct substitutes for the same good or service but are... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

December 2023 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Boortmalt: The Master Maltster

By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B Alvarez, Damien McLoughlin, Lena Duchene and Emer Moloney

By May 2023, Boortmalt was the world’s leading producer of malt, with a production capacity of 3 million tonnes, 15% of global market share, and 27 malting plants across five continents. It had recently acquired a major competitor and had sustained an EBITDA growth of... View Details

04 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 4

firms to make certain enhancements public, creating an incentive for firms to free ride on the contributions of others. This practice raises a number of puzzling issues. First, why should a firm further develop a product if competitors... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

20 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Panama Canal: Troubled History, Astounding Turnaround

West Coast headed to eastern ports, with a smaller flow of manufactured goods and agricultural products headed the other way. The canal supercharged the growth of the West Coast (at the expense of Venezuela in oil and the South in timber)... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Transportation

25 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

When Your Passion Works Against You

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-year absence, the company he co-founded was dispirited, rudderless, and near bankruptcy. In a staff meeting, Jobs shared his plan for revitalizing the struggling brand, touching on one... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

The Future of IT Consulting

to automatically direct product to geographical points of demand. Q: Can you describe some of the enablers and drivers behind the growth of the IT consulting industry? How has globalization impacted this growth? A: The enablers and... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Consulting

23 Nov 2021
Research & Ideas

The Vinyl Renaissance: Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf

product is made." Vinyl is really interesting because I can’t think of many other products that kids will buy that were cool for their parents. Usually it’s like, “Oh, my parents like that stuff. I don’t... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Music

09 Jan 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Economic Transition and Private-Sector Labor Demand: Evidence from Urban China

Keywords: by Lakshmi Iyer, Xin Meng, Nancy Qian & Xiaoxue Zhao

07 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 7

strategies for launching them for 10 years. In this article he draws on research on dozens of platform sites and products to offer a framework for building a successful platform business. It involves asking five basic questions: (1) Can I... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Mar 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business

This word cloud is composed of blog posts by more than 900 students describing how individual organizations are likely to be affected by climate change. Image by Patrick Clapp Last fall, first-year MBA students at Harvard Business School received a new assignment in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Green Technology

April 2021
Case

Codecademy: Where to Next?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman

In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with his Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for computer science literacy and... View Details

Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Business Model; Change Management; Venture Capital; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Teams; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Network Effects; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; United States

27 Jul 2010
First Look

First Look: July 27

Hampshire's Squam Lake. Their goal: the mapping of a long-term plan for financial regulation reform. The Squam Lake Report distills the wealth of insights from the ongoing collaboration that began at these meetings and provides a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

21 Mar 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, March 21

activity the CEOs undertake during one workweek and (ii) a machine learning algorithm that projects these data onto scalar CEO behavior indices. Low values of the index are associated with plant visits and one-on-one meetings with View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2018
Case

Yatooq: Longing for Arabic Coffee

By: Mark Roberge, Gamze Yucaoglu and Samer Al-Rachedy

As one of the few female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, Lateefa Alwaalan had been trying to produce the perfect cup of Arabic coffee for over a decade. In 2007, she began testing various coffee blends, which she later branded Yatooq, the Arabic word for “craving” or... View Details

31 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 31

Authors:Geoffrey Jones and Asli M. Colpan Publication:Chap. 3 in The Oxford Handbook of Business Groups Abstract Business groups—collections of legally independent firms interconnected by multiple economic and social linkages that exhibit widely diversified View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

27 Nov 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Secrets for Creating a Long-Lasting Brand

Longchamp Luxury Brand?Does an affordable luxury product work against the top-tier brand? L.A. Philharmonic Shows the American Symphony Orchestra Isn’t Dead YetLike many symphony orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic lost touch with... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

04 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

How a Juicy Brand Came Back to Life

Rush Limbaugh. Stern was an especially effective spokesperson. He got to know the founders of the business personally and conveyed to his listeners a genuine and infectious regard for the products and the people behind them. The brand's... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Food & Beverage

16 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 16, 2019

ideas, assesses their importance today, and explores their potential for the future. Through its wide historical focus, this Reader challenges the widespread assumption that creativity research is mainly a product of the second half of... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy

By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma

In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the... View Details