Publications

28 May 2019
News

How bad are Pioneer’s job cuts? At over 27% of workers, they’re deeper than after 9/11 and the financial crisis

07 Dec 2017
News

Innovation is key to solving America's health-care problems

Who Benefits Most in Disease Management Programs?

Disease management programs aim to reduce cost by improving the quality of care for chronic diseases. Evidence of their effectiveness is mixed. Reducing health care spending sufficiently to cover program costs has proved particularly challenging. This study uses a... View Details

2022
Article

The Effects of Public and Private Equity Markets on Firm Behavior

By: Shai Bernstein

In this article, I review the theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of public and private equity markets on firm behavior, emphasizing the consequences that emerge from disclosure requirements, ownership concentration, and degree of firm standardization.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Finance And Governance; Financing Policy; Commercialization; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Public Equity; Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention; Cost of Capital

25 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

A Few Firms Have Outsized Influence in D.C.

researchers determined that all of the findings can be explained in part by high fixed costs to enter the lobbying club—both in the costs of hiring well-paid lobbyists and in complying with reporting... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

17 May 2012
News

Study: Safety inspections don't hurt profits

Article

Putting the 'Relationship' Back into CRM

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

Many managers think that the way to capture value through relationship marketing is to focus on the 'good' customers and get rid of the 'bad' ones. But there is a lot more to best practice relationship management than maximizing revenues on individual customers and... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; CRM; Customer Relationship Management; Brand Building; Brand Management; Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry

03 Mar 2014
HBS Case

Decommoditizing the Canned Tomato

Consumers in the United States are so increasingly into fresh, local, and carbon neutral that if someone figured out how to grow a tomato that could walk itself to the grocery store, they'd be a millionaire. So why is Mutti S.p.a., a tomato processing company based in... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Agriculture & Agribusiness; Food & Beverage; Retail

May–June 2021
Article

Capturing Value in Platform Business Models that Rely on User-Generated Content

By: Hemang Subramanian, Sabyasachi Mitra and Sam Ransbotham

Business models increasingly depend on inputs from outside traditional organizational boundaries. For example, platforms that generate revenue from advertising, subscription, or referral fees often rely on user-generated content (UGC). But there is considerable... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Network Effects; Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Risk and Uncertainty

January–February 2019
Article

Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don't

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

In the digital economy, scale is no guarantee of continued success. After all, the same factors that help an online platform expand quickly—such as the low cost of adding new customers—work for challengers too. What, then, allows platforms to fight off rivals and grow... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Competition; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy

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1980
Working Paper

Components of Manufacturing Inventories: A Structural Model of the Production Process

By: Alan J. Auerbach and Jerry R. Green

This paper presents a structural model of production and inventory accumulation based on the hypothesis of cost minimization. It differs from previous attempts in several respects. First, it integrates the analysis of input inventories with output inventories, treating... View Details

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October 26, 2015
Article

Measuring and Communicating Health Care Value with Charts

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Robin P. Blackstone, Derek A. Haas and Nikhil G. Thaker

The goal of a health care system should be to deliver the most value to patients: the outcomes achieved for treating a medical condition relative to the costs incurred over a complete care cycle. We have found that a radar (spider web) chart is an effective means to... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

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19 Nov 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans

Keywords: by Doug J. Chung, Thomas Steenburgh & K. Sudhir

February 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

FreeMarkets OnLine

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Describes the marketing strategy of an entrepreneurial start-up engaged in electronic purchasing for large manufacturers. By creating an electronic bidding platform, the company has been able to cut down procurement costs by about 15%. The case question concerns how... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Bids and Bidding; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Production; Electronics Industry

Educators

21 Dec 2016
News

Making the ACA Affordable — bipartisan lessons from abroad

February 1998 (Revised September 1998)
Case

Insteel Wire Products: ABM at Andrews

By: V.G. Narayanan and Ratna G. Sarkar

Insteel implements an activity-based costing (ABC) system in 1996. It finds pallet nails to be its most profitable product and decides to expand the number of cells making pallet nails from two to four. A repeat of the ABC study in 1997 shows pallet nails have become... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Expansion; Resource Allocation; Activity Based Costing and Management

Educators

18 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Big Deals: Financing Large-Scale Investments

venture capital for people with real guts," quips Esty. "Most of the projects are start-ups, yet they cost something on the order of $5 billion, not $5 million." And all too often, he adds, they turn out to be losing... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

November 2023
Teaching Plan

Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 622-001. Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized... View Details

Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Product Positioning; Auto Industry; China; Sweden

2 Dec 2019
Other Presentation

Increasing Solar Power

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Abby Hopper

Is increasing solar power the answer? Abby Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, and Professor Joe Lassiter discuss how to deliver reliable, clean, low cost power for people everywhere. View Details

Keywords: Solar Power; Renewable Energy; Service Delivery