Publications

January 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

People Analytics at McKinsey

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Olivia Hull

A private equity–backed fast food chain has hired McKinsey’s new People Analytics group to help it improve performance. As the final client workshop approaches, Associate Partner Alex DiLeonardo ponders the best way to present the team’s findings, especially those that... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Customer Relationship Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Cost Management; Human Resources; Employees; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Measurement and Metrics; Performance; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Consulting Industry; Service Industry

December 2009 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Monsanto: Helping Farmers Feed the World

By: David E. Bell, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Mary Shelman

Monsanto has led the effort to bring biotechnology to bear on food production. Through some management missteps and consumer resistance the company had difficulties in its early years. But since Hugh Grant became CEO the picture has brightened with widespread adoption... View Details

Keywords: Food; Global Strategy; Leadership; Production; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States

November 2006
Case

Organics: Coming Center Stage?

By: James E. Austin and Reed Martin

The organics movement has certainly come a long way. From hippie farming communes and a scattering of natural food stores in the 1960s, organics outgrew its origins as a counterculture curiosity of the 1970s to become the fastest growing segment of the food industry in... View Details

Keywords: Food; Supply and Industry; Consumer Behavior; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

October 1992 (Revised September 1996)
Case

McDonald's Corporation

By: David M. Upton and Joshua D. Margolis

McDonald's has over many years built an operating strategy based on consistency and quality through a limited product range. Competitive forces have drawn the company into a much wider variety of foods and services in order to maintain growth. Now, new competitors... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Problems and Challenges; Environmental Sustainability; Quality; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Operations; Integration; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

June 2018
Case

Feeding America (A)

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam

This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the U.S., designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Food; Resource Allocation; Fairness; Performance Efficiency; United States

19 Jan 2022
Blog Post

From Retail to HBS: How I’m Building a Career Path at the Intersection of Arts, Culture, and Business

Sara Jetty (MBA 2021) grew up in Carmel, Indiana and received her B.S. from Indiana University. Prior to attending HBS, she held roles at BLK DNM, West Elm, and Bloomingdale’s. During her time at HBS, she... View Details

03 Feb 2015
News

In a Bid To Entice Tastemakers, SodaStream Gets a New Look and Gourmet Flavors

Keywords: Food and Beverage Stores; Food and Beverage Stores

March 2008 (Revised January 2023)
Supplement

Cadbury Schweppes: Capturing Confectionery (B)

By: David Collis, Toby Stuart and Troy Smith

In late 2002, global confectionery and beverage maker Cadbury Schweppes needed to decide whether or not to make an acquisition bid for Adams, an underperforming gum company which had been put up for sale by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Examining the decision from a... View Details

Keywords: Food; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry

08 Nov 2016
First Look

November 8, 2016

use standardized color, achieved by synthetic dyes, as part of their marketing strategies. Food manufacturers along with dye makers and regulators co-created the food-coloring business. Synthetic View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

1984
Book

The Results and Interpretation of Three Field Trials of Lysine Fortification of Cereals

By: James E. Austin, Jean Pierre Habicht, Max Milner, Vernon Young and Linda D. Myers

Keywords: Food; Nutrition

Find at Harvard

08 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

NFL Head Coaches Are Getting Younger. What Can Organizations Learn?

three years of fast food experience. By contrast, Torres continues, incumbent C-level exes are “overly focused on internal issues and opt to invest in familiar technologies rather than taking bold risks.”... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht, and Abhijit Naik; Sports

July 2009 (Revised October 2011)
Case

VeeV on the Rocks?

By: Joshua D. Margolis, Christopher Marquis and Laura Winig

Three pressing challenges (equity split, extent of commitment to social responsibility, and product discoloration) confront VeeV, the world's first alcoholic beverage infused with acai berries. Brothers Courtney and Carter Reum founded VeeV in 2007 and the firm has... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Food; Business Growth and Maturation; Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Equity; Food and Beverage Industry

July 2019
Case

LaCroix Sparkling Water

By: Tomomichi Amano, Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman

Launched in 1981 as an “all occasion” sparkling water brand, LaCroix Sparkling Water has had a number of ups and downs as a brand. After being purchased by National Beverage in 1996, the brand was re-positioned as a new, colorful, fun alternative to the other sparkling... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Industry Structures; Food and Beverage Industry

01 Jun 2018
News

What I Do: Minnie Ingersoll (MBA 2002)

it’s consistent from company to company.” Her new COO role at Code for America, a San Francisco–based nonprofit dedicated to improving civic tech and “strengthening America’s basic social safety net,” has proven this maxim true. “I... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; illustrations by Peter and Maria Hoey

Pietro Satriano

Pietro Satriano is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. He sits on the boards of CarMax, the largest omni-channel used car retailer in the U.S. and Metro, a large regional grocery retailer in Canada. Pietro advises a number of food-tech startups and acts... View Details

December 2000
Case

Friona Industries, L.P.

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

As the food industry becomes more sophisticated, and as genomics and other factors provide for quality control from the producers to the consumers in the food chain, the beef industry has been one of the last commodity systems to organize the vertical systems to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Food; Management Systems; Supply and Industry; Performance Consistency; Quality; Partners and Partnerships; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Royal DSM: From Continuous Transformation to Organic Growth

By: William W. George, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Amram Migdal

Royal DSM CEO Feike Sijbesma was pondering the challenges of shifting DSM’s global organization from the constant transformations of the past 100 years to creating organic growth. When Sijbesma took the helm as CEO in 2007, he further pushed and completed the company’s... View Details

Keywords: Organic Growth; Organizational Change; M＆A; Mergers And Acquisitions; Divestment; Business Ventures; Business Divisions; Business Growth and Maturation; Restructuring; Change; Change Management; Transformation; Transition; Engineering; Chemicals; Mining; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Capital Markets; Financial Markets; Food; Globalization; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Health; Nutrition; History; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Style; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Ownership; Public Ownership; Performance; Strategy; Adaptation; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Value; Value Creation; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; Netherlands

Article

What to Know About Locating in a Cluster

By: Willy C. Shih and Sen Chai

As a study of two industry clusters in Denmark shows, factors that can make clusters attractive—easy people movement and knowledge spillovers—can also make it harder for individual companies to retain proprietary knowledge. View Details

Keywords: Clusters; Clustering; Competitiveness; Life Sciences; Telecommunications; Science-based; Research And Development; Industry Clusters; Research; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Geographic Location; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Denmark