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June 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Sustainability Reporting at Dollar Tree, Inc.

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

The cases discusses the ESG strategy of Dollar Tree Inc., a U.S. Fortune 500 company in the deep discount retail industry and the and shareholder pressure faced by the company. In 2022, the company faced a shareholder resolution from a renowned shareholder advocacy... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Shareholder Activism; Dollar Tree; Sustainability Reporting; ESG Reporting; Board Of Directors; Shareholder Engagement; GHG; Environmental Accounting; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Trends; Communication; Announcements; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Reports; Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Strategic Planning; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Situation or Environment; Opportunities; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Value Creation; Retail Industry; United States; Virginia

Web

Frequently Asked Questions | HBS Online

course teaches business professionals how to craft and continually adapt go-to-market strategies for new ventures, products, and services. Participants develop a proven toolkit for identifying, capturing, and influencing customers and... View Details

05 Sep 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Making the Right Technical Hire

will pay off. Join the conversation You can read more about my thoughts on hiring for startups here. Please share other ideas on this topic in the comments! Adapted from the author’s blog post, Are You Being Strategic About Hiring? View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin; Technology

August 2022 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Pricing at Netflix: The Sequel

By: Elie Ofek and Amy Klopfenstein

This case continues the themes discussed in "Pricing at Netflix" (Case 521-004). Following the conclusion of the original case, Netflix developed new, high-profile original content, added millions of subscribers, and introduced another price increase in January 2022.... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Advertising; Marketing Strategy; Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Finance; Strategy; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Business Strategy; Adaptation; Internet and the Web; Customers; Customer Satisfaction; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Advertising Industry; North and Central America; United States

March 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Ethan Berman at RiskMetrics Group (A)

Ethan Berman, CEO of J.P. Morgan's risk management spinoff, has grown RiskMetrics Group (RMG) from a small team of 30 to a 70-person firm contemplating an IPO. Along the way, the consensus-based decision-making process that he espoused started to prove unwieldy; his... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Style; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Service Industry; Consulting Industry

March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Winning Business at Russell Reynolds (A)

By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco

In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting–and... View Details

Article

Stop the Meeting Madness: How to Free Up Time for Meaningful Work

By: Leslie Perlow, Constance Noonan Hadley and Eunice Eun

Many executives feel overwhelmed by meetings, and no wonder: On average, they spend nearly 23 hours a week in them, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. What’s more, the meetings are often poorly timed, badly run, or both. We can all joke about how painful they... View Details

Keywords: Time Management; Performance Efficiency; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Improvement

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11 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

Mixing Open Source and Proprietary Software Strategies

quality differential are higher in both firms, the firms tend to look more alike, choosing the same business model. Q: Can you give an example of a firm adapting its business model? A: Yes, this case actually motivated me to start working... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Web Services

May 2010 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Kent Thiry: "Mayor" of DaVita

By: William W. George and Natalie Kindred

Kent Thiry, CEO of dialysis provider DaVita, is considering how to integrate employees from recently acquired Gambro Healthcare without damaging DaVita's robust, unconventional internal culture. When Thiry joined DaVita in 1999, breaking an important promise to his... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Experience and Expertise; Employee Relationship Management; Leadership Style; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Personal Development and Career; Integration; Health Industry

01 Dec 2022
News

Future Vision

teach by the case method in new and different modalities. These were huge lifts for our IT and operations teams and for our faculty and students, and we failed fast (and often) many times before we were satisfied. But we also learned a lot about our ability to View Details

Keywords: Brian Kenny; Educational Support Services; Educational Services

01 Mar 2024
News

The Internet's Next Frontier

While the Crypto, Fintech, and Web3 Lab—one of 13 labs contained within Harvard’s Digital Data Design Institute—might not have the Bunsen burners and test tubes found in science and engineering labs, it does share a philosophical construct: it is a sandbox—an... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie

02 Aug 2020
What Do You Think?

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

the relentless quest for adaptation and improvement in the so-called technology sectors seems to fuel the need for experimentation, the nature of experimentation in other sectors, including the high hazard/high reliability industries, may... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

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

05 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software

pixelfit Companies that contribute to open source software and use it in their own IT systems and applications can gain a competitive advantage—even though they may be helping their competitors in the short run. Open source software is software whose code can be... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Computer

January 2006 (Revised July 2016)
Case

Gordon Bethune at Continental Airlines

By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson

A $385 million loss for the final months of fiscal year 1994 signaled Continental might go bankrupt. Could new CEO Gordon Bethune turn Continental around? Continental was in dire straits because the deregulation of the commercial airline industry in 1978 ushered in a... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Profit; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Improvement; Labor and Management Relations; Air Transportation Industry

November 2011
Case

Celeritas, Inc.: Leadership Challenges in a Fast-Growth Industry

By: Michael Beer and Ingrid Vargas

In 2011, Celeritas is a leading data communications company in the crowded, highly competitive, and ever-evolving enterprise-network optimization market. Having experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2003, Celeritas has recently seen sales decline and has begun... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Morale; Conflict; Organizational Change; Team Building; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology; Leadership; Communication; Groups and Teams; Attitudes; Conflict and Resolution; Information Technology Industry; Communications Industry