Publications

April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Price; Distribution; Supply Chain Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

31 Mar 2022
Op-Ed

Navigating the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in Professional Services

profitability for its partners. And then we have the multinational Magic Circle firm Linklaters, which offers seamless, cross-jurisdictional, cross-practice legal services to its clients, the opportunity to... View Details

Keywords: by Ashish Nanda

03 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The State of Customer Service Leadership

version 1.0 of that concept. Remind us what that was, and how version 2.0, which you introduce in this book, updates this idea. Schlesinger: The basic relationships between employees, customers, and financial results, in that order, that we set forth in the original... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner; Retail

2017
Book

Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship

By: Geoffrey Jones

This book explores whether profits and environmental sustainability are compatible through the lens of a global history of green entrepreneurship between the nineteenth century and today. It tells the story of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who... View Details

Find at Harvard

20 Sep 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Larry Fink at BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit

Keywords: Re: George Serafeim; Financial Services

September 2018
Case

ProdEng: Services for Oil & Gas Extraction

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal

ProdEng is a venture created as part of a PE fund and provides oil field services in Argentina. In 2016, an industry-wide unforeseen oil and gas demand slump drove ProdEng’s average service rates down by more than 37%, with EBITDA margins falling from 50% to 24% in the... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Marketing; Price; Strategy; Latin America; Argentina

December 20, 2007
Article

Profit And Poverty: Why It Matters

By: Michael Chu

Commentary on investing in microfinance View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Profit; Poverty; Financial Services Industry

April 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A) (Abridged)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Owens & Minor (O&M) performed lean inventory services for Virginia Mason (VM) as its Alpha Vendor, but the outdated industry pricing model created perverse incentives and could not capture O&M's costs. Together, O&M and VM created an activity-based pricing model: Total... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Partners and Partnerships; Activity Based Costing and Management; Business Model; Non-Governmental Organizations; Nonprofit Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Asset Pricing; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

2014
Working Paper

~To Groupon or Not to Groupon: The Profitability of Deep Discounts

By: Benjamin G. Edelman

We examine the profitability and implications of online discount vouchers, a relatively new marketing tool that offers consumers large discounts when they prepay for participating firms' goods and services. Within a model of repeat experience good purchase, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Voucher Discounts; Groupon; Experience Goods; Repeat Purchase; Online Advertising; Price; Profit; Marketing Strategy; Retail Industry

SSRN

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07 Nov 2011
News

Lutte contre la pauvretÃ© et recherche du profit

March 2016
Article

To Groupon or Not to Groupon: The Profitability of Deep Discounts

By: Benjamin Edelman, Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers

We examine the profitability and implications of online discount vouchers, a relatively new marketing tool that offers consumers large discounts when they prepay for participating firms' goods and services. Within a model of repeat experience good purchase, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Voucher Discounts; Groupon; Experience Goods; Repeat Purchase; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications

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May 2016 (Revised August 2022)
Case

RegionFly: Cutting Costs in the Airline Industry

By: Susanna Gallani and Eva Labro

RegionFly is a small, private airline specializing in ultra-premium services. Founded shortly after the "Golden Age of airline travel," RegionFly's financial performance had been strong for several decades. More recently, however, the results have taken a downward... View Details

Keywords: Recession; Downsizing; Profitability; Cost Management; Profit; Luxury; Competitive Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Divisions; Logistics; Decision Making; Strategic Planning; Air Transportation Industry

04 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Diversity Boosts Profits in Venture Capital Firms

yuri_arcurs Recent research shows for the first time that diversity in venture capital firms not only spawns creativity and alternative viewpoints, but also improves financial performance. Paul Gompers, Eugene Holman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Financial Services

March 2007
Teaching Note

Understanding Customer Profitability at Charles Schwab (TN)

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Teaching note to 106002. View Details

Keywords: Customers; Profit; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Decision Making; Cost; System; Transformation; Budgets and Budgeting; Performance Evaluation; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

14 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Rewriting the Rules of Service Competition

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professors James Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard A. Schlesinger literally wrote the book on service industry management with The Service View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett, W. Earl Sasser & Leonard A. Schlesinger; Retail

06 May 2002
Research & Ideas

Profits for Nonprofits: Earning Your Own Way

issues that profit brings to a social service organization. Founded thirty-five years ago, the small, multiservice nonprofit Haley House is a spiritually based community organization that serves... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

June 2017
Case

MIA: Profit at the Base of the Pyramid

By: Lynda M. Applegate, José Antonio Dávila Castilla, Sarah Mehta and Aldo Sesia

In January 2016, Guillermo Jaime had just returned home to Mexico City after attending a Harvard Business School executive education program. Jaime was the founder and CEO of Mejoramiento Integral Asistido (MIA), a company providing affordable housing to low-income... View Details

Keywords: Base Of The Pyramid; Social Capitalism; Housing; Emerging Markets; Social Enterprise; Society; Wealth and Poverty; Social Entrepreneurship; Construction Industry; Mexico

January–February 2018
Article

Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality

By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat

More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details

Keywords: Inclusive Growth; Sustainability; Social Impact; Business Strategy; Shared Value; Impact Investing; Inequality; Corporate Governance; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Execution; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment