Publications

24 Jun 2019
Blog Post

Dance to the Music: How Noa Torok Found Her Dream Job at SoundCloud

Noa Torok, MBA 2019, came to HBS with a blank slate. “I arrived with zero expectations,” she says. “I had no idea what I wanted to do.” Her prior experience had shown her the opposite – what she did not want to do. After studying both law and business View Details

March 2018
Case

Summit Public Schools (A)

By: John J-H Kim and Aldo Sesia

Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students... View Details

Keywords: K-12; Online Learning; Virtual Learning; Blended Learning; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Business Model; Performance Improvement; Technology

February 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Creating and Measuring Purpose at Viega

By: Ethan Rouen, Suraj Srinivasan and James Barnett

At its headquarters in Attendorn, Germany, Viega’s chairwoman Anna Viegener gathered the company’s leadership team to discuss their progress on formalizing purpose-driven leadership as a strategic driver within the organization. Viega manufactured and distributed... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development; Employee Relationship Management; Leadership; Mission and Purpose; Expansion; Measurement and Metrics; Germany

January 2011 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Marvel Enterprises, Inc. (Abridged)

By: Anita Elberse

The management team of Marvel Enterprises, known for its universe of superhero characters that includes Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men, must reevaluate its marketing strategy. In June 2004, only six years after the company emerged from bankruptcy, Marvel has amassed a... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Intellectual Property; Rights; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: The Business of Crowdsourcing

Gaining the community's trust is vital to building a successful business with crowdsourcing, agreed business leaders at the Digital Initiative Summit at Harvard Business School on March 30. When Tongal got its start in 2009, some members... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

April 2007
Case

Schibsted

By: Bharat N. Anand and Sophie Hood

In 2006, newspaper firms in developed markets were severely threatened on three fronts: the growth of online news, online classified advertising, and free newspapers. Schibsted, however, had managed to cope with these challenges successfully, and had become something... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Product Launch; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Adaptation; Competitive Advantage; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Scandinavia

February 2024
Supplement

JTC: Stronger Together with Shared Ownership: What JTC Did and Its Impact

By: Ethan Bernstein

Nigel Le Quesne, CEO of Jersey-based financial services firm JTC, firmly believed that "shared ownership" was at the heart of his company’s successful track record. The firm had seen its revenues, profits, and number of clients and staff grow steadily throughout its... View Details

Keywords: Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Leadership Style; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Employee Ownership; Financial Services Industry

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

The Future of IT Consulting

companion to the rate of change most companies experience in other technologies, markets, and initiatives of competitors. We have noted that the successful IT consulting firm must be able to anticipate, sense, and nimbly respond to... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Consulting

July 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Athletic Brewing Company: Crafting the U.S. Non-Alcoholic Beer Category

By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne V. Wilson

Athletic Brewing Company (“Athletic,” for short) was founded by Bill Shufelt and John Walker in 2017. In creating Athletic, Shufelt and Walker opened the first U.S. brewery and taproom fully devoted to the production of non-alcoholic (NA) craft beer. By 2021, Athletic... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Product Marketing; Product Positioning; Product Launch; Product Design; Product; Competition; Marketing; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Cultural Entrepreneurship; Culture; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

Sep 02 2014
Testimonial

Developing the Tools to Embrace Change

2022
Book

Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game

By: Andrew Binns, Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael Tushman

Innovation used to be seen as a game best left to entrepreneurs, but now a new breed of corporate managers is flipping this logic on its head. These Corporate Explorers have the insight, resilience, and discipline to overcome the obstacles and build new ventures from... View Details

Keywords: Organization Change And Adaptation; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Innovation and Management; Leading Change

Anita Elberse is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Professor Elberse develops and teaches an MBA course covering the "Businesses of Entertainment, Media, and Sports," which ranks among the most sought-after... View Details

Keywords: advertising; arts; broadcasting; communications; consumer products; e-commerce industry; electronics; entertainment; fashion; home video games; information; marketing industry; motion pictures; music; publishing industry; sports; telecommunications; video games

25 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 25

effectively, where they can be damaging, and where additional complementary mechanisms to spur innovation may be appropriate. Publisher's link: http://www.people.hbs.edu/tnicholas/patents_creative_destructive.pdf Working Papers Does View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

21 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Inside the OR: Disrupted Routines and New Technologies

Why did a group of Harvard Business School professors become interested in an innovative new heart surgery technique? It turns out that a hospital's operating room provides an excellent controlled arena from which to explore the role that teamwork plays in the View Details

Keywords: by Hilah Geer

22 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries

Thanks to the pioneering success of Toyota, the concept of a "lean" operating system has been implemented in countless manufacturing companies and even adapted for industries as diverse as insurance and healthcare. With its... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

June 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Buurtzorg

By: Ethan Bernstein, Tatiana Sandino, Joost Minnaar and Annelena Lobb

As co-founders of home nursing company Buurtzorg, Jos de Blok and Gonnie Kronenberg prized both self-management and organizational learning. Buurtzorg’s 10,000 nurses across 950 neighborhood nursing teams in the Netherlands were empowered to manage themselves, both in... View Details

2 Sep 2021
Interview

Amy Edmondson

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Deepak Jayaraman

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Amy has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #3 in 2019. She studies teaming,... View Details

Keywords: Psychological Safety; Organizational Culture; Communication; Performance Effectiveness