Publications

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June 1991 (Revised October 1991)
Case

General Electric: Reg Jones and Jack Welch

By: Francis Aguilar and Christopher A. Bartlett

When GE's retiring Reginald Jones turned the job of CEO over to Jack Welch on April 1, 1981, the Wall Street Journal reported that GE had "decided to replace a legend with a live wire." Some wondered if the young dynamo could fill the elder statesman's very large... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Business or Company Management; Change Management; Leading Change; Restructuring; Investment; Strategic Planning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Succession

06 Dec 2004
What Do You Think?

Why Do Managers Fail to Act on Their Predictions?

be able to tell what may come, but it takes a whole lot of confidence and conviction to be able to act upon the vision and take preventive action." That confidence and conviction presumably has to be supplied by real leaders willing... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

23 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Informed and Interconnected: A Manifesto for Smarter Cities

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter & Stanley S. Litow; Technology

February 2018 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Huawei: How Can We Lead the Way?

By: Elie Ofek, Tian Tao, Eden Yin and Nancy Hua Dai

On September 12, 2017, just as Apple’s Tim Cook was unveiling the iPhone X, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group (CBG), and Glory Cheung, his Chief Marketing Officer, were discussing some key strategic issues regarding Huawei’s smartphone business.... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Product Positioning; Marketing Communications; Price; Competitive Strategy; Global Strategy

June 2006 (Revised January 2007)
Case

Dana Hall: Funding a Mission (A)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Herman B. Leonard and Melissa Tritter

Dana Hall is a private all-girls school in New England facing a crisis in its mission. As social norms shift away from single-sex education, the school's enrollment is falling and deficits are becoming the norm. At the same time, the modern vision for girls' education... View Details

Keywords: Crisis Management; Financing and Loans; Nonprofit Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Strategic Planning; Education Industry; England

November 2020
Case

The 1,000-Year Plan: Lee Kum Kee and Sustaining a Family Culture

By: Lauren Cohen, Dawn H. Lau and Billy Chan

The Lee family, whose Hong Kong-based Lee Kum Kee company has established itself as a legend within the Chinese and Asian sauce world, sets out to create a daring new vision of what family legacy means. With the family business having been established in 1888, and by... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Mission and Purpose; Values and Beliefs; Business and Community Relations; Organizational Structure; Strategic Planning

July 2015 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Building Strong Partnerships at the Inter-American Development Bank

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Erin L. Henry, Andreas Georgoulias and Natalie Bartlett

Building Strong Partnerships at the Inter-American Development Bank details the development of the bank's new Office of Outreach Partnerships to sustain a culture of innovation through maintaining and generating partnerships in order to fulfill the bank's greater... View Details

08 Nov 2016
First Look

November 8, 2016

Strategy By: Moldoveanu, Mihnea Abstract—I introduce algorithmic and meta-algorithmic models for the study of strategic problem solving, aimed at illuminating the processes and procedures by which strategic... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2023
Case

Thomas Buberl: Refounding AXA

By: Hubert Joly, Mihir Desai and Amram Migdal

In 2022, AXA and its CEO Thomas Buberl faced new types of challenges, including systemic risks such as climate change, geopolitical instability, public health crises, and social tensions caused by economic risks. AXA was one of the world’s largest insurers. Since... View Details

October 2023
Teaching Note

Metaverse Wars

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 723-431. Metaverse Wars recaps the development of the metaverse concept and the attendant hype, bringing the narrative up to the summer of 2023 when Meta’s big pivot looked more like a costly misstep than a stroke of strategic genius. In... View Details

Keywords: Metaverse; Strategy; Social Media; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry

15 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Businesses Beware: The World Is Not Flat

fundamental building blocks of the company's strategy. “The idea is to help businesses cross borders profitably by seeing the world as it really is.” Note that Toyota's starting point is not a grand, longer-term vision of some distant... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

March 2013
Teaching Note

Nestlé: Agricultural Material Sourcing Within the Concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV) (TN)

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Matthew Preble

In December 2012, Hans Jöhr, Nestlé's head of corporate agriculture, was preparing to meet with the company's board of directors to discuss its vision for the future related to sustainable agriculture. Nestlé's continued success depended on its ability to access the... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Agribusiness; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Nutrition; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry