Publications

March 2020
Case

Minneapolis Star Tribune

By: Joseph L. Bower, Elizabeth Hansen and Michael Norris

In the summer of 2019, Mike Klingensmith, CEO of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Twin Cities metro region’s largest newspaper, reviewed subscription trends and plans for future experimentation. The newspaper industry across the U.S. had suffered a steep decline for... View Details

Keywords: Financial Performance; Industry Evolution; Business Earnings; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Journalism and News Industry; Minnesota

March 2006 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Massive Incorporated (A)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Clark Gilbert and Victoria Winston

How do you go to market with a brand new product in a new industry? How does a business develop an opportunity and then adapt its strategy to ensure success? Who are the early adopters and how does a business work with them? Katherine Hays, chief operating office at... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Product Launch; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Advertising Industry

December 2020
Supplement

Video Interview with Maxeme Tuchman

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Four diverse women entrepreneurs launched their ventures in a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that was part of a shift to a creative technology-driven economy for Miami. Although Miami was rated the #1 U.S. city for startups in 2017, the region contained structural... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Female Entrepreneur; Racism; Sexism; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Diversity; Gender; Race; Prejudice and Bias; City; Culture; Miami

October 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Women Entrepreneurs and Tech Ecosystems: One City, Two Realities, and Four Diverse Women

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Four diverse women entrepreneurs launched their ventures in a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that was part of a shift to a creative technology-driven economy for Miami. Although Miami was rated the #1 U.S. city for startups in 2017, the region contained structural... View Details

Keywords: Female Entrepreneur; Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Inclusion; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Racism; Sexism; Start-up; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Diversity; Gender; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Innovation and Invention; City; Culture; Miami

May 2004 (Revised March 2005)
Case

Music Downloads

By: David B. Yoffie and Deborah Freier

Examines the competition between competing music formats. In the '90s, the MP3 format challenged the traditional means of music distribution by allowing for storage of near CD-quality recordings at 1/10th of their previous size. The threat to traditional distribution... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Music Entertainment; Legal Liability; Distribution; Competition; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Information Infrastructure; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Music Industry

Find at Harvard

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

million. “You have to be more proactive and control the acquisition process, which word-of-mouth does not allow for.” That’s where digital marketing can help, allowing companies to target specific customers through search ads or social View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

October 2016
Supplement

24 Hour Fitness (B): Ownership Changes, 2005–2016

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

In 2016, 24 Hour Fitness was the number-two fitness chain in the United States, generating revenues of $1.4 billion from 441 clubs serving 3.8 million members. Based in San Ramon, California, 24 Hour Fitness operated clubs in 13 states. Having grown rapidly to become... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Buildings and Facilities; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Organization; For-Profit Firms; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Age; Training; Private Equity; Financing and Loans; Price; Profit; Revenue; Geographic Location; Geographic Scope; Health; Nutrition; Business History; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Journals and Magazines; Human Capital; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Market Entry and Exit; Media; Organizational Design; Private Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Groups and Teams; Sales; Salesforce Management; Situation or Environment; Welfare or Wellbeing; Sports; Strategy; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Segmentation; Information Technology; Internet; Mobile Technology; Online Technology; Software; Web Sites; Value; Valuation; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States; California; San Francisco

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

virtual interaction. It doesn't come from Zoom. It doesn't come from social media. It doesn't come from, you know, the warm feeling that you get on a dating app, on the contrary. Social media is the is the junk food of social life. And so... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

June 2004 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Scientific-Atlantia (S-A), a leading manufacturer of cable TV equipment, is confronting strategic challenges in mid-2004. For decades, cable operators have faced high switching costs that have locked them into exclusive supply relationships with either S-A or its... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Competition; Industry Structures; Television Entertainment; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

Web

Contact Us

our office to learn more about our students and alumni or to develop a customized recruiting strategy. Name* Contact Email* Subject* Employer Name Select Industry Consulting Consumer Products Energy / Utilities Entertainment / Media... View Details

17 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

discovery to validate a problem but don’t yet have a product, my follow-up question is: “How do you know people or companies will use your product?” Answers are equally discouraging. More often than not, I hear examples of interest tests, such as hits on social View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

30 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Peloton Changed the Exercise Game. Can the Company Push Through the Pain?

Few companies create an entirely new consumer market and reach icon status—and then set out to reinvent themselves. But that’s the hill the at-home, interactive-exercise firm Peloton is now climbing. Peloton was one of the freewheeling successes of the first year of... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Media & Broadcasting; Media & Broadcasting; Media & Broadcasting

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

to reach new people. Unlike traditional mass media advertising such as local TV commercials or print ads, which are expensive and time-consuming, paid digital media such as Google search ads, Facebook ads,... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

April 2025
Article

Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity and Decreased Stability in Intra-organizational Communication Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Christopher White, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston and Carey E. Priebe

Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by COVID-19, related work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. To understand these shifts, we analyzed aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within 4,361 organizations... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; COVID-19; Communication Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Read Now

April 14, 2017
Article

Companies Like United Need to Cultivate Good Judgment, and Free Their Employees to Use It

By: John A. Deighton

United Airlines has pledged to improve its training programs and empower its employees to put customers first in the wake of a video showing a passenger being dragged from a plane. Of all the U.S. air carriers, United should have known the power of social media and... View Details

Keywords: Crisis Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Training; Air Transportation Industry

Register to Read

April 2017
Supplement

Imprimis (C)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karen Elterman and Marc Appel

This case is a supplement to Imprimis (A & B). Set in 2015, it first describes Imprimis’s decision to introduce its own line of compounded eye drop medication called LessDrops. The case then examines the moral dilemma faced by CEO Mark Baum, who was struck by the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Moral Sensibility; Competitive Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

September 2001 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Buenos Aires Embotelladora S.A. (BAESA): A South American Restructuring

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Gustavo A. Herrero

In 1998, BAESA, PepsiCo's largest bottler and distributor outside North America, experienced severe financial difficulty and had to restructure its debt and business operations to avoid bankruptcy or liquidation. Based in Argentina, with operations throughout South... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Borrowing and Debt; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Bonds; Stocks; Multinational Firms and Management; Laws and Statutes; United States; Argentina; Brazil

February 2023 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk

By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic

Late afternoon on Friday, October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk was the center of attention at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The night before, Musk officially took the company private and became Twitter’s majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition... View Details

Keywords: Elon Musk; Twitter; Acquisition; Revenue; Advertising; Social Media; Business or Company Management; Public Opinion; Job Cuts and Outsourcing