Publications

September 1993 (Revised October 1993)
Supplement

First National City Bank Operating Group (C)

By: John P. Kotter and Andrew P. Burtis

Provides a short summary of John Reed's succession at City Bank from Executive Vice President in 1976 to CEO in 1984. View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Personal Development and Career; Banking Industry

22 Feb 2021
Book

Reaching Today's Omnichannel Customer Takes a New Sales Strategy

mutual trust that the rep establishes with others in the company. Further, the effects of successful talent management seem to be cumulative: good people learn from each other. Again, this is especially true... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

July 1984 (Revised September 1986)
Case

CML Group, Inc.: Going Public (A)

By: William A. Sahlman

Describes a series of decisions confronting Charles Leighton, co-founder and chairman of the CML Group. CML is a successful participant in the leisure time industry with two lines of business: specialty retailing and recreational consumer products. The key issues in... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Going Public; Strategy; Business or Company Management; Cost vs Benefits; SWOT Analysis; Investment Banking; Financing and Loans; Planning; Corporate Finance; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry

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March–April 2017
Article

Hiring an Entrepreneurial Leader: What to Look For

By: Timothy Butler

Aspiring to be innovative and agile, companies of all shapes and sizes want to recruit entrepreneurial managers. But most firms lack a scientific way to separate the true entrepreneurs from other candidates. To address that problem, Butler compared the psychological... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Leadership Style; Attitudes

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June 2004 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Cox Communications, Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jonathan Gibbons

Cox Communications, the third largest U.S. cable television system operator, is confronting strategy decisions in mid-2004. Cox managers must decide whether to speed its deployment of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which offers capital and operating costs savings... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Information Technology; Competition; Product Development; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

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

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April 1990 (Revised November 1992)
Case

Population Services International: The Social Marketing Project in Bangladesh (Abridged)

By: James E. Austin

Population Services International (PSI) was a not-for-profit agency founded to disseminate family planning information and to market birth control products, primarily in less developed countries seeking to curb their population explosions. In 1976, PSI concluded an... View Details

Keywords: Conferences; Developing Countries and Economies; Information Publishing; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Agreements and Arrangements; Product; Nonprofit Organizations; Pharmaceutical Industry; Bangladesh; Washington (state, US)

June 2020
Case

Breakthroughs at Blueprint Medicines

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy Giusti and Susie L. Ma

Precision medicine company Blueprint Medicines was building a successful track record for bringing drug therapies to market 40% faster than average. The company had spent $40 million dollars and two years building a compound library that became its drug development... View Details

Keywords: Precision Medicine; Cancer; Biotechnology; Drug Development; Strategy; Expansion; Science; Genetics; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Culture; Management; Growth and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Cambridge; Massachusetts

14 Apr 2016
News

Our 2016 Honor Roll: The 40 Under 40 Most Outstanding MBA Professors

03 Oct 2017
Sharpening Your Skills

7 Effective Ways to Lead Teams

Source: rawpixel Very few businesses today can exist today without effective team work. So it's surprising that while many managers are regularly coached on how to lead individuals, training in team leadership is much more rare.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

April 2010
Case

Globalization at Komatsu

By: Michael Y. Yoshino

The case captures the challenges Komatsu, the second largest manufacturer of the earth moving equipment faced during the past five decades as it sought to globalize its operations. By 2007, it had become the second largest manufacturer of the earth moving equipment... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Distribution Channels; Production; Organizational Culture; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Manufacturing Industry; Japan

16 Aug 2016
First Look

August 16, 2016

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51488 June 2016 American Journal of Managed Care When Doctors Go to Business School: Career Choices of Physician-MBAs By: Ljuboja, Damir, Brian W. Powers, Benjamin Robbins,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2020 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Skillz: Esports and Skill-Based Mobile Gaming

By: Andy Wu, David B. Yoffie and George Gonzalez

Founded in 2012, Skillz offered a platform for mobile app developers to monetize skill-based games via prized tournaments. Skillz had over 20,000 registered developers that had created thousands of Skillz-powered games played by over 30 million registered users... View Details

Keywords: Video Games; Mobile; Esports; Applications and Software; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Growth and Development Strategy; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; United States

October 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Epic Games

By: Andy Wu and Christopher Zhang

Epic Games entered a stagnant market with its PC-games digital storefront in 2018, in the context of incumbent competitors such as Steam, its meteoric rise via Fortnite, and imminent industry shifts in gaming distribution. On the surface, Epic Games Store’s competitive... View Details

Keywords: Industry Analysis; Video Games; Platforms; Comparative Advantage; Growth Strategy; Innovation Focused Strategy; Pricing Strategy; Strategy; Competition; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Digital Platforms; Technology Industry

April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Dovernet

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; Vancouver

25 Oct 2010
HBS Case

Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market

States is an unusually competitive and cluttered market. It is tough to succeed without a clear and sustainable point of differentiation. While successful grocery retailers are expanding internationally, the odds are long. Both... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

April 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

American Nursing Services, Inc.

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Roger H. Hallowell

P.K. Scherle, R.N., founder, president, and owner, struggles with her successful business and focuses on either growth or enhanced profitability. View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Service Delivery; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry

November 1983 (Revised December 1984)
Case

Frito-Lay, Inc.: Grandma's ""Ready-To-Eat"" Cookies

Mr. Kenneth Treece, marketing director of Frito-Lay's Grandma's (R) Cookie division has received the final test market figures for the new supermarket line of Grandma's Ready-To-Eat cookies. One set of data, the Kansas City test results, was extremely encouraging;... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States