Publications

February 2013
Case

18 Months in a Startup: Zaggora.com

By: Tom Nicholas

The founders of Zaggora reflected back on a tumultuous year-and-a-half in which they had generated, from just $40,000 in personal savings, a multi-million dollar sportswear enterprise selling Hotpants to women. These were hotpants not of the 1960s hipster variety, but... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Brands and Branding; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Finance; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry

12 Feb 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans

Keywords: by Doug J. Chung, Thomas Steenburgh & K. Sudhir

November 1997 (Revised May 2002)
Case

MicroAge, Inc.: Orchestrating the Information Technology Value Chain

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Kirk A. Goldman

MicroAge, Inc. started as a storefront in Tempe, AZ in 1976 selling personal computer kits to hobbyists. During their first year of operation, founders Jeff McKeever and Alan Hald sold $1.5 million worth of computer kits, priced at under $1,000 each. Twenty years... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Growth Management; Risk Management; Product; Opportunities; Horizontal Integration; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; Arizona

Find at Harvard

February 2023
Case

Grupo Sancor Seguros: Facing the Digital Transformation of Insurance in Argentina (A)

By: Jorge Tamayo and Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago

In 2020, Alejandro Simón, CEO of Sancor Seguros Group, a nearly 75-year-old cooperative that had become Argentina’s insurance leader, had to decide about the Group’s digital transformation strategy. The Group’s values and history needed to be considered during the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Transformation; Organizational Culture; Cooperative Ownership; Strategy; Business Strategy; Adaptation; Technology Adoption; Insurance Industry; Latin America; South America; Argentina

15 Aug 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Ryan Serhant: How to Manage Your Time for Happiness

Keywords: Re: Ashley V. Whillans; Real Estate

02 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

6 Strategies for Building Socially Responsible—and Profitable—Companies

A dozen years ago, Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim wondered why some companies operated with an eye toward the greater good, while most did not. Back then, he always got the same response: Corporate leaders thought social and environmental practices... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

November 2015 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Aspiring Minds

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

By 2015, India-based employment assessment and certification provider Aspiring Minds had helped facilitate over 300,000 job matches through its assessment tools. Aspiring Minds' flagship product, the Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT), used machine learning... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Strategy; Higher Education; Technological Innovation; Employment; Technology Industry; India; China

December 2015
Case

The Hain Celestial Group

By: David E. Bell, José B. Alvarez, James Weber and Mary Shelman

Hain Celestial manufactured natural and organic food and personal care products to be sold to retailers of these products. The company had grown successfully and profitably through acquisitions and organically for two decades. In late 2015, Hain faced challenges on... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Strategy; Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; United States

Das Narayandas is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His academic credentials include a Bachelor of Technology degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), a Post-Graduate... View Details

Keywords: advertising; beauty products; biotechnology; computer; electrical equipment; electronics; entertainment; federal government; high technology; industrial goods; information technology industry; internet; management consulting; manufacturing; marketing industry; professional services; retailing; telecommunications; transportation

Teaching Interest

MBA Elective Curriculum Business Marketing and Sales

Business markets differ from consumer markets in important ways. Typically, the buying process is more complex, the buying units and purchase criteria differ, and marketing decisions are more closely interrelated with firm-wide strategic choices. In addition,... View Details

June 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Driving Scale with Otto

By: Rebecca Karp, David Allen and Annelena Lobb

This case asks how startup founders make scaling decisions in light of their priorities for their business and for themselves. Otto was a technology company that applied artificial intelligence technology to sales. It deployed natural language processing to find sales... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Natural Language Processing; B2B; B2B Innovation; Scaling; Scaling Tech Ventures; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Finance; Sales; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology Industry; United States; Cambridge; New York (city, NY); Spain

13 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

Negotiating Challenges for Women Leaders

Women don't have a problem developing an effective leadership style. What they do struggle with more than men, however, is claiming the authority to lead, according to Hannah Riley Bowles and Kathleen L. McGinn. The gender gap in leadership is the focus of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

12 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

‘Let the Buyer Beware’ Doesn’t Protect Investors

that the Chinese wall was no protection at all for the independence of the analysts. Trying to sell IPOs, analysts gave glowing recommendations to firms which collapsed within months. Trying to support the stocks of firms previously sold... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

A Practical Approach to Sales Compensation: What Do We Know Now? What Should We Know in the Future?

Personal selling represents one of the most important elements in the marketing mix, and appropriate management of the sales force is vital to achieving the organization’s objectives. Among the various instruments of sales management, compensation plays a pivotal... View Details

February 2019 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Sales Force Management at Nobel Ilac

By: Doug J. Chung and Gamze Yucaoglu

Nobel Ilac was a Turkish generic pharmaceutical company marketing more than 100 drugs in 20 countries and, as of 2017, had over 2,500 employees worldwide. Nobel had implemented a transformation strategy—more specifically, a customer segmentation plan—whereby the sales... View Details

Keywords: Sales Strategy; Compensation; Employee Retention; Recruiting; Pharmaceuticals; Salesforce Management; Strategy; Organizational Design; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Retention; Recruitment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Turkey

Career Coach

Michele Biamonte

to best sell their experience/skills. She enjoys helping students and alumni think strategically about their job choice + life fit and how to intentionally incorporate personal interests (family, volunteer... View Details

Keywords: Education; Commercial Banking; Financial Services (All); Investment Banking; Financial Services (All); Investment Management; Financial Services (All)

28 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Ground Game, Air Wars, and Other Marketing Lessons From Presidential Elections

New research from Harvard Business School shows that mass advertising is better at swaying undecided consumers while face-to-face personal selling is more suited at closing the deal for those already leaning... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2020
Article

A Practical Approach to Sales Compensation: What Do We Know Now? What Should We Know in the Future?

By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Niladri B. Syam

Personal selling represents one of the most important elements in the marketing mix, and appropriate management of the sales force is vital to achieving the organization’s objectives. Among the various instruments of sales management, compensation plays a pivotal role... View Details

Keywords: Sales Compensation; Sales Management; Sales Strategy; Principal-agent Theory; Structural Econometrics; Field Experiments; Machine Learning; Artificial Intelligence; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; AI and Machine Learning