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- January 2007 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
PSI: Social Marketing Clean Water
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Nava Ashraf and Marie Bell
Senior management at PSI, arguably the world's largest and most successful social marketer with impressive achievements in the field of family planning, HIV/AIDS, and malaria prevention must determine what to do about their slow-to-take-off clean water initiative.... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised February 2009)
- Case
China Merchants Bank: Here Just For You
By: F. Warren McFarlan, GuoQing Chen, HengYuan Zhu, Bin Yang, Michael Shih-ta Chen, G.A. Donovan, Waishun Lo and Yan Yang
Founded in 1987, China Merchants Bank (CMB) is a pioneer in the use of technical innovation and IT as a competitive tool in the rapidly evolving Chinese banking sector. With a relatively small branch network when compared to its larger competitors, CMB uses an... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
Prosper Marketplace, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth Kind
Describes a set of financial and strategic decisions confronting the founding management team of a new online financial services company. Prosper Marketplace is an internet-based market for individuals to borrow money from other individuals who wish to invest in such... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
By: Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, founders of Microsoft and Apple respectively, have revolutionized the relationship between the individual and computer technology. Once the exclusive domain of academia and research facilities, computers can now be found in every area of... View Details
- December 2006
- Article
Europe vs America: Institutional Hysteresis in a Simple Normative Model
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We show how the differences in US and European institutions can arise in a normative model. The paper focuses on the labor market and the government's decision to set unemployment benefits in response to an unemployment shock. The government balances insurance... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised January 2007)
- Case
Infosys in India: Building a Software Giant in a Corrupt Environment
By: Rawi E. Abdelal, Rafael M. Di Tella and Prabakar (PK) Kothandaraman
Shortly after Infosys was founded in 1981, its managers faced a major turning point when they made a decision to operate without giving in to the petty corruption rife in the Indian economy. Within just a few years, that decision had truly defined the company. Over the... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
Goodyear and the Threat of Government Tire Grading
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis A. Yao and Elizabeth Raabe
In the spring of 1977, Goodyear CEO Charles J. Pilliod Jr. was looking at an internal report on government and legal events relevant to the tire industry. Two items caught his attention. First, he noticed that an industry suit to block the government's proposed system... View Details
- September 2006 (Revised November 2008)
- Case
Supergrid
Supergrid is a mammoth wind-power development scheme for Europe, recently proposed by Airtricity. This firm, founded in 1997, is a fast-growing power-development company focused on wind. Already having built about 600 megawatts of wind turbines in Scotland and Ireland,... View Details
- August 2006
- Background Note
Analyzing Work Groups
By: Linda A. Hill and Michel Anteby
Work groups are the building blocks of organizations. They are found in all areas of an organization, from research and development to customer service, and at all levels, from the executive suite to the factory floor. Some are incredibly successful, while others are... View Details
- August 2006 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
Natura: Global Beauty Made in Brazil
By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho
Explores the globalization strategies of Natura, Brazil's largest cosmetics company. Founded in 1969, Natura grew using a direct selling model. Led by its three founders, the firm made distinctive use of Brazil's diversity and became characterized by high ethical and... View Details
- August 2006 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm
By: Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams
After nearly 100 years as a mid-size regional law firm, Duane Morris entered a period of spectacular growth led by CEO Sheldon Bonovitz. Originally founded by Quakers, the firm had a distinct organizational culture featuring a number of unique or unusual business... View Details
- August 2006
- Article
Extending the Faultline Concept to Geographically Dispersed Teams: How Colocated Subgroups Can Impair Group Functioning
By: Jeffrey T. Polzer, Brad Crisp, Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa and Jerry W. Kim
We theorize that in geographically dispersed teams, members' geographic locations are likely to activate "faultlines" (hypothetical dividing lines that split a group into subgroups) that impair team functioning. In a study of 45 teams comprised of graduate students... View Details
- May 2006 (Revised February 2012)
- Case
General Electric's 20th Century CEOs (Abridged)
By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony J. Mayo and Mark Benson
General Electric thrived in every decade of the 20th century. Since its founding in 1892, GE has placed a high value on picking and training the best people. Staff members worked with other scientists in the company's research lab to design and manufacture new and... View Details
- May 2006 (Revised July 2007)
- Case
Tropos Networks
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Elizabeth Kind
As Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos Networks, walked through the halls of the firm's offices, he realized that the space they had moved into only about a year ago was already becoming too small. The company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was founded in late 2000... View Details
- May 2006
- Case
A123Systems
By: H. Kent Bowen, Kenneth P Morse and Douglass Cannon
A 123Systems was a young company that was founded on basic materials science research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A co-founder of the company, Yet-Ming Chiang, was a full professor at MIT and served as scientific adviser. Intellectual property based... View Details
- February 2006
- Case
Bumble and bumble: Building a Successful Business in Beauty and Fashion
By: Nancy F. Koehn and Erica Helms
Explores the creation and subsequent rise of Bumble and bumble, a trend-setting hair-care company. Analyzes the vision and achievements of the founding entrepreneur, Michael Gordon, and charts the evolution of the company within the $230 billion global beauty industry.... View Details
- January 2006
- Case
Jack Strang at SequenceLabs
By: Mukti Khaire, John J. Gabarro and Lynda M. Applegate
How can entrepreneur manage his firm if things go wrong despite having a great idea, a solid team, and financial backing? Jack Strang founded a biotech firm with his friend Peter Evans, to develop molecular pathway-based "cures" for metabolic disorders. The idea was... View Details
- December 2005 (Revised May 2007)
- Case
Cynthia Fisher and the Rearing of ViaCell
By: Robert F. Higgins, Richard G. Hamermesh and Ingrid Vargas
Describes the start up of Viacord, a Boston-based medical services firm founded by Cynthia Fisher (HBS MBA) in 1993. Told from Fisher's perspective, the entrepreneur details the conceptualization and launch of the business and the many obstacles and expenses faced in... View Details
- December 2005 (Revised April 2011)
- Case
General Electric's 20th Century CEOs
By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson
General Electric thrived in every decade of the 20th century. Since its founding in 1892, GE has placed a high value on picking and training the best people. Staff members worked with other scientists in the company's research lab to design and manufacture new and... View Details
- October 2005 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Strategic Inflection: TiVo in 2005
By: David B. Yoffie, Pai-Ling Yin and Barbara Mack
In the late 1990s, TiVo pioneered the digital video recorder (DVR), a new consumer electronics category. By 2005, the company was the clear leader in technology and installed base. It had also built extraordinary loyalty among its customers. However, TiVo lost a half... View Details