by John Macomber - Publications - Faculty & Research

May 1998 (Revised October 2001)
Case

Taco Bell Inc. (1983-1994)

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Dave DeLong

Details the actions of John Martin, newly named CEO, as he leads Taco Bell through a decade of incremental and radical changes. By the end of the case, total system sales within Taco Bell, a Mexican style fast-food restaurant chain and a division of PepsiCo, have grown... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Transformation; Economic Growth; Food; Leadership Style; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Design; Performance Effectiveness; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; Mexico

Citation

Educators

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12 Apr 2013
News

It’s just the gravy

08 Feb 2017
News

How Immigrants Changed the Geography of Innovation

November 2013 (Revised January 2015)
Case

Obamacare

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Katrina Flanagan

One vote in June, 2012, decided the fate of President Barack Obama's crowning first-term achievement: universal health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court cast the deciding vote to uphold the keystone of the reform: the mandate to purchase... View Details

Keywords: Universal Health Insurance; Adverse Selection; Leviathan; Courts and Trials; Judgments; Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Government and Politics; Insurance Industry; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; United States

Citation

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15 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Five Questions for Paul Gompers and Josh Lerner

booms, we have seen the impositions of tougher standards by venture capitalists when examining whether to fund or refinance companies, a decrease in the valuations assigned to these firms, and a slowing of the frenetic pace of investment.... View Details

Keywords: by Carol Elsen; Financial Services

25 Jun 2001
Lessons from the Classroom

Machiavelli, Morals, and You

of one of the keys to leadership: the notion of accountability. Badaracco, the school's John Shad Professor of Business Ethics, uses the novel as part of his course called The Moral Leader, an unusual course for MBA students in which... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

10 Mar 2011
What Do You Think?

To What Degree Does the Job Make the Person?

(people who experience no hormonal change and cannot adapt) leave or are forced out." While ignoring the question of chemical change, dependencies that were posed by several respondents may suggest opportunities for future research.... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Mar 2019
Research & Ideas

Ignore This Advice at Your Own Peril

paper details the results of nine studies showing that advisors not only get offended when their guidance is disregarded, but they may punish those colleagues by denigrating them, distancing themselves—and in some cases, even severing the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

23 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative

good at associational thinking, or simply associating. They make connections between seemingly unrelated problems and ideas and synthesize new ideas. I would frame associational thinking by asking this question: Has somebody else in the... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons, Julia Hanna & Roger Thompson

13 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Public Companies Underinvest in the Future

Investment Behavior of Public and Private Firms," written by Farre-Mensa with New York University's John Asker and Alexander Ljungqvist, details how and why public and private companies differ when it... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

XTV: Xerox’s Attempted Recovery From “Fumbling the Future”

By the end of the second spin-off regime, Xerox's position in the copier market had begun to improve. While its share of the market would never return to 80 percent levels, Xerox was able to regain more than ten market share points,... View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough

09 Jan 2014
Research & Ideas

The Entrepreneurs Who Invented Economic Forecasting

instead, that economic activity could be greatly affected by policy gained prestige. Thus, even while Fisher sunk into poverty, his econometric ideas were gaining strength. Of course, the most popular economist of the 1930s became View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

22 Apr 2002
Research & Ideas

Does Spirituality Drive Success?

Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who moderated the discussion. He invited the panelists to discuss how they have the courage to maintain their openness or naiveté when so many people around them look to them to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace, Sean Silverthorne & Wendy Guild

16 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Peeling Back the Global Brand

Corporate Brands Crossing Borders In the second presentation of the Global Brands session, HBS professor Douglas Holt described a work in progress that he is conducting with HBS professor John Quelch and Earl Taylor of Research... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Retail

08 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

The Return of the Salesman

began to appear in the 1990s, with French historian Laurence Fontaine's Histoire du colportage en Europe: XVe-XIXe siècle, a work translated into English and published by Duke University Press as History of Pedlars in Europe in 1996. This... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

26 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Corporate Field Researchers Share Tricks of the Trade

smarter trades, according to the findings of a study by Soltes, an assistant professor at HBS, and David Solomon, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business. To conduct the research, the duo obtained investor meeting records from... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

08 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

The Immigrants Who Built America’s Financial System

of the many immigrant policymakers who played a part in establishing the foundational financial system of this country, along with Robert Morris [England], Haym Solomon [Poland], Alexander James Dallas [Jamaica], Stephen Girard [France] and View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services; Banking

25 Sep 2006
Research & Ideas

How Software Platforms Revolutionize Business

independent developers to build new features. The cell phone has become a lucrative platform for more than handset makers—also in on the party are makers of digital cameras, music services, and organizer software. Not only are existing industries being transformed and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Web Services

25 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Planning for Surprises

many U.S. airlines, the debt owed to customers in the form of miles is a value significantly larger than the airlines' market capitalization. This is simply not sustainable. Airlines have already reduced the value of miles by making seats... View Details