Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,253)
- Faculty Publications (1,011)
- August 2000 (Revised February 2003)
- Case
Borders Group, Inc.
By: Zeynep Ton and Ananth Raman
Describes Borders Group, a well-known retail chain, in late 1999 and its traditional strengths and rapid growth in the 1990s. By 1990, however, the company had fallen behind Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble in leveraging the Internet for book retailing, although it... View Details
Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Distribution Channels; Service Operations; Business Growth and Maturation; Economic Growth; Industry Growth; Growth and Development; Internet; Business Model; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Supply and Industry; Retail Industry; Publishing Industry
- July 2000 (Revised August 2000)
- Case
AllHerb.com: Evolution of an E-tailer
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Christina L. Darwall
Serial entrepreneur Ken Hakuta, in the second year of his latest venture, reconsiders his original strategy of maintaining an independent, self-funded, self-led company. His Internet herbal remedy company, AllHerb.com, has already enjoyed considerable success with its... View Details
- July 2000 (Revised October 2000)
- Case
Petstore.com
Petstore.com is one of four contenders for leadership in the highly competitive online pet supply business. Petstore.com faces decisions regarding potential merger partners and how to brand its service within the website managed by its ultimate merger partner,... View Details
- July 2000
- Background Note
Industry Transformation
By: Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin
One of the steepest challenges a strategist faces is to navigate his or her company through a period of industry transformation--an era of rapid and wholesale changes in industry structure. This note considers how periods of transformation typically unfold. It then... View Details
- July 2000 (Revised September 2005)
- Case
BMG Entertainment
By: Jan W. Rivkin and Gerrit Meier
As dramatic changes in technology and customer tastes roil the music industry, the top executives of BMG Entertainment, one of the world's largest record companies, must decide how to organize for digital distribution of music. This case includes a brief history of the... View Details
- April 2000 (Revised November 2003)
- Case
H. E. Butt Grocery Company: The New Digital Strategy (A)
By: F. Warren McFarlan and Melissa Dailey
Shows how the company's IT priorities have moved from primary supply chain restructuring to e-commerce. Shows the new organization structure created by the company. View Details
- April 2000
- Background Note
Aligning Incentives for Supply Chain Efficiency
By: V.G. Narayanan and Ananth Raman
Introduces students to the basics of principal-agency theory as it applies to supply chains. Operational problems in supply chains can often be traced to incentive issues. Students and managers lack frameworks to analyze incentive problems in supply chains. This note... View Details
- April 2000
- Article
The Fable of Fisher Body
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber
General Motors' (GM) acquisition of Fisher Body is the classic example of market failure in the literature on contracts and the theory of the firm. According to the standard account, GM merged vertically with Fisher Body in 1926, a maker of auto bodies, because of... View Details
- February 2000 (Revised March 2000)
- Case
Owens & Minor, Inc. (B)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
After a manager at Owens & Minor, a national medical and surgical distribution company, proposes and develops a formalized activity-based pricing and activity-based management approach to sales and service provision, this case explore the outcome. View Details
- February 2000 (Revised December 2000)
- Case
Staples.com
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Joanna M. Jacobson and Gillian Morris
Staples.com, the online unit of the U.S. office supplies retailing chain Staples, faces a range of strategic and organizational issues as it accelerates its growth. Should it pursue only existing Staples customers or consumers who do not shop in Staples stores? How... View Details
- February 2000 (Revised February 2002)
- Case
Owens & Minor, Inc. (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
A forward-thinking manager at Owens & Minor (O&M), a large national medical and surgical distribution company, enlisted the help of both logistics and cost managers to develop an innovative pricing schedule based on the customer's activities instead of the price of the... View Details
- February 2000 (Revised November 2002)
- Case
QuickenInsurance: The Race to Click and Close (A)
ES Technologies started in 1976 as a storefront in Tempe, Arizona selling personal computer kits to hobbyists. Twenty years later, revenues exceeded $3.5 billion, and the business had evolved from a computer store to a master reseller and full-line integrator of... View Details
- February 2000 (Revised September 2002)
- Case
Forever: De Beers and U.S. Antitrust Law
By: Debora L. Spar and Jennifer Burns
For over a century, the international diamond market has been dominated by one of the most successful cartels on earth. Run by the legendary De Beers Corp., the cartel has managed to keep diamond prices increasing and to prevent the defection that dooms most other... View Details
- January 2000
- Article
Coordinating and Managing Supply Chains: The General Manager's Role
By: A. Raman
- January 2000
- Article
Retailing and Supply Chains in the Information World
By: J. H. Hammond, F.A. Abernathy, J.T. Dunlop and D. Weil
- November 1999 (Revised June 2002)
- Case
Debate Over Unbundling General Motors: The Delphi Divestiture and Other Possible Transactions, The
Ever since General Motors (GM) announced in February 1997 its intention to divest Delphi Automotive Systems--its upstream parts manufacturing operations--Wall Street had called for further unbundling, and various stakeholders competed for their claim of value... View Details
- September 1999 (Revised October 2000)
- Case
Eggrock Partners, LLC (A)
By: Thomas J. DeLong, Myra M. Hart and Sharon Peyus
Explores the challenges of choosing how to grow a professional services firm (PSF). Before developing a growth strategy, the partners need to agree on what business(es) the company should be in. Each of the three partners has differing views of what the company should... View Details
- August 1999 (Revised January 2002)
- Case
Brita Products Company, The
By: John A. Deighton
Clorox's Brita skillfully exploits a tide of water safety concerns, growing a home water (filtration) business from inception to a 15% U.S. household penetration in ten years. The dilemma in the case arises as the period of increasing returns seems to be drawing to a... View Details
- August 1999 (Revised May 2000)
- Case
E Ink
By: Teresa M. Amabile and Susan Archambault
E Ink is a high-technology start-up attempting to revolutionize print communication through electronic ink displays. The founders and top managers of this two-year-old firm are striving to translate a technological breakthrough into a working prototype, move from... View Details
- July 1999 (Revised January 2000)
- Case
Yahoo!: Business on Internet Time
By: Jan W. Rivkin and Jay R. Girotto
In the wake of major competitive moves, CEO Tim Koogle and his senior team at Yahoo!, an Internet portal, must decide whether and how to adjust their strategy. Following deals between AOL and Netscape, Excite and @Home, Infoseek and Disney, and Snap and NBS, Yahoo!... View Details