Publications

March 2010 (Revised November 2010)
Case

Pandora Radio: Fire Unprofitable Customers?

By: Willy C. Shih and Halle Alicia Tecco

Pandora Radio is at a crossroads. Founder Tim Westergren has just been told by a well known VC to get rid of his unprofitable customers in order to get his costs down, but Westergren is not sure that such actions are consistent with his company's business model.... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customer Satisfaction; Music Entertainment; Venture Capital; Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Internet; Media and Broadcasting Industry

November 2007 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Tom Cruise

By: Anita Elberse and Peter Stone

In November 2006, Harry Sloan, chairman and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM) offers movie star Tom Cruise and his business partner Paula Wagner a chance to run United Artists (UA), a dormant studio within MGM's portfolio. Just over two months earlier, Viacom... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Talent and Talent Management; Film Entertainment; Brands and Branding; Partners and Partnerships; Value Creation; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

October 2011 (Revised February 2012)
Case

One Game to Rule Them All: Lord of the Rings Online and the MMO Market

Keywords: Competition; Strategy; Business Model; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Video Game Industry

01 Sep 2014
News

Feedback

percent. Screen Saver Re: AMC Theatres’ quest for a third place Very interesting story of what brick-and-mortar can do to compete in a tough video entertainment market. The puzzle is if this is a strategy of building better mousetraps or... View Details

01 Jun 2014
News

Book Review: Hooray for the Huddled Masses

wheel." — Jack Legare, the hero of Goddesses and Doormats, the forthcoming thriller by Norb Vonnegut (MBA 1986) What I'm Reading "An LA native, I thought I understood the entertainment industry—that is, until I read HBS professor Anita... View Details

Keywords: Maureen Harmon

06 Apr 2016
News

Raising a Glass to Life-Long Entrepreneurship

Koch first brewed the now-well known beer in his kitchen, long before the term “craft beer” was coined. In his entertaining new book, he shares 20-plus years of lessons learned since the first batch of beer—“the long arc of an... View Details

01 Dec 2013
News

Faster, Bigger, Stronger: Supersizing the NFL

Nickelodeon and Univision. "We know," O'Reilly observes, "that other entertainment and sports interests are competing for these groups and that we can never rest on our laurels." Innovation can mean basics like reducing parking and... View Details

Keywords: Arts, Entertainment; Arts, Entertainment; Arts, Entertainment; Arts, Entertainment

September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Supplement

Wemade: (Re)Establishing Trust in Blockchain Games (B)

By: Jung Koo Kang, Charles C.Y. Wang, David Allen and Kwangmoon So

This supplement reviews Wemade's efforts to rebuild confidence in its business after its WEMIX coin was delisted from the major South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges on December 8, 2022. It outlines Wemade's strategy of transparency, which included partnerships with... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Cryptocurrency; Crypto Economy; Accounting; Financial Reporting; Revenue Recognition; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Corporate Disclosure; Information Technology; Financial Markets; Governance; Accounting Industry; Video Game Industry; South Korea