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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

April 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

CredEx Fintech: Business Model Transformation During the Digital Era

By: Laura Huang, Raphael Amit and Xu Han

Founded in 2010, CredEx has been a fast and constant innovator in the microfinance industry in China. Tang Xia, CEO and co-founder of CredEx, has led the company through a number of profound business model innovations in response to external environment changes, which... View Details

Keywords: Digitization; Fintech; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Transformation; Microfinance; Organizational Change and Adaptation

January 2013 (Revised March 2017)
Case

CloudFlare, Inc.: Running Hot?

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden

In July 2012, the cofounders of CloudFlare, a Silicon Valley startup that protects websites and accelerates their traffic, are considering the implications of five employees' resignations over the prior three months. Was this natural attrition for a high-tech venture... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Resignation and Termination; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; California

07 Nov 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Sir Alex Ferguson--Managing Manchester United

the team, which can be taxing emotionally. "The hardest thing to do is to let go of a player who has been a great guy," Ferguson told me. Many other factors contribute to his successes, too. One factor I am particularly impressed by is his ability to View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Sports; Entertainment & Recreation

July 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Mary Kay Inc.: Enriching Women's Lives while Embracing Change

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Julia Kelley

In December 2020, Mary Kay Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green considered several strategic dilemmas. Founded in 1963 by Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay was a direct sales company whose Independent Beauty Consultants purchased its beauty and cosmetics products at... 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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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

April 2005 (Revised July 2009)
Case

IBM's Decade of Transformation: Turnaround to Growth

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Robert D. Austin and Elizabeth Collins

Describes IBM's decade of transformation. Provides background on the company's history and the factors that led to its near death in the early 1990s and to its remarkable turnaround during Gerstner's reign as CEO. A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: History; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leading Change; Transformation; Growth and Development Strategy

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

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

March 2013
Case

Robin Ash and Printzhof Press

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Lynda St. Clair

Robin Ash has just been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of Printzhof Press and Vice President of its parent company, Education and Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Her first objective is to create an action plan that will achieve two seemingly contradictory corporate... View Details

Keywords: United States; Organizational Change; Management Styles; General Management; Change Management; Morale; Communication; Human Resource Management; Book Publishing; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Conflict Management; Leading Change; Competitive Strategy; Organizational Culture; Planning; Education Industry; Publishing Industry

09 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Most Accountants Aren’t Crooks—Why Good Audits Go Bad

manager who misses a family dinner and blames the traffic, though he simply lost track of time. Likewise, an auditor's biases may lead her to unknowingly adapt over time to small imperfections in a client's financial practices.... View Details

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman, George Loewenstein & Don A. Moore; Accounting; Financial Services

Web

HBS - The year in Review

2021 Annual Report From The Dean Financials PDF Downloads Archive The Year in Review The 2020–21 fiscal year was one of innovation and adaptation. While the pandemic disrupted lives and activities around the world, Harvard Business School sought to not just continue... View Details

09 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Leadership Lessons of the Great Recession: Options for Economic Downturns

With global markets in turmoil over the last several weeks, leaders throughout the world are starting to think about how they should respond if confronted with an economic downturn. Yet what do we know about how leaders decide what to do when demand suddenly falls? And... View Details

Keywords: by Sandra Sucher & Susan Winterberg; Aerospace; Electronics

October 2019
Case

Leading Bank Leumi into the Future

By: Joshua D. Margolis, Allison M. Ciechanover, Nicole Keller and Danielle Golan

An unlikely but highly effective leader of a traditional bank, Rakefet Russak-Aminoach, simultaneously leads a classic change effort and an unconventional effort to innovate. She focuses her initial energy on making the bank more efficient in the face of industry... View Details

15 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Businesses Beware: The World Is Not Flat

International is increasingly cognizant of the need to adapt to local contexts—as evinced not only by the India entry strategy but by changes in merchandising policies, clearer definition of decision rights, and even the astonishing... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

December 1997 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Merck Sharp & Dohme Argentina, Inc. (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Hal Hogan

Describes the efforts of the new managing director of Merck's subsidiary for Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay to transform the organization and its culture. Focuses on a critical decision: whether to offer the son of a high-ranking official in the government's national... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Ethics; Decision Making; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Leadership; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Conflict of Interests; Argentina; Uruguay; Paraguay