Publications

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August 2006 (Revised July 2007)
Background Note

Governance of the Family Business Owners

By: John A. Davis

Reviews the principal ways in which the owners of a family business achieve their governance objectives of a suitable identity and sensible direction and the discipline to achieve these. Covers the responsibilities and rights of owners, plus governance procedures,... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Goals and Objectives; Family Ownership

October 1984 (Revised May 1990)
Case

NIKE (A)

Describes the history of Nike, its economic strategy, and the industries in which it competes. The teaching objective is to ask the student to identify and evaluate Nike's economic/technical strategy. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Business History; Supply and Industry; Financial Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry

September 1988 (Revised September 1993)
Case

Mrs. Fields Cookies

By: James I. Cash Jr.

Mrs. Fields Cookies is a small company selling freshly baked goods through privately owned specialty stores (each store sells only Mrs. Fields products). The company has about 8,000 employees worldwide and less than 150 information systems people for a unique leverage... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Information Management; Organizational Structure; Customer Relationship Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Networks; Internet and the Web; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

11 Mar 2021
Blog Post

A Year as Co-Presidents: Q+A with AASU's Bukie Adebo (MBA 2021) and Alexis Jackson (MBA 2021)

engage with the local Black community, to offer more academic and career support to HBS students, and build a more robust pipeline of Black students. Bukie Adebo and Alexis... View Details

April 1996 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Crown Cork & Seal/CarnaudMetalbox

By: William E. Fruhan Jr. and William DeWitt

A U.S. packaging firm acquires a French packaging firm with the objective of creating the largest global packaging firm in the world. View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Service Industry; France; United States

Web

Leadership with purpose: Redefining success and impact with Satpal Singh (SELP—India 4, 2019) - Recruiting

Harvard Business School, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would impact my career. I was already leading Business Transformation at Legrand India and had spent years gaining diverse industry experience across the manufacturing, oil View Details

July 1987 (Revised October 2009)
Background Note

A Method For Valuing High-Risk, Long-Term Investments: The "Venture Capital Method"

By: William A. Sahlman and Daniel R Scherlis

Describes a method for valuing high-risk, long-term investments such as those confronting venture capitalists. The method entails forecasting a future value (e.g., five years from the present) and discounting that terminal value back to the present by applying a high... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Risk Management; Valuation

01 Feb 1997
News

Shaping the Future of Business: Entrepreneurial Evolution at HBS

Last issue, the Bulletin undertook a survey of fifty years of entrepreneurship at HBS, beginning with the School's first course on the subject introduced in 1947. In this edition, we pick up in the early 1980s, when renewed interest in entrepreneurship generated... View Details

Keywords: Nancy O. Perry and Susan Young; profiles by Garry Emmons

April 1993 (Revised May 2009)
Case

Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: In Service for Sight, The

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Starting as a modest 20-bed hospital, Aravind had grown into a 1,400-bed hospital complex by 1992. It had by then screened 3.65 million patients and performed 335,000 cataract surgeries, nearly 70% of them free of cost for the poorest of India's blind population.... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Social Marketing; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Welfare; Expansion; Health Industry; India

June 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Simulation

Managing the Customer Journey Marketing Simulation: Adobe's Data-Driven Operating Model (DDOM)

By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Celine Chammas

Adobe started monitoring Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), one of its primary metrics, when it shifted from selling its software in a box to selling the software as a subscription-based cloud service. They wanted to know when, where, and how much to invest in marketing.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Acquisition; Customer Journey; Marketing Strategy; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Budgets and Budgeting

10 Mar 2013
News

Six Ways We Get Sidetracked or Swayed

Web

Rewiring the Workplace: Behavioral Economics and the Future of Inclusive Organizations - Blog: RGE Report

example of how collective bargaining created a major shift for gender-equal treatment. The U.S. Women’s team achieved their goal by surpassing their male counterparts, winning consistent international championships View Details

January 1982 (Revised July 2007)
Case

Kirk Stone (A)

Kirk Stone ran into an organization "land mine" when he joined the company. The teaching objective is to understand better how Kirk could have anticipated the company culture and other realities. View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Organizational Culture; Personal Development and Career; Planning

Find at Harvard

April 1986 (Revised January 1993)
Case

Au Bon Pain

An eight-year-old company is in the midst of growth. This case follows the company from its inception through its growth stages. Teaching objectives are to understand the problems of growth, partnership, and operations-driven companies. View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Growth and Development; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

July 1999
Background Note

Management Development Plan In A Family Business, The

By: John A. Davis

Defines management development objectives for family members employed in their family business. Outlines a process of putting these individuals on a career path to provide them with needed developmental experiences while respecting the broader needs of the... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Organizations; Leadership Development; Experience and Expertise

19 Jan 2015
News

Which Has More Bias? Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica

January 1984
Background Note

Just-in-Time Production Controlled by Kanban

Describes the method of control of repetitive manufacturing as used at Toyota by Just-in-Time and Kanban. The objective is to facilitate an understanding of how the method works and its rationale. View Details

Keywords: Production; Business Processes

06 Mar 2025
Blog Post

IFC India 2025: Sustainability in Action: Inside Hindustan Unilever’s Public Sanitation and Plastic Recycling Facilities

Professor Vikram Gandhi’s Immersive Field Course (IFC) “Development while Decarbonizing: India’s Path to Net-Zero" delved into the critical aspect of decarbonization and sustainability goals amid India's... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Corrigendum to 'Resource-Monotonicity for House Allocation Problems'

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus and Lars Ehlers

Ehlers and Klaus (2003) study so-called house allocation problems and claim to characterize all rules satisfying efficiency, independence of irrelevant objects, and resource-monotonicity on two preference domains (Ehlers and Klaus, 2003, Theorem 1).... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Resource Allocation