Publications

January 2011 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Paydiant

By: Jose B. Alvarez, Elizabeth C. Williamson and James Weber

Kevin Laracey, founder of Paydiant, needed to figure out how to launch a payment processing company with a new technology based on smart phones. Consumers had increasingly turned to electronic payment methods such as credit cards and debit cards to make purchases.... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Credit Cards; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Market Entry and Exit; Industry Structures; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Cooperation; Technology Adoption; Retail Industry

Every company wants to grow, and the most proven way is through innovation. The conventional wisdom is that only disruptive, nimble startups can innovate; once a business gets bigger and more complex corporate arteriosclerosis sets in. Gary Pisano's remarkable research... View Details

29 Mar 2012
Working Paper Summaries

An Exploration of Luxury Hotels in Tanzania

Keywords: by Diego A. Comin; Entertainment & Recreation

October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing

By: George Serafeim, Siko Sikochi and Namrata Arora

The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an estimated 700,000... View Details

12 Mar 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Allocating Marketing Resources

Keywords: by Sunil Gupta & Thomas J. Steenburgh

February 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Aleph Farms: A New Culture of Meat

By: Elie Ofek and Jeff Huizinga

Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech start-up, was hoping to play a major role in disrupting the conventional meat sector. Compared to intensive agricultural practices, Aleph’s cultured (or lab-grown) meat solution held the promise of considerably reducing greenhouse gas... View Details

Web

Live from Klarman Hall - Alumni

collective development of standards and crystallization of emerging demand signals, all paving the way for smart regulation. This session will focus on what (climate) alliances do, why individual firms/investors would find it difficult to... View Details

August 2018 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Hubble Contact Lenses: Data Driven Direct-to-Consumer Marketing

By: Jill Avery and Ayelet Israeli

As its Series A extension round approaches, the founders of Hubble, a subscription-based, social-media fueled, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand of contact lenses, are reflecting on the marketing strategies that have taken them to a valuation of $200 million and debating... View Details

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and serve on many established and start-up corporate health care/medical... View Details

Keywords: health care; insurance industry; medical devices; retailing; digital health

January 2013
Article

Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India

By: Shawn A. Cole, Xavier Gine, Jeremy Tobacman, Petia Topalova, Robert M. Townsend and James Vickery

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Household; India

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June 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Supplement

Vanguard Retail Operations (B)

By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Generalist Model; Specialist Model; Service Operations; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States

January 2023 (Revised November 2024)
Case

ELCA's Series A

By: Anke Becker, Raymond Kluender and William R. Kerr

Vu Phong and Xavier Silva co-founded ELCA to build proprietary software for their technology-enabled language learning tool. Since winning a prestigious venture contest in 2021, their number of registered users grew rapidly, as did the demand for new features like... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy

September – October 2009
Article

U.S. Energy Policy: Overcoming Barriers to Acting

By: Max Bazerman

Energy policy is on everyone's mind these days. The U.S. presidential campaign focused on energy independence and exploration (drill, baby, drill), climate change, alternative fuels, even nuclear energy. But there is a serious problem endemic to America's energy... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Climate Change; Energy Sources; Government and Politics; Cognition and Thinking; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Problems and Challenges; Non-Renewable Energy; Economics; Natural Environment; Energy Industry; United States

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07 Oct 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Specific Knowledge and Divisional Performance Measurement

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling

June 2009
Case

The Role of the Audit Committee in Risk Oversight

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kaitlyn Simpson

An audit committee chair considers how he can help his committee become more effective given the increasing regulatory demands on audit committees. He also wrestles with the lack of specificity in audit committee duties and whether his committee should take on... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Laws and Statutes; Risk Management

March 2010 (Revised April 2014)
Case

American Well: The Doctor Will E-See You Now

By: Elie Ofek and Ron Laufer

What is next for healthcare IT provider American Well, whose innovative Online Care technology allows physicians to deliver care to patients online in real time? Using American Well's platform, patients with non-emergency health concerns can communicate with physicians... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Service Delivery; Online Technology; Health Industry

July – August 2010
Article

Are You Ignoring Trends That Could Shake Up Your Business?

By: Elie Ofek and Luc Wathieu

Virtually all managers in consumer businesses recognize major social, economic, and technological trends. But many do not consider the profound ways in which trends--especially those that seem unrelated to their core markets--influence consumers' aspirations,... View Details

Keywords: Trends; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Product Development

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August 29, 2017
Article

How to Successfully Work Across Countries, Languages, and Cultures

By: Tsedal Neeley

According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, the number of people in the global labor force will reach 3.5 billion by 2030. Among the enormous changes this will demand are new skills, attitudes, and behaviors. A five-year study of the global workforce at... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Globalized Firms and Management; Employees; Competency and Skills; Success

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