Publications

January – February 2011
Article

Creating Shared Value

By: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business has been criticized as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely thought to be prospering at the expense of their communities. Trust in business has fallen to new... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Economic Growth; Economic Systems; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Trust; Human Needs; Welfare; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

July 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Mary Kay Inc.: Enriching Women's Lives while Embracing Change

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Julia Kelley

In December 2020, Mary Kay Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green considered several strategic dilemmas. Founded in 1963 by Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay was a direct sales company whose Independent Beauty Consultants purchased its beauty and cosmetics products at... View Details

Kristin Mugford is the Melvin Tukman Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Finance Unit at the Harvard Business School and the Senior Associate Dean for Culture and Community. She previously served as Faculty Chair for field-based learning and... View Details

August 2019 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Lemonade: Disrupting Insurance with Instant Everything, Killer Prices, and a Big Heart

By: Elie Ofek and Danielle Golan

Launching its first products in the fall of 2016 in New York, insurtech startup Lemonade was on a mission to disrupt the insurance market by using AI and behavioral economics principles. The company offered renters, homeowners, and condo insurance and mainly targeted... View Details

Keywords: AI; Business Startups; Insurance; Technological Innovation; Business Model; Disruption; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; Global Strategy; Decision Making; Insurance Industry; Technology Industry

December 2019
Case

The Business of Pain: Johnson & Johnson and the Promise of Opioids

By: Erik Snowberg, Trevor Fetter and Amy W. Schulman

This case is designed to provide an engrossing overview of stakeholder capitalism through a vigorous discussion of the conflicts that can arise when trying to serve multiple stakeholders. In 2007, Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) subsidiary Janssen has to decide whether or... View Details

Keywords: Opioids; Addiction; Stakeholder Capitalism; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Product Launch; Decision Making; Ethics; Social Issues; Pharmaceutical Industry

April 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

AI Wars

By: Andy Wu, Matt Higgins, Miaomiao Zhang and Hang Jiang

In February 2024, the world was looking to Google to see what the search giant and long-time putative technical leader in artificial intelligence (AI) would do to compete in the massively hyped technology of generative AI. Over a year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a... View Details

Keywords: AI; Artificial Intelligence; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Competitive Strategy; Technological Innovation

August 2007 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Trouble with a Bubble

By: Tom Nicholas

Examines technology, firm performance, and the stock market during the 1929 Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The 1920s was an extraordinary period of technological progress marked by a strong run-up in stock market prices. Firms invested heavily in... View Details

Keywords: Bubble; Stock Market; Great Depression; Irving Fisher; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; History; Financial Markets; Performance; Labor and Management Relations; Equity; Financial Crisis; Innovation and Invention; United States

22 Sep 2016
News

The Road to Successful Bundled Payment Risk

15 Sep 2016
News

Competing Against Luck

January 2012 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA)'s Entry into the Retirement Market

By: Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy

This case examines Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA)'s decision to enter the retirement market with their new "Dimensional Managed DC" product, a complete retirement solution that aimed to provide investors with what they really wanted: the same standard of living in... View Details

Keywords: Retirement; Asset Management

June 1998 (Revised August 2001)
Case

Wells Fargo Online Financial Services (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Nicole Tempest

Wells Fargo, the industry leader in electronic banking, has implemented a Balanced Scorecard in its online financial services group (OFS) to track and measure performance. The OFS group develops and supports services that allow existing and future banking customers to... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Internet and the Web; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Corporate Strategy; Performance Evaluation; Finance; Change; Situation or Environment; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

April 1995
Case

Minnetonka Corporation: From Softsoap to Eternity

Minnetonka Corp. which was founded in 1964, began as a niche player in the gift soap and novelty toiletries markets. In 1980, it entered--and managed to capture a piece of--the mass bar-soap market with pump-dispensed Softsoap liquid soap. In 1984, the company took on... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

January 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk (A)

By: Clayton M. Christensen

Hewlett-Packard decided that, to grow more rapidly, it needed to design a revolutionary disk drive product that would create an entirely new market or application for magnetic recording technology. The company followed most of the "rules" good managers follow in such... View Details

Keywords: Management; Information Infrastructure; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Computer Industry; United States