Publications

22 Oct 2014
News

Aligning Strategy and Sales with Frank Cespedes

07 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Giving Back: Consumers Care More About How Companies Donate Than How Much

seems like a sizable portion of the firm’s earnings. In fact, consumers favor brands that seem to be giving a larger cut of their profits, even if the total dollar amount is lower compared to brands that give a smaller proportion of profits but larger total dollar... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

Suraj Srinivasan

Suraj Srinivasan is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Business Administration, a member of the Accounting and Management faculty unit, and chair of the View Details

Keywords: accounting industry; financial services

15 May 2024
Research & Ideas

A Major Roadblock for Autonomous Cars: Motorists Believe They Drive Better

automation for people? To parse how US drivers view their own driving abilities and that of automated vehicles, the researchers conducted two sets of experiments and surveys. In one experiment with 579 participants who are representative... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Transportation; Auto

2014
Working Paper

Private Equity's Diversification Illusion: Economic Comovement and Fair Value Reporting

By: Kyle Travis Welch

This study examines how accounting has informed private equity diversification claims and demand for private equity investments. Despite research showing private equity lacks portfolio diversification benefits, those marketing private equity assets continue to... View Details

SSRN

27 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Cost of a Product Recall

device industry. That allowed the researchers to evaluate how a recall’s severity and proximity—the degree of product market overlap between recalled and competing products—may stall or speed innovation in a... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Manufacturing; Consumer Products; Auto; Medical Devices & Supplies

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

financed them—declared such brick-and-mortar businesses were dinosaurs on their way to extinction. The success of Bluemercury proved the critics wrong. “We’ve always had a hard time being able to identify the skills and behaviors of entrepreneurial leaders” Despite... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

August 1984 (Revised June 1986)
Case

Cray Research, Inc.

By: Francis Aguilar

Cray Research faces several management problems as a result of rapid growth and the need for continued growth. Issues to be discussed include 1) whether Cray should be a marketing or a technology company; 2) new and powerful competition; 3) products to offer as Cray... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Growth Management; Product Marketing

October 2000 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Cost of Capital at Ameritrade

By: Mark L. Mitchell and Erik Stafford

Ameritrade Holding Corp. is planning large marketing and technology investments to improve the company's competitive position in deep-discount brokerage by taking advantage of emerging economies of scale. In order to evaluate whether the strategy would generate... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Asset Pricing; Cash Flow; Cost of Capital; Investment; Marketing; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Entrepreneurial Management: Customer Discovery and Business Development

By: Frank V. Cespedes

This research focuses on: (a) market research methods and tactics suitable to startups seeking their initial customers and validation of their initial business model; (b) guidelines for conducting visits with potential customers as part of the startup ptrocess; and (c)... View Details

December 2022
Article

Shaping Nascent Industries: Innovation Strategy and Regulatory Uncertainty in Personal Genomics

By: Cheng Gao and Rory McDonald

In nascent industries—whose new technologies are often poorly understood by regulators—contending with regulatory uncertainty can be crucial to organizational survival and growth. Prior research on nonmarket strategy has largely focused on established firms in mature... View Details

Keywords: Technological Change; Innovation; Qualitative Methods; New Categories; Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy

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March 2020
Case

ZEISS Group: Organize by Customer Culture?

By: Willy C. Shih

How should ZEISS, the German manufacturer of precision optical and optoelectronic systems manage two historic businesses that operated fairly autonomously? The Industrial Quality Solutions (IQS) business sold measurement equipment to manufacturing companies in sectors... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Manufacturing Industry; Europe; Germany

07 Jun 2023
HBS Case

3 Ways to Gain a Competitive Advantage Now: Lessons from Amazon, Chipotle, and Facebook

perk that allowed Amazon to capture market share and eventually blow past Sony, which after years of struggling, closed its e-reader store in 2014. “Without creating a competitive advantage, it is difficult for companies to produce and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

26 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Unpacking That Icky Feeling of 'Shopping' for Diverse Job Candidates

from historically marginalized groups—even when the real goal is to create a more diverse workplace, because it’s both the right thing to do and good for business. New research by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Summer Jackson... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

February 2001
Case

BarnesandNoble.com (B)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dickson Louie and William A. Sahlman

At the end of 1998, Jonathan Bulkeley, the newly-named CEO of barnesandnoble.com, is faced with a challenge. As the second leading online bookseller behind Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com must build its market share. With Forrester Research predicting that the online... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Publishing Industry