Publications

SSRN

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March 2011 (Revised July 2011)
Case

Vestas' World of Wind

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Elena Corsi

The wind turbine manufacturer Vestas launched the industry's first highly localized and customized new product launch campaigns which used also new tools such as web 2.0 platforms. Used to operate in a market where demand exceeded supply, Vestas had lost contact with... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Marketing Channels; Internet and the Web; Product Launch; Demand and Consumers; Advertising Campaigns; Global Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Finance; Product Marketing; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry

March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Seeding and Selling Asana

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal

In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and... View Details

Keywords: SaaS; Customer Journey; Business Model; Business Organization; Change Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; United States

The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the eighteenth century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the nineteenth, they paradoxically... View Details

2011
Working Paper

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Mathematical Methods; Attitudes; Interests; Perception; Wealth and Poverty

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Winter 2020
Article

The Economics of Maps

By: Abhishek Nagaraj and Scott Stern

For centuries, maps have codified the extent of human geographic knowledge and shaped discovery and economic decision-making. Economists across many fields, including urban economics, public finance, political economy, and economic geography, have long employed maps,... View Details

Keywords: Maps; Economic Geography; Geography; Economics; History

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July 2016 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Hamilton: An American Musical

By: Anita Elberse and Jennifer Schoppe

In July 2013, composer, writer, actor and rapper Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Tommy Kail, and producer Jeffrey Seller met to discuss how to launch Hamilton, a new musical based on the life of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, Alexander Hamilton.... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Creative Industries; Performing Arts; (General) Management; Blockbusters; Non-profit; Theater Entertainment; Strategy; Risk Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Arts; Creativity; Product Launch; Product Development; Marketing; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

December 2019
Supplement

The Business of Pain: Johnson & Johnson and the Promise of Opioids (B)

By: Erik Snowberg, Trevor Fetter and Amy W. Schulman

This case is designed to provide an engrossing overview of stakeholder capitalism through a vigorous discussion of the conflicts that can arise when trying to serve multiple stakeholders. In 2007, Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) subsidiary Janssen has to decide whether or... View Details

Keywords: Opioids; Addiction; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Product Launch; Ethics; Society; Pharmaceutical Industry

February 2016
Teaching Note

Advanced Leadership Pathways: General Gale Pollock and Services for the Vision Impaired

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Tessa Natanay Hamilton and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Following a successful military career as an Army Nurse, achieving rank as Major General, becoming the first female Acting Surgeon General of the Army, and the 22nd Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, Pollock developed a vested interest in improving the lives of the... View Details

Keywords: Health

Jan W. Rivkin is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program, Senior Associate Dean for Research, and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on... View Details

Keywords: airline; computer; internet; music; transportation

11 May 2022
Blog Post

MoMBAs: The Inspiring Student Mothers of HBS

This Mother’s Day, we celebrated progress and possibility on the HBS campus! HBS first accepted women into the MBA Program in 1963. Fast forward six decades and now classrooms are 44% female and most sections have 1-2 mothers. Across the... View Details

June 2014
Article

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with, while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Attitudes; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

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02 Aug 2022
Blog Post

From HBS to Cutting-Edge Tech

face which prepares you to be the leader you want to be in 20 years. What was your first cold call like? I was the first one to be cold called for my section. It was nerve wracking! But my discussion group... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and... View Details

Keywords: Open Platforms; Bottlenecks; Wintel Platform; Disintermediation; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Business History; Digital Platforms; Computer Industry

SSRN

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November 2014
Teaching Note

Claritas Genomics

By: Robert F. Higgins and Matthew G. Preble

Dr. Patrice Milos is the first CEO of Claritas Genomics (Claritas) and she faces a number of challenges in scaling the young company. Claritas was formed around a lab spun out from Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) which had performed genomic tests for the hospital. Now... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Healthcare Startups; Genetic Testing; Genetics Diagnostics; Spinning Out Hospital Services; Spin-out; Health Care and Treatment; Genetics; Entrepreneurship; Biotechnology Industry; Health Industry; United States

November 2006 (Revised May 2014)
Case

Li Ka-Shing and the Growth of Cheung Kong

By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony J. Mayo and Mark Benson

Events in the history of Cheung Kong's growth reveal how Li Ka-Shing applied his skills as a "first-class noticer" to complex political and socioeconomic environments. While Li's determination to succeed is legendary, so are his skills in reading and responding to the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Competency and Skills; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Portfolio; Business History; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Hong Kong