Publications

14 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Amazon vs. Whole Foods: When Cultures Collide

Walmart, which had entered the organic space. By 2017, Whole Foods had started closing stores. Turning data into customer value Amazon, by contrast, had always been about low costs and efficiency, pursuing a frugal focus and rigorous performance measurement in its... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

June 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Supplement

Vanguard Retail Operations (B)

By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Generalist Model; Specialist Model; Service Operations; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States

January 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

The Olmos Project: Value Creation and Value Capture

By: John Macomber, Fernanda Miguel, Laura Urdapilleta and Valeria Moy

Private investment in public infrastructure can be encouraged when there are multiple avenues to capture and to share the value created by such a project. Gains in the market value of land adjacent to projects are not customarily channeled back into defraying the... View Details

Keywords: Value Capture; Infrastructure; Decision Making; Agribusiness; Value Creation; South America; Peru

Article

Lone Inventors as Sources of Technological Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality?

Are lone inventors more or less likely to invent breakthroughs? Recent research has attempted to resolve this question by considering the variance of creative outcome distributions. It has implicitly assumed a symmetric thickening or thinning of both tails, i.e., that... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Patents; Groups and Teams; Creativity

Find at Harvard

07 May 2012
Research & Ideas

The Art of Haggling

additional time in the cottage, and the buyer takes care of winter maintenance concerns. Win-win solutions like that could leave both parties better off than a straight cash deal. In academic circles, the former approach is called View Details

Keywords: by Katie Johnston

07 May 2014
What Do You Think?

How Should Wealth Be Redistributed?

Summing Up Is Wealth Distribution a Problem Cause or Symptom? The passion and thought that went into this month's questions about wealth redistribution suggest that the topic is of more than passing interest. Some cautioned against hasty... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

October 1992 (Revised September 1993)
Case

L.L. Bean, Inc.: Item Forecasting and Inventory Management

By: Arthur Schleifer Jr.

L.L. Bean must make stocking decisions on thousands of items sold through its catalogs. In many cases, orders must be placed with vendors twelve or more weeks before a catalog lands on a customer's doorstep, and commitments cannot be changed thereafter. As a result,... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Risk Management; Cost Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Demand and Consumers; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Retail Industry; United States

Research Summary

Overview

Professor MacKay combines theory and measurement to deliver new insights about price competition and consumer preferences. In current and published papers, his research addresses how strategic pricing decisions may be influenced by algorithms, long-term contracts,... View Details

Keywords: Price Effects; Competition Policy; Algorithms; Online Competition; Dynamic Pricing; Beliefs; Preferences; Preference Heterogeneity; Preference Measurement; Competition; Microeconomics; Strategy; Integration; Cooperation

March 2025 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Good for the Seller, Good for the Buyer and Good for Society: Sampo-yoshi, Sustainability and Trust at ITOCHU

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Bethelehem Y Araya

In 2024, ITOCHU CEO Masahiro Okafuji was at a crossroads. As the thirteenth CEO since ITOCHU’s founding in 1858, he had fueled the company’s growth since 2011 by bringing ITOCHU’s founding philosophy of Sampo-yoshi (good for the seller, good for the buyer and... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Trust; Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Japan

September 2015
Article

Design and Implementation of a Privacy Preserving Electronic Health Record Linkage Tool in Chicago

By: Abel Kho, John Cashy, Kathryn Jackson, Adam Pah, Satyender Goel, Jorn Boehnke, John Eric Humphries, Scott Duke Kominers and et al.

Objective
To design and implement a tool that creates a secure, privacy preserving linkage of electronic health record (EHR) data across multiple sites in a large metropolitan area in the United States (Chicago, IL), for use in clinical... View Details

Keywords: Information; Customers; Safety; Rights; Ethics; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Chicago

Read Now

January 2008
Article

Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman and Willy C. Shih

Most companies aren't half as innovative as their senior executives want them to be (or as their marketing claims suggest they are). What's stifling innovation? There are plenty of usual suspects, but the authors finger three financial tools as key accomplices.... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Innovation and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Prejudice and Bias; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

May 2013
Case

Altius Golf and the Fighter Brand

By: Robert J. Dolan and Sunru Yong

Altius Golf is the clear leader in the golf ball market despite a long-term decline in the number of golfers and a drop in sales following the financial crisis. The firm has maintained its position by introducing generations of advanced, super-premium golf balls that... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Competitive Advantage; Decision Choices and Conditions; Distribution Channels; Sports; Financial Crisis; Brands and Branding; Segmentation; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

04 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

How a Juicy Brand Came Back to Life

by asserting that a brand might fit better in one company's portfolio than in another's. But a marketing professional would probably explain the improved fit in terms of distribution economies or manufacturing synergies. I would explain... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Food & Beverage

04 Oct 2021
What Do You Think?

How Do We Make Sure the Right People End Up with Power in Organizations?

(iStockphoto/Rawpixel) The subject of power has a certain intoxicating aura about it. Maybe that’s why I studied and wrote about interorganizational power in channels of distribution while teaching courses in marketing too long ago. The... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

February 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Chari: Exploring Fintech in Morocco

By: Karen G. Mills and Ahmed Dahawy

This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Morocco. It highlights Morocco’s unique economy where cash remains a dominant player in the market despite global advancements in digitalization. The case also explores the various cultural and... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Cultural Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Technological Innovation; Distribution Industry; Distribution Industry; Morocco

10 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 10, 2009

create value. We extend this theory to address value appropriation. A product or process design that is modular with respect to intellectual property (IP) allows firms to better capture value in situations where knowledge and value creation are View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

22 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 22

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-100.pdf Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries: The Impact of Task Decomposition and Knowledge Distribution on the Locus of Innovation Authors:Karim R. Lakhani, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, and Michael L.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2009
Case

When Supply is of Public Interest: Roche & Tamiflu

The case focuses on the challenges of Roche maintaining a supply network for a global influenza pandemic response initiative based on its antiviral drug Tamiflu. The Roche group is a 40 billion CHF company consisting of a pharmaceutical division and a diagnostic... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Health Pandemics; Distribution; Logistics; Production; Supply Chain Management; Performance Capacity; Pharmaceutical Industry

November 2021
Article

Ratings, Reviews, and the Marketing of New Products

By: Itay P. Fainmesser, Dominique Olié Lauga and Elie Ofek

We study how user-generated content (UGC) about new products impacts a firm's advertising and pricing decisions and the effect on profits and market dynamics. We construct a two-period model where consumers value quality and are heterogeneous in their taste for the new... View Details

Keywords: Online Reviews; Product Ratings; Social Networks; Word Of Mouth; Pricing; User-generated Content; Advertising; Product Marketing; Price; Consumer Behavior; Product Positioning; Social Media