Publications

December 2008
Case

Taylor Fresh Foods

By: David E. Bell, Natalie Kindred and Mary Louise Shelman

In 13 years, Bruce Taylor had built Taylor Fresh Foods into a $1 billion company and the top supplier of salads to the U.S. food service industry and to supermarket deli departments. In 2008, he was convinced that the time was right to make a big push in the fresh food... View Details

Keywords: Food; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain Management; Competition; Expansion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

January 1998 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Reading Rehabilitation Hospital: Implementing Patient-Focused Care

Reading Rehab Hospital has experimented with a popular new concept in health care--patient-focused care--intended to increase quality and reduce costs by organizing care delivery around particular diagnoses or "service lines," rather than around the functions or... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Production; Service Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Visits for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Provides practical guidelines for conducting customer visits to explore and validate demand for an entrepreneurial offering. Reviews conditions under which visits will yield superior insights, compared to other research methods. Describes criteria for selecting visit... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Entrepreneurship

December 2001
Case

Cybersettle

By: Michael A. Wheeler and Gillian Morris

Cybersettle's management faced a dilemma: How could they turn their company, which provided confidential online settlement services for insurance claims, into a profitable enterprise? Having started during the heady days of Internet "dot-com fever," the company now had... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Bids and Bidding; Negotiation Process; Conflict and Resolution; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Internet; Insurance Industry

Find at Harvard

October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Engine No.1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil

By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski

ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Global Warming; Impact Investment Funds; Hedge Fund Activism; Leadership Development; Business Model; Renewable Energy; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Governing and Advisory Boards

June 10, 2021
Article

Preparing Hospitals for the Next Pandemic

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman

The COVID-19 epidemic response has shown that the U.S. is blessed with heroic physicians and other health care providers, researchers, and facilities. But it has also revealed a health care system that was woefully unprepared for the surge of pandemic patients. In the... View Details

Keywords: Hospital; Hospital Management; Hospitals—administration; Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Investment; Health Care Operations; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Operations; Performance Improvement; Investment; Health Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

August 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Northvolt: Making the World's Greenest Battery

By: Jurgen R. Weiss and Emilie Billaud

In 2021, the demand for lithium-ion batteries increased rapidly, particularly for electric vehicles. Anxious not to be reliant on Asian players, Europe was keen on developing its own home-grown capacity to control the value chain, maintain employment in Europe, and get... View Details

07 Jul 2019
HBS Case

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

Chief Sustainability Officer and Walmart Foundation President Kathleen McLaughlin. “ we’re now a tech company as much as a retail company,” Mc Laughlin said. “This digital transformation creates new jobs, but, more important, it changes the nature of jobs, even... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

August 2008 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Polanco: A Fashionable Opportunity

By: Arthur I Segel and Ben Creo

Roberto Charvel is a young MBA graduate making his first personal real estate investment in his native Mexico City. Charvel is planning to purchase and renovate a nine-unit apartment building. Is the market good? Should he sell or lease the units? How should he handle... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Housing; Leasing; Property; Real Estate Industry; Mexico City

June 2005 (Revised September 2008)
Class Lecture

Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

By: Bharat N. Anand, Stephen P. Bradley, Pankaj Ghemawat, Tarun Khanna, Cynthia A. Montgomery, Michael E. Porter, Jan W. Rivkin, Michael G. Rukstad, John R. Wells and David B. Yoffie

It's great to have a blockbuster quarter or a revolutionary product or service, but true business excellence demands sustainability. Maintaining your competitive advantage requires a strategy that makes your business unique and carries you forward as the world around... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage

October 1987 (Revised September 1992)
Case

Hurricane Island Outward Bound School

Hurricane Island Outward Bound, a small, nonprofit school that helped pioneer experiential education in the United States, has recently recovered from a financial crisis. Students take the role of the school's new marketing manager, who is preparing his first marketing... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Nonprofit Organizations; Marketing Strategy; Education; Education Industry; United States

October 2020 (Revised March 2021)
Supplement

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations During COVID-19 (C)

By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in August 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are navigating Migros through COVID-19 and the unprecedented... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Crisis Management; Health Pandemics; Strategic Planning; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey

July 2016
Case

Cataumet Boats, Inc.

By: W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis

Jaime Giancola, an MBA student, has recently completed an operations management course in which aggregate production planning (APP) was one of the topics. She believes that her family's business, Cataumet Boats, which her grandparents started and which her mother and... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Family Business; Production; Cost Management; Transportation; Customer Satisfaction

March 2025
Supplement

Intuition Robotics: An AI Companion for Older Adults (B)

By: Amit Goldenberg, Elie Ofek and Orna Dan

Two years after Intuition Robotics opted to pursue a business-to-government contract with the New York State Office of the Aging, and put direct-to-consumer efforts on the back burner, it was at a crossroads. The partnership had been successful, and the company had... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; AI and Machine Learning; Resource Allocation; Business and Government Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Health Industry; Technology Industry; New York (state, US); United States

June 2010
Case

Playa Dorada Tennis Club: Expansion Strategy

By: W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Brent Kazan

Playa Dorada Beach & Resort in Boca Raton, Florida, faces a growing seasonal demand for tennis services. The number of guests is expected to double in the next few years, and while the tennis facilities are a popular and well-promoted amenity at the resort, court space... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Planning; Price; Expansion; Tourism Industry; Accommodations Industry; Travel Industry; Florida

2024
Working Paper

Climate Solutions, Transition Risk, and Stock Returns

By: Shirley Lu, Edward J. Riedl, Simon Xu and George Serafeim

Using large language models to measure firms' climate solution products and services, we find that high-climate solution firms exhibit lower stock returns and higher market valuation multiples. Their stock prices respond positively to events signaling increased demand... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Generative Ai; Large Language Models; Climate Finance; Climate Change; Innovation and Invention; Environmental Sustainability; AI and Machine Learning; Investment; Financial Markets

SSRN

Read Now

October 2023
Case

Vida Health: Transforming Chronic Disease Treatment

By: William Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller

San Francisco based Vida Health, founded by Stephanie Tilenius, former vice president of Commerce and Payments at Google, was a B2B digital health startup focused on the treatment of cardiometabolic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity. Its innovative digital... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Health Care and Treatment; Product Marketing; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Health Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California; San Francisco