Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,514)
- Faculty Publications (582)
- November 2022 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
'A Marshall Plan for Africa': James Mwangi and Equity Group Holdings
By: Caroline M. Elkins, Debora L. Spar, Zeke Gillman and Julia M. Comeau
Financial Inclusion. Dignity. Trust. These were the core principles driving James Mwangi’s transformation of Equity Building Society, insolvent in 1991, into what is, today, Equity Group Holdings, East and Central Africa’s largest retail banking institution. Raised in... View Details
- November 2022 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Hugging Face (A): Serving AI on a Platform
By: Shane Greenstein, Daniel Yue, Sarah Gulick and Kerry Herman
It is fall 2022, and open-source AI model company Hugging Face is considering its three areas of priorities: platform development, supporting the open-source community, and pursuing cutting-edge scientific research. As it expands services for enterprise clients, which... View Details
- October 2022
- Case
Afrigen Biologics: Vaccines for the Global South
By: Debora L. Spar and Julia Comeau
The majority of vaccines used on the continent of Africa (99%) are produced offshore. This makes African nations reliant on the West for major health care needs, a problem which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Afrigen Biologics (in partnership with the WHO)... View Details
- September 2022 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Navya: Steering toward a Driverless Future
By: Julian De Freitas, Elie Ofek, Shaun Ingledew and Tonia Labruyere
In 2022, Sophie Desormière arrived at French roboshuttle producer Navya, tasked with charting a new course in a challenging sector. The company, which had recently listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, was burning through cash reserves and needed to transform the promise... View Details
- July 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
A Soul and a Service: North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (the Mutual) was founded in 1898 as a for-profit entity selling life insurance catering to the Black community. The Mutual was entering a field crowded with established White-owned competitors that largely refused to... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Background Note
Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor
Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost... View Details
Keywords: Grocery Delivery; Grocery; Digitalization; Fulfillment; Delivery; Supply Chain; Disruption; Food; Supply Chain Management; Market Design; Trends; Value Creation; Goods and Commodities; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Transformation; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; China
- 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
Keywords: Healthcare; Best Practices; Best Practices Transfer; Flat Organization; Self-Managed Organizations; Self-Managed Teams; Organizational Learning; Knowledge Management; Learning; Management Practices and Processes; Human Resources; Communication; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Groups and Teams; Networks; Health Industry; Netherlands; Europe
- April 2022
- Supplement
Mastercard Labs (B)
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, digital technologies were on the rise, and innovation needed to become a strategic imperative at the company. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom,... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Culture; Transformation; Organizational Culture; Culture Change; Organizational Adaptation; Organizational Effectiveness; Alignment; Leadership; Leadership Development; Innovation; Innovation Ecosystems; Diversity; Collaboration; Co-creation; Learning Organizations; Empowerment; Ecosystem; Agility; Prototype; Experiment; Partnerships; Operating Model; Risk Management; Digital Transformation; Metrics; Payments; Financial Industry; Financial Inclusion; Ambidexterity; Corporate Innovation; Innovation Lab; Accelerator; Start-up; Fintech
- April 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Mastercard Labs (A)
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company’s competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard’s new vision of a “World Beyond Cash” distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Culture; Culture Change; Organizational Adaptation; Organizational Effectiveness; Alignment; Leadership; Leadership Development; Innovation; Innovation Ecosystems; Ecosystem; Diversity; Collaboration; Co-creation; Learning Organizations; Empowerment; Globalization; Agility; Prototype; Experiment; Partnerships; Operating Model; Risk Management; Metrics; Payments; Financial Inclusion; Financial Industry; Ambidexterity; Corporate Innovation; Innovation Lab; Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Credit Cards; Innovation Leadership; Organizational Culture
- April 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Mastercard Labs (A) (Abridged)
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company’s competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard’s new vision of a “World Beyond Cash” distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Culture; Organizational Culture; Culture Change; Organizational Adaptation; Organizational Effectiveness; Alignment; Leadership; Leadership Development; Innovation; Innovation Ecosystems; Diversity; Collaboration; Co-creation; Learning Organizations; Empowerment; Ecosystem; Agility; Prototype; Experiment; Partnerships; Operating Model; Risk Management; Metrics; Payments; Financial Inclusion; Financial Industry; Ambidexterity; Corporate Innovation; Innovation Lab; Accelerator; Start-up; Intrapreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Transformation
- March 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Pakistan Rising: Bazaar's Growth Story (A)
By: Paul A. Gompers and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2021 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are contemplating whether the year-and-a half old startup should also venture into offering financing to... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi: Leading Through the Fog of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards
As COVID-19 began to take lives, destroy healthcare systems, and shut down economies across the globe, Dr. Rakesh Suri, Chief Executive Officer of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and his executive team adapted their leadership to instill the new levels of agility and... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Culture; Organizational Culture; Organizational Adaptation; Organizational Effectiveness; Alignment; Leadership; Innovation; Diversity; Collaboration; Co-creation; Learning Organizations; Empowerment; Teamwork; Ecosystem; Agility; Partnerships; Data-driven Decision-making; Operating Model; Risk Management; Virtual Work; Team Dynamics; Telemedicine; Metrics; Globalization; Pandemic; COVID-19; Hospital; Healthcare; United Arab Emirates; Middle East; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Crisis Management; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Digital Transformation; United Arab Emirates; Middle East
- February 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova? (Abridged)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea—helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
NFX Capital and Moov Technologies
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller
In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Key Success Factors in Environmental Entrepreneurship: The Case of Wilderness Safaris
By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Woods and Herman B. Leonard
This chapter analyzes the entrepreneurial conception and evolution of the Wilderness Safaris (WS) ecotourism enterprise operating in eight African countries. It illuminates a series of factors that contribute to positive environmental impact as well as financial... View Details
- January 2022
- Case
Fueling a Cleaner Future: ACWA Power and Green Hydrogen
By: Dennis Yao and Alpana Thapar
In January 2020, Paddy Padmanathan, president and CEO of ACWA Power, was reflecting on the company’s sixteen-year record of success and thinking about its future growth plans. Founded in 2004, ACWA Power was a Saudi Arabian developer, owner, and operator of power and... View Details
- Article
The Translucent Hand of Managed Ecosystems: Engaging Communities for Value Creation and Capture
By: Elizabeth J. Altman, Frank Nagle and Michael Tushman
Management research has increasingly explored the domains of ecosystems, platforms, and open/user/distributed innovation—governance structures focused on engaging with external communities. While these research areas include substantial empirical and theoretical work... View Details
- 30 Nov 2021
- Interview
TikTok: Super App or Supernova?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Brian Kenny
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around the simple idea of helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. By May 2020, TikTok operated in 155 countries and had roughly 1 billion monthly active users, placing... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Babban Gona: Great Farm
By: Kristin Fabbe, Tarun Khanna, Caroline M. Elkins, Zeke Gillman, Eleni Kyrkopoulou and Thomaz Teodorovicz
In 2020, Babban Gona was one of the world’s largest farming operations with over 140,000 acres of maize farms, an area over ten times as large as Manhattan, and over 80,000 member-farmers in Nigeria. According to the company, the average Nigerian farmer’s net income... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Supplement
Michael Ku and Global Clinical Supply at Pfizer Inc.: Bringing Hope to Patients (C)
By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards
This case is the third installment in a series about the 10-year cultural and digital transformation of Pfizer’s Global Clinical Supply organization. In 2011, Michael Ku became Pfizer’s Vice President of Global Clinical Supply (GCS) after the company had undergone... View Details
Keywords: Clinical Supply Chain; COVID-19; Vaccine; Agile; Innovation and Invention; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Transformation; Leadership; Corporate Strategy; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Mission and Purpose; Health Care and Treatment; Supply Chain Management; Digital Transformation