Publications

14 Jan 2022
Blog Post

Want Hybrid Work to Succeed? Trust, Don’t Track, Employees

need to be shoulder-to-shoulder to collaborate,” Neeley says, “but you have to trust people will show up when they need to. 2. Stop counting ‘butts in seats’ As a corollary to trusting in workers, View Details

Keywords: All Industries

January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Exercise

Travelogo: Understanding Customer Journeys

By: Eva Ascarza, Nicolas Padilla and Oded Netzer

In late May 2023, Sarah Merino, the newly appointed manager of the Customer Insights group at Travelogo—an online travel booking platform—initiates a comprehensive analysis of clickstream data to understand the varied behaviors and needs of their users. In preparation... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing Strategy; Segmentation; Consumer Behavior; Travel Industry; United States

20 Nov 2018
News

Retraining road-trip: New skills for older workers

TeachingInterests

Investing: Risk, Return and Impact (MBA)

By: Shawn A. Cole

This is an investing/finance course, designed to build on skills introduced in the RC finance course, but with an emphasis on how and whether investors should incorporate what have traditionally been considered “non-financial” criteria in their decisions: for... View Details

Research Summary

Financial reporting quality and its consequences

Does reporting quality have real economic consequences? Professor Yu addresses this question in her research, which examines the channels through which reporting quality affects the behavior of economic agents, namely managers and investors. Her particular focus is... View Details

Person Page

Read excerpts from DENIAL

By: Richard S. Tedlow

The Edifice Complex: Denial at Sears

Book Excerpt: Denial at Sears (BusinessWeek.com, February 26, 2010)

From Denial: Why Business... View Details

04 Apr 2019
Blog Post

Finding Your Creative Outlet on Campus

engaging, and a great way to meet cool people.” Taking listeners behind the scenes For season two of the podcast, the team decided to focus on uncovering stories that... View Details

June 2013
Case

Olympic Rent-A-Car U.S.: Customer Loyalty Battles

By: John Deighton and James T. Kindley

The marketing and operations managers for Olympic Rent-A-Car meet to decide how to respond to changes in the loyalty rewards program at the market-leading competitor. The competitor's program gives awards based on dollars spent instead of days rented and eliminates... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Auto Industry; Service Industry

01 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

When Do Alliances Make Sense?

of Mexico. Examining the net profits of those leases for which solo firms and alliances narrowly outbid one another, Beshears concludes that alliances are in fact more efficient than solo firms, earning an... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy; Utilities

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

three of the best-known and most successful startups—Uber, Etsy, and Airbnb—hoping to find some commonalities in how those businesses solved the dilemma. Spoiler alert: it’s the egg that needs incubating. As... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

27 Sep 2010
Research & Ideas

Customer Experts Lose Influence When Teams are Pressured

puzzling and frustrating when I had the sense that our team failed to make the most of everyone's input. As a project manager I had made sure we... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

August 1999 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Catanese and Vulcan (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Sanjay Pothen

A small CPA firm puts in a new performance measurement system, and profits increase by 350% in less than a year. This case illustrates the reasons for improved profitability as well as the sustainability of levels of growth, the opportunities, and the threats that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Performance Evaluation; SWOT Analysis; Profit

Career Coach

Ben Schlatka

Ben (HBS '05) has deep experience in technology driven organizations - including fund raising and venture formation, product marketing, product management, business development and managing technical professionals in large public and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Services (All); Health Care; Clean Technology; Energy; Telecommunications; Technology

September 2019 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Gap, Inc., 2019

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2000, The Gap, Inc. (Gap) was the world’s largest player in specialty fashion retailing, and companies such as Inditex of Spain, H&M of Sweden, and Fast Retailing of Japan were less than a quarter of Gap’s size. But after two decades of growth, Gap’s progress... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Fashion; Multinational; Brands; Fast Fashion; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Performance Improvement; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Change Management; Strategy; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sweden; Spain; United States