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August 1981 (Revised September 1985)
Background Note

How to Avoid Getting Lost in the Numbers

Provides some hints and tips to students who encounter difficulty in performing quantitative analyses of case studies. Describes how to approach the numbers and suggests devices they can use to overcome their problems. View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Cases

19 Dec 2012
Research & Ideas

How to be Extremely Productive

Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours, he shares more performance-enhancing tips on everything from how to sleep better on overnight business flights (window seat, no alcohol, earplugs, and eyeshades) to dealing with... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg

February 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Haier: Incubating Entrepreneurs in a Chinese Giant

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Nancy Hua Dai

CEO Zhang Ruimin must plan how to accelerate the growth of self-managed microenterprises. Platforms were Haier’s business platforms operating in five major sectors: white goods transformation, investment and incubation, financial holdings, real estate, and cultural... View Details

Keywords: China; Microenterprise; Appliances; Platform; Change; Innovation; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; China

January 1995 (Revised April 1996)
Background Note

Choreographing a Case Class

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Compares four different approaches to case teaching: lecturing, theorizing, illustrating, and choreographing a case. Argues the advantages of the "choreography" method from the point of view of students' learning. Concludes with a description of that method and some... View Details

Keywords: Cases

02 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

‘Retail Revolution’ Excerpt: The Scale of the Ecommerce Threat

However, with ecommerce we believe we are now at a tipping point for many retailers. Category killers are highly focused retailers specializing in a category of goods that succeeded against Walmart due to their deep assortment, aggressive... View Details

Keywords: Re: Rajiv Lal; Retail

19 Dec 2016
Research & Ideas

The 10 Most Popular Stories of 2016

Credit: iStockPhoto Startups often struggle to find their first customers—especially in the sharing economy, where survival depends on securing users on both the supply and demand sides. No surprise, then, that our readers flocked to a story about the early days of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

January 2004 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Texas Gulf Sulphur: The Timmins Ontario Mine

By: Henry B. Reiling and Maria Mercedes Camargo

Employees, officers, and directors of Texas Gulf Sulphur acquired or tipped off others to acquire common stock or options before and concurrent with the announcement of a major discovery of ore. The question is whether any of these acquisitions violated either federal... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Ethics; Stock Options; Lawfulness; Mining Industry; Texas

10 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Retailing Revolution: Category Killers on the Brink

generally is at a tipping point, with category killers being the first significant casualties of the (r)evolution that is occurring. Retail store asset productivity has been in decline since the start of the recession in 2007, and we... View Details

Keywords: by Rajiv Lal & Jose B. Alvarez; Retail

January 2023
Module Note

Network Effects in Technology

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

In business and strategy contexts, network effects are often accompanied by bandwagon (or herding) effects, positive feedback loops (or accumulated advantage effects), and market tipping (or winner-take-all dynamics). Though these phenomena are often grouped together... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Network Effects

2014
Book

Entrepreneurial Finance: Finance and Business Strategies for the Serious Entrepreneur

By: Steven Rogers and Roza Makonnen

Whatever business you run or plan to launch, Entrepreneurial Finance provides the essential tools and know-how you need to build a sturdy foundation that will support it for many years to come.
Entrepreneurial Finance, Third Edition, offers potent... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Financial Strategy; Business Strategy

2022
Working Paper

Can a Website Bring Unemployment Down? Experimental Evidence from France

By: Aïcha Ben Dhia, Bruno Crépon, Esther Mbih, Louise Paul-Delvaux, Bertille Picard and Vincent Pons

We evaluate the impact of an online platform giving job seekers tips to improve their search and recommendations of new occupations and locations to target, based on their personal data and labor market data. Our experiment used an encouragement design and was... View Details

Keywords: Online Platform; Digital Platform; Unemployment; Encouragement Design; Job Search; Jobs and Positions; Internet and the Web; Well-being; Outcome or Result; Digital Platforms; France

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November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas Eisenmann and Steven G. Blank

Provides practical guidelines for conducting market research to explore and validate demand for entrepreneurial offering. Explains how the research objectives of entrepreneurs might differ from those relevant to managers evaluating product or service offerings to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship

27 May 2011
Working Paper Summaries

An Empirical Decomposition of Risk and Liquidity in Nominal and Inflation-Indexed Government Bonds

Keywords: by Carolin E. Pflueger & Luis M. Viceira

21 Sep 2015
Book

What It Takes to Learn to Be a Leader

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

20 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to be a Customer

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge.99 percent of marketing focuses on how to sell to customers. Very little attention is paid... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

August 2004 (Revised August 2005)
Background Note

Online Auction Markets

eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon.com entered the online auction market within four years of one another, along with a host of smaller Web sites. Five years later, eBay clearly outstripped its competitors, despite the fact that Yahoo! and Amazon both had a huge installed base... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Auctions; Network Effects

August 2012
Case

ARISE: A Destination-for-a-Day Spa

By: Michael Beer and Lynda St. Clair

A new Dallas-based health and beauty spa aims to use a highly distinctive human resource system as the foundation of its competitive strategy. By encouraging employees to act as "personal wellness coaches" (PWCs) with high commitment and broad responsibilities, the... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Service Delivery; Competitive Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Health Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Service Industry; Texas

May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Melissa Wood Health: How to Win in the Creator Economy

By: Eva Ascarza

In October 2020, Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, founder of the digital subscription wellness platform Melissa Wood Health (MWH) and creator of ‘The MWH Method,’ was evaluating the strategic directions of her company. What had started as a way to share workouts and wellness... View Details

Keywords: Lifestyle Brand; Brands and Branding; Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Negotiation

March 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Technical Note

Note on Lobbying and the Dodd-Frank Financial Reforms

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

The note provides background on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, brief background on lobbying, and aspects of the lobbying effort by the financial industry and JP Morgan Chase with regard to Dodd-Frank. It is intended as a companion to... View Details

Keywords: Government and Politics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms