Publications

April 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Unilever's Response to the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

In February 2020, Nick Dalton, executive vice president HR business transformation at Unilever, reflected on the changing nature of work marked by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation. Launched in 2016, Unilever’s Future of Work... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Human Capital; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Structure; Transformation; Human Resources; Consumer Products Industry; Europe

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Jumia's Path to Profitability

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details

September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Supplement

Hitachi Rail Limited (B)

By: David J. Collis, Akiko Kanno and Nobuo Sato

This supplement describes the strategy and organisation changes made by British executive, Alistair Dormer, after he is made head of Hitachi Rail's global business. The company acquires an Italian company, continues to win contracts in the UK, but struggles to bring... View Details

Keywords: Organization Structure; Leader Selection; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Strategy; Global Strategy; Organizational Structure; Leadership; Mergers and Acquisitions; Integration; Values and Beliefs; Rail Industry; Japan

March 2020 (Revised February 2021)
Module Note

Corporate Strategy

By: Ashish Nanda

As a strategist, you must decide for your firm what products to produce, what customers to serve, what geographies to operate in, and what activities to perform. This note on Corporate Strategy, which introduces the fifth module of the RC Strategy course, offers a... View Details

Keywords: Scope; Corporate Strategy; Horizontal Integration; Vertical Integration

26 Apr 2018
HBS Seminar

Olav Sorenson, Yale University

07 Mar 2022
News

Risks to the Brain

September 2019
Case

Netflix: A Creative Approach to Culture and Agility

By: Ranjay Gulati, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

By 2018, Netflix had been credited for revolutionizing how viewers consumed entertainment—shifting from ad-fueled linear network programming to a highly personalized, on-demand, all-you-can-consume, ad-free model. The company was riding a long wave of revenue and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Technologies; Streaming; Video On Demand; International Expansion; Leadership; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Style; Management Style; Organizational Culture; Entertainment; Media; Change Management; Expansion; Technology Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

2020
Working Paper

Measuring the Cost of Corporate Water Usage

By: DG Park, George Serafeim and T. Robert Zochowski

We develop a methodology that calculates the impact that organizations have on the environment through their water consumption relating to water stress risk. Using the methodology, we derive estimates for four companies that show how assumptions on the geographic... View Details

Keywords: Water; Water Management; Environment; Sustainability; Environmental Impact; Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Organizations; Environmental Sustainability; Valuation

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June 2018 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Global Brand Management of Anheuser Busch InBev's Budweiser

By: Jill Avery

Brian Perkins, chief architect of the $6 billion Budweiser brand, was excited about 2018, in which the company would launch Budweiser into several new markets in Africa and Latin America. He was feeling the pressure to finalize a global brand strategy that would define... View Details

April 2023
Technical Note

Venture Capital Firms: What Drives Success?

By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

With the rapid growth of venture capital (“VC”) in recent decades, we might wonder: who succeeds at VC and why? This is a complicated question, as many factors come into play. VC partnerships are comprised of individual investors with varying backgrounds, experiences,... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment; Success

2015
Working Paper

The Logic of Agglomeration

By: Gilles Duranton and William R. Kerr

This review discusses frontier topics in economic geography as they relate to firms and agglomeration economies. We focus on areas where empirical research is scarce but possible. We first outline a conceptual framework for city formation that allows us to contemplate... View Details

Keywords: Agglomeration; Clusters; Cities; Innovation; Industry Clusters; City; Innovation and Invention