Publications

18 Dec 2006
Lessons from the Classroom

Grooming Next-Generation Leaders

Something is always a stretch for someone. "There are often conflicts between how fast you can move and how fast the organization can move you. If someone doesn't see mobility, they may leave." Adapting A Leadership Style Not... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

March 2011 (Revised April 2011)
Case

State Bank of India: Transforming a State Owned Giant

By: Rajiv Lal and Rachna Tahilyani

February 2011: O.P. Bhatt reflected contentedly on his five-year term as Chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest commercial bank. He had led SBI on a journey of transformation from an old, hierarchical, transaction oriented, government bank to a modern,... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Customer Relationship Management; Commercial Banking; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Banking Industry; India

22 Feb 2022
News

New Urban Order

compelling,” says Senior Lecturer John Macomber, coauthor with Joseph Allen of Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity. “In other words, more and more of these companies will enter the mainstream.” The need for climate View Details

Keywords: Kathleen Fu, Deborah Blagg, Julia Hanna, and Maureen Harmon; illustrations by; energy; environment; sustainability; entrepreneurship; Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation; Transportation; Water, Sewage and Supply Systems; Utilities; Construction of Buildings; Construction; Waste Management and Remediation Services; Corporate Services

04 Dec 2019
Book

Creating the Experimentation Organization

a process of five steps by which companies can effectively scale experimentation, using an alphabetical mnemonic: Awareness, Belief, Commitment, Diffusion, Embeddedness. The five stages of creating an experiment organization, adapted from... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

07 Feb 2019
Book

How Big Companies Can Outrun Disruption

“Larger companies are rarely seen as fountains of innovation,” says Harvard Business School professor Gary Pisano. Yet scale, if properly exploited, can still be an engine for transformation. In his new book Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation, he... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

June 2022 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Strategic Innovation at the United Nations: A Network of Ecosystems

By: Frank Nagle, Elizabeth J. Altman and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2021, Gina Lucarelli, leader of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs, prepared for a meeting with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. The two planned to discuss the future of the Accelerator Labs, a network of social innovation labs located... View Details

Keywords: Change; Disruption; Transformation; Change Management; Education; Learning; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Range; Local Range; Geopolitical Units; Country; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology; Information Management; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Psychology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Society; Social Issues; Welfare; Strategy; Cooperation; Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; North and Central America

01 Jun 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Stakeholder Management Facing New Headwinds?

captured the spirit of respondents when she said, “For Harvard Business School to give up on the case method would be a step backward, not forward.” Reminding us that the method was adapted from teaching techniques practiced at Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

November 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Zespri Grows

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Controlling about a third of global kiwifruit exports by volume and nearly half by value in 2018, Zespri was a grower-owned “corporatized cooperative” with the exclusive right to export New Zealand-grown kiwifruit (except to Australia). Zespri did not grow fruit but... View Details

September 2017
Case

Tencent

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

Tencent had undergone many transformations since it was founded in 1998 as a simple messaging service. In 2017, it was the largest online games provider in China with a wide range of game types, China’s largest social networking service provider with several of the... View Details

Keywords: Tencent; Tencent Holdings; WeChat; Social Networking; Social Networks; Gaming; Gaming Industry; Video Games; Computer Games; Mobile Gaming; Portals; Payments; Mobile Payments; O2O; Online-to-offline; E-commerce; Messaging; Subscription Model; Freemium; Mobile App Industry; Smartphone; PC; Monetization Strategy; Antitrust; Streaming; Cloud Computing; Artificial Intelligence; Big Data; Alibaba; Facebook; JD.com; Tesla; Bundling; Synergies; Digital Strategy; Imitation; Licensing; Agility; Entry Barriers; Online Platforms; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Business Units; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Organization; For-Profit Firms; Joint Ventures; Restructuring; Communication; Communication Technology; Blogs; Interactive Communication; Interpersonal Communication; Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Music Entertainment; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Price; Profit; Revenue; Geographic Scope; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Business History; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Social Marketing; Network Effects; Emerging Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Industry Growth; Monopoly; Media; Distribution Channels; Product Development; Service Delivery; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Business and Government Relations; Groups and Teams; Networks; Opportunities; Social and Collaborative Networks; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Expansion; Horizontal Integration; Vertical Integration; Segmentation; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Internet and the Web; Applications and Software; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Value Creation; Communications Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Financial Services Industry; Information Industry; Information Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Music Industry; Service Industry; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Video Game Industry; Web Services Industry; Asia; China; Canton (province, China)

May 2016
Case

The Inexorable Rise of Walmart? 1988—2016

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

In October 2015, Walmart surprised investors by announcing that it expected flat sales growth for 2015 and growth of only 3% to 4% over the coming three years. Profits would also fall due to significant investments in people and technology. The company’s stock price... View Details

Keywords: Asda; Costco; David Glass; Convenience Stores; Discount Retailing; Dollar Stores; Doug McMillon; E-commerce; Online Retail; General Merchandise; Grocery; Lee Scott; Mike Duke; Multichannel Retailing; Omnichannel; Neighborhood Market; Sam Walton; Sam's Club; Store Formats; Supercenter; Supermarket; Warehouse Clubs; Merchandising; Walmart; Wal-Mart; Globalized Firms and Management; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Units; Business Divisions; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Organization; For-Profit Firms; Film Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Banks and Banking; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Global Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Business History; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Human Capital; Labor Unions; Wages; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Management Succession; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Distribution; Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Labor and Management Relations; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Expansion; Segmentation; Information Technology; Internet; Mobile Technology; Online Technology; Web; Web Sites; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Distribution Industry; Banking Industry; United States; Arkansas; Bentonville

Blog

Celebrating 100 Years of the HBS Case Method

adapted for teaching business management—with one main adjustment. Instead of using case law, business professors would employ real-life situations from the business world to analyze business dilemmas and principles of practice. The first... View Details

Article

Drive Innovation with Better Decision-Making

By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Taran Swan

Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today’s discovery-driven innovation processes involve... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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April 2011 (Revised May 2011)
Case

EMC2: Delivering Customer Centricity

By: Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery

This case introduces the concept of customer centricity and traces its development at EMC, the world's leading data storage hardware and information management software company. EMC's customers had historically relied on EMC salespeople to guide them through the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Relationship Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Salesforce Management; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet; Information Technology Industry

November 2007 (Revised September 2010)
Background Note

The Rong Family: A Chinese Business History

By: Elisabeth Koll

Provides the complex historical background to understanding the development of family businesses in China from the late 19th century to the present. Using the example of the Rong family, China's most prominent industrialist family in pre-1949 China, analyzes the... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Business History; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Alliances; Business and Government Relations; Social and Collaborative Networks; China