Publications

April 2022
Teaching Note

Christie's and Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi: The Value of a Brand

By: Jill Avery

A sixteenth century Renaissance masterpiece, missing for 137 years, believed by many to have been destroyed, and then rediscovered less than a decade ago, becomes the most expensive painting ever sold, all the while surrounded by controversy. Did the buyer of Leonardo... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Valuation; Art; Art Dealer; Auction House; Brand Storytelling; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Fine Arts Industry; United States; Italy

April 1990 (Revised December 1995)
Case

SouthPark IV

By: William J. Poorvu

A young entrepreneur examines an 80,000 square foot office/warehouse building as a potential acquisition. The building is currently fully leased but all four leases will expire shortly. Due to changing market conditions, the protagonist has to look at current market... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Property; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Leasing; Cash Flow; Real Estate Industry

September 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Dianrong: Marketplace Lending, Blockchain, and 'The New Finance' in China

By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo

This case examines the strategic positioning of Dianrong, one of the largest online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China, in its attempt to become a foundational player in the expansion of the FinTech sector in Asia. Dianrong had recently announced the... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Internet and the Web; Supply Chain; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Competition; Product Positioning; Strategy; Financial Services Industry; China

26 Sep 2023
Book

Digital Strategy: A Handbook for Managing a Moving Target

time has come to produce a wide-ranging book about current research on digital strategy. Simultaneously, the inception of the digital age, with all its multiple remarkable fallouts, contributes to making the received body of strategy... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Information Technology; Technology

24 Sep 2020
Blog Post

Introducing the HBS Heartland Club

Reno, Nevada, the Heartland has so much to offer, and we want to make sure we have that representation in the student body and in our outreach initiatives. In order to do this, we want to increase exposure to the Heartland in all aspects... View Details

September 20, 2004
Comment

How Consumers Value Global Brands

By: Douglas Holt, John A. Quelch and Earl L. Taylor

In 2002, we carried out a two-stage research project in partnership with the market research company Research International/USA to find out how consumers in different countries value global brands. First, we conducted a qualitative study in forty-one countries to... View Details

Keywords: Global Brands; Brand Value; Multi-national Brands; Social Responsibility; Global Range; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Brands and Branding; Social Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

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August 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

Singapore Airlines: Premium Goes Multi-Brand

By: Rohit Deshpande and Dawn H. Lau

Singapore Airlines had long been considered the gold standard for its innovative customer service. However, the company was faced with new sources of competition, from the rapid growth of Southeast Asian low-cost carriers on the one hand, to the expansion of premium... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Air Transportation Industry; Air Transportation Industry; Singapore

April 2005 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Change at Whirlpool Corporation (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin, Dorothy A. Leonard and Gary Hamel

In 1998, the CEO of Whirlpool Corp. decides to change the company's strategy significantly to escape an increasingly unattractive "stalemate" in the appliance industry. The change he proposes involves a fundamental shift in the company's focus--from manufacturing to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Competitive Advantage; Strategic Planning; Production; Brands and Branding; Management Teams; Consumer Products Industry; United States

September 1997
Case

Information at the World Bank: In Search of a Technology Solution (A)

By: W. Earl Sasser, Josep Valor and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Information Technology Services Director Mohamed Muhsin planned to restructure the World Bank's information technology in response to President Jim Wolfensohn's call to build a knowledge bank. Several reorganization efforts taken by the bank in the 1980s led to a... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Information; Knowledge Management; Mission and Purpose; Technology; Public Administration Industry

Find at Harvard

Web

Japan - Global

August 2009, he was a global partner at Egon Zehnder International, a worldwide executive search and assessment firm. During his more than 15-year tenure there, he launched the firm's Tokyo-based financial service practice group and oversaw View Details

02 Sep 2015
What Do You Think?

What's Wrong With Amazon’s Low-Retention HR Strategy?

Sam’s Club’s parent, once said: “Give me fewer, better-trained, better-paid people and they’ll win every time.”) But think a minute. We’ve mentioned four organizations that all have been quite successful pursuing both high- and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Web Services; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Consumer Products; Fashion

24 Oct 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Startup or Established Company? Which Is Best for You?

What are the tradeoffs between going to a startup versus joining a mature company? Having done both, several times, I get this question all the time. There are many things to consider and lots of “it depends” when it comes to where you... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

01 Mar 2010
Op-Ed

A Golden Opportunity for Ford and GM

ramp-up production as quickly as possible. While Whitacre and Mulally maximize current sales, taking advantage of this opportunity in the near term is not a long-term strategy. All too often, both GM and Ford have squandered similar... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Auto

Summer 2018
Article

Scale versus Scope in the Diffusion of New Technology: Evidence from the Farm Tractor

By: Daniel P. Gross

Although tractors are now used in nearly every agricultural field operation and in the production of nearly all crops, they first developed with much more limited application. Early diffusion was accordingly rapid in these narrower applications but limited in scope... View Details

Keywords: Technology Diffusion; Spatial Technology Diffusion; Farm Tractors; R＆D; General-purpose Technologies; Technology Adoption; Agribusiness; Transportation; Research and Development; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

26 Mar 2020
Blog Post

The Road Untraveled: VC Perspectives on COVID-19

Times of Crises We are all inundated on social media with strong opinions during these unprecedented times, and I was finding it challenging to capture tactical talking points to share with my peers. My prior experience in the VC View Details

01 Feb 2001
News

What Makes a Good Leader

authority on leadership — sees this phenomenon as a sign of the times. "The transition from the industrial age to the information age is a huge shift," he notes. "In all of human history, there have only... View Details

Keywords: Management

2015
Working Paper

Multi-Product Duopoly With Cross-Product Cost Interdependencies

By: Gary Biglaiser and Andrei Hagiu

Many multi-product firms incur a complexity fixed cost when offering different product lines in different quality tiers relative to the case when offering all products lines in the same quality tier (high or low). Such fixed costs create an interdependency between... View Details

Keywords: Multi-product Duopoly; Vertical Differentiation; Fixed Costs; Cost; Profit; Business Strategy; Duopoly and Oligopoly

SSRN

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Web

Employment Data Trends

Employment Data Trends Employment Data Trends Trends Career Data Internship Data Trends by Industry 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 Consulting 24% 23% 26% 25% 18% Consumer Products 3% 3% 3% 4% 3% Entertainment / Media 2% 3% 3% 1% 3% Health Care... View Details

Blog Post

Innovation in Health Care Education: A Call to Action

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Vasant Kumar, Kevin Schulman and Karen Staman

Health care administration educators are at a crossroads: the health care sector is rife with inefficiencies, erratic quality, unequal access, and sky-high costs, complex problems which call for innovative solutions, and yet, according to our content analysis of top... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Education; Education; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Health Industry