Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,511)
- Faculty Publications (340)
- March 2018 (Revised September 2019)
- Case
Chewy.com (A)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble
In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, faces a “bet the company decision”—whether to stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of its e-commerce fulfillment or to take the function in house. Cohen worries... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Rosslyn Resource: Monetization and Sales Strategy
By: Robert J. Dolan and Sunru Yong
Rosslyn Resource identifies exploration targets (potential mineral deposits) in the mining industry and advances them until the project can be monetized, usually through sale to a larger mining company, in return for an upfront fee and a royalty on future revenues.... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Big Apple Circus: Time to Fold the Tent?
By: David G. Fubini and Matthew Wiger
By 2016, the Big Apple Circus has weathered many storms in its 38 seasons as one of the most well-known New York City nonprofits. Will Weiss, the executive director, has witnessed his share of chaos during four years at Big Apple. After a slight resurgence following... View Details
- December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
- Case
Alltech
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky–based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech... View Details
Keywords: Alltech; United States; Agribusiness; Agriculture; Animal; Animal Agriculture; Animal Feed; Livestock; Family Business; Vertical Integration; Strategy; Growth; Feed Additives; Feed Supplements; Kentucky; Growth Strategy; Family Businesses; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Change Management; Trends; Governance; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Intellectual Property; Leadership; Management; Markets; Organizational Culture; Private Ownership; Science; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Research; Sales; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Kentucky; Brazil; China
- December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
- Case
NatureSweet
By: Jose Alvarez, Forest Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred
This case describes the business model and workplace philosophy of NatureSweet, a privately owned, vertically integrated greenhouse grower and marketer of fresh tomatoes with sales across the United States and $329 million in 2016 revenues. CEO Bryant Ambelang treated... View Details
Keywords: NatureSweet; Tomatoes; Agriculture; Greenhouse; Ambelang; Cherry Tomatoes; Incentives; Worker Empowerment; Empowerment; Toyota Production System; Leadership; Branding; Produce; Manufacturing; Organizational Change; Agribusiness; Business Model; Employee Relationship Management; Working Conditions; Organizational Culture; Success; Problems and Challenges; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; Mexico; North America
- Article
How a Fast-Growing Startup Built Its Sales Team for Long-Term Success
By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Mattson
It’s common for leaders of sales teams to focus almost exclusively on short-term tactics and current operations while failing to think and act in a way that supports the longer-term needs of their businesses—and it’s hard to fault them. The biggest problem with a... View Details
- November 2017
- Teaching Note
Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details
Keywords: Brands; Brand ＆ Product Management; Big Data; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Consumer Behavior; Predictive Analytics; Forecasting; Preferences; Operation Management; Distribution Channels; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Forecasting and Prediction; Data and Data Sets; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States; North America
- Article
Channel Integration, Sales Dispersion, and Inventory Management
By: Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Ioannis Stamatopoulos
We study the effects of the introduction of cross-channel functionalities on the overall sales dispersion of retailers and the implications of these effects for inventory management. To do that, we analyze data from a leading U.S. retailer who introduced a... View Details
- July 2017
- Case
Magpie: Developing and Using Buyer Personas
The founders of a start-up platform for publishers have developed preliminary personas of target customers and are evaluating the implications for initial target buyers, messaging, and marketing programs. The case is useful for discussing the process of developing... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Opportunistic Returns and Dynamic Pricing: Empirical Evidence from Online Retailing in Emerging Markets
By: Chaithanya Bandi, Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and Zhiji Xu
We investigate how dynamic pricing can lead to higher operational costs through more product returns in the online retail industry. Dynamic pricing has been widely applied by many online retailers. Research has shown that, in response to dynamic pricing, some customers... View Details
- April 2017 (Revised October 2017)
- Case
Wal-Mart Update, 2017
By: David B. Yoffie and Eric Baldwin
In 2017 Wal-Mart was still the world’s largest company, with over $480 billion in annual revenue and operations in 28 countries. Although it had mostly vanquished its rival discount retailers in the U.S., it was struggling to find the right growth strategy. Facing a... View Details
- February 2017
- Teaching Note
Oversight Systems
By: Frank Cespedes
This Teaching Note accompanies the case, set in May 2016, which discusses sales strategy and channel partnerships at Oversight Systems, an early stage software firm that developed analytics for organizations to monitor their data for errors, fraud, and operational... View Details
- January 2017 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Sales Razor Technologies
By: Paul Gompers and Noam Wasserman
Describes the issues facing a founder-CEO regarding building a board of directors, assembling an executive team, managing tension between co-founders, and outsourcing system development work. View Details
- January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
- Case
IBM Transforming, 2012–2016: Ginni Rometty Steers Watson
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen
To transform IBM for the next technology wave, Ginni Rometty, who became CEO in 2012, led divestment of declining businesses, made acquisitions in digital innovation and cloud computing, formed partnerships with former competitors such as Apple and tech startups, and... View Details
- January 2017 (Revised February 2018)
- Case
Godiva Japan: Think Local, Scale Global
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Esel Cekin and Akiko Kanno
This case tracks Jerome Chouchan’s strategies and execution for a successful turnaround of Godiva Japan’s operations, which were experiencing a decline in sales when he became the managing director of the company in 2010. Through various initiatives and innovations,... View Details
Keywords: Branding; Internationalization; Innovation; Positioning; Customer Segmentation; Occasion-based Segmentation; Execution; Talent; Customer-focused Strategies; Product Positioning; Globalized Firms and Management; Change Management; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Product; Segmentation; Innovation and Invention; Brands and Branding; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Japan
- November 2016
- Case
ShotSpotter
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra
SST, Inc. offered a subscription-based gunfire detection service, ShotSpotter Flex, to cities across the United States in addition to a few abroad. Over its 20-year history, SST had mostly honed a reliable business-to-government sales model, and the company had been... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
PTC: A Transformation to IoT
By: Rajiv Lal and Sarah McAra
In the 2010s, PTC, a leading provider of software for discrete manufacturers, faced maturing markets and changing customer needs as smart, connected products took hold—the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT). PTC saw a first mover advantage in entering the IoT space... View Details
- Winter 2016
- Article
Improving Store Liquidation
By: Nathan Craig and Ananth Raman
This paper introduces methods for increasing the efficiency of retail store liquidation, which we define as the time-constrained divestment of retail outlets through an in-store sale of inventory. The retail industry depends extensively on liquidation, not only as a... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Decision-Making by Precedent and the Founding of American Honda (1948 – 1974)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and John Heilbron
American Honda was founded in 1959 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company to facilitate sales and distribution in the United States. The details of American Honda’s early history have long served as evidence in debates among scholars and practitioners... View Details
- August 2016 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
Oversight Systems
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amram Migdal
The case, set in May 2016, discusses sales strategy and managing sales and service at Oversight Systems, an Atlanta, Georgia–based software firm that developed analytics for organizations to monitor their data for errors, fraud, and operational inefficiencies. Included... View Details