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February 2014
Article

Learning by Supplying

By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Organizations; Learning

March 2022
Article

Contractual Restrictions and Debt Traps

By: Ernest Liu and Benjamin N. Roth

Microcredit and other forms of small-scale ﬁnance have failed to catalyze entrepreneurship in developing countries. In these credit markets, borrowers and lenders often bargain over not only the interest rate but also implicit restrictions on types of investment. We... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Entrepreneurship; Developing Countries and Economies; Financing and Loans

January 2007
Article

Acquisitions and Firm Growth: Creating Unilever's Ice Cream and Tea Business

By: G. Jones and Peter Miskell

This article provides a longitudinal case study of the use of acquisitions by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever to build the world's largest ice cream and tea businesses. The study supports recent resource-based theory which argues that complementary rather than... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Integration; Value; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Business and Shareholder Relations; Interests; Business Ventures; Employees; Food and Beverage Industry

2012
Working Paper

Learning by Supplying

By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley

Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Supply Chain; Competitive Advantage; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competency and Skills; Relationships; Telecommunications Industry

21 Feb 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Developing the Guts of a GUT (Grand Unified Theory): Elite Commitment and Inclusive Growth

Keywords: by Lant Pritchett & Eric D. Werker

Article

How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma

By: Tom Nicholas

In 1993, four years prior to the publication of Clayton Christensen’s highly influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the Business History Review (BHR) published an article by Christensen titled “The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of... View Details

Keywords: Clayton Christensen; Impact; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Research

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

06 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

Four Strategies for Making Concessions

Richard E. Walton and Robert B. McKersie's book A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System (ILR Press, 1991). The head of a manufacturing firm was preparing to initiate talks with the leadership... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

23 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

It’s Back to Business-Basics for Nonprofits

everything is not equally worth doing.— Jeff Bradach Bradach said when he moved from the classroom to consulting he was surprised to find so many nonprofits lacking a basic business theory to run their organizations. The philosophies of... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

10 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Top Scholars Say About Leadership

Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, recently published by Harvard Business Press, aims to give the topic its intellectual due. Edited by Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who will become the new Dean of Harvard Business School on July 1,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

an "invisible hand" that was largely beyond the control of individual firms. Competitive theory has been advanced at Harvard Business School, shown here under construction. The scope for strategy as a way to control market... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

Research Summary

Competing business models

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

Building on the literatures on competitive positioning and the theory of industrial organization, my work seeks to tackle previously unaddressed questions by studying situations where firms compete in dissimilar ways. Some examples of these questions include:View Details

08 Apr 2015
Working Paper Summaries

The Cooperative Solution of Stochastic Games

Keywords: by Elon Kohlberg & Abraham Neyman

May 2005 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Gallardo's Goes to Mexico

By: Clayton M. Christensen

The theories of market segmentation and brand building in Chapter 3, What Products Will Customers Want to Buy? in The Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor suggest that when companies segment markets and build brands in ways that match how the... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Global Strategy; Brands and Branding; Segmentation; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Mexico

Educators

November 2009
Article

Responding to Public and Private Politics: Corporate Disclosure of Climate Change Strategies

By: Erin Marie Reid and Michael W. Toffel

The challenges associated with climate change will require governments, citizens, and firms to work collaboratively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a task that requires information on companies' emissions levels, risks, and reduction opportunities. This paper... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Problems and Challenges; Pollutants; Risk and Uncertainty; Business and Shareholder Relations; Management Practices and Processes; Social Issues; Corporate Disclosure; Values and Beliefs; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government and Politics

2018
Chapter

How Geography Shapes—and Is Shaped by—the Internet

By: Shane Greenstein, Avi Goldfarb and Chris Forman

Book Abstract: The first 15 years of the 21st century have thrown into sharp relief the challenges of growth, equity, stability, and sustainability facing the world economy. In addition, they have exposed the inadequacies of mainstream economics in providing answers to... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Geographic Location; Internet

November 2010
Article

Beyond the Deal: Wage a 'Negotiation Campaign'

By: James K. Sebenius

While negotiation scholars primarily take the individual transaction as the "unit of analysis," this article characterizes the (new) concept of a "negotiation campaign" in which a number of individual deals must be put together, often on multiple "fronts," to realize a... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Deal; Management Practices and Processes; Value; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Sales; Partners and Partnerships; Venture Capital

October 1995 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Cambridge Consulting Group: Bob Anderson

By: Jay W. Lorsch and John J. Gabarro

Describes the situation facing the head of a rapidly growing industry-focused group within a consulting company. Highlights the dilemmas of being a "producing manager" (i.e., a professional who has both individual production as well as management responsibilities).... View Details

Keywords: Management; Managerial Roles; Agency Theory; Consulting Industry

Educators

2012
Working Paper

Clear and Present Danger: Planning and New Venture Survival Amid Political and Civil Violence

By: Shon Hiatt and Wesley Sine

Although entrepreneurs constitute a key economic driving force for many emerging economies, they often face unstable environments due to the failure of governments to maintain civil and political order. Yet, we know very little about how environments characterized by... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Developing Countries and Economies; Government and Politics; Crime and Corruption; Balance and Stability; Strategic Planning