Publications

August 2001 (Revised April 2002)
Case

Strategic Capital Management, LLC (A)

By: Mark L. Mitchell, Erik Stafford and Todd Pulvino

Strategic Capital Management, LLC, is a hedge fund that is planning to make financial investments in Creative Computers and Ubid. Creative Computers recently sold approximately 20% of its Internet auction subsidiary, Ubid, to the public at $15 per share. Ubid's stock... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Business Subsidiaries; Internet and the Web; Investment Funds; Price; Performance Efficiency; Capital Markets; Auctions; Investment Return; Equity; Planning; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Research Questions

By: Anita Elberse

One overarching question drives my research: What are effective marketing strategies for managers in creative industries?

I focus on three sub-questions:

How can managers in creative industries effectively manage products and product... View Details

December 2012 (Revised November 2014)
Case

Lit Motors

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden

In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim, had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Prototyping; Electric Vehicle; Urban Vehicle; Customer Tests; Gyroscope; Entrepreneurs; Development Stage Enterprises; Creativity; Disruptive Technologies; Consumer Surveys; Market Segmentation; Manufacturing Costs; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; United States; California

June 2014
Teaching Note

Lit Motors

By: Thomas Eisenmann

In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim, had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Prototyping; Electric Vehicle; Urban Vehicle; Customer Test; Gyroscope; Entrepreneurs; Development Stage Enterprises; Creativity; Disruptive Technologies; Consumer Surveys; Market Segmentation; Manufacturing Costs; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; United States; California

25 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Collaborating Across Cultures

man to emperor Xuanzong and his consort. “To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of existing ideas, then combining ideas that haven't been connected before creates the potential to produce something new and useful" The... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

24 Mar 2012
News

Praise Is Fleeting, But Brickbats We Recall

31 May 2004
Research & Ideas

How Team Leaders Show Support–or Not

What do leaders do to make employees in creative functions feel supported or not? That was one of the research questions posed by Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and colleagues in what has turned into a penetrating study... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

April 2007
Case

The Boeing Company: Moonshine Shop

By: Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan and Shannon O'Donnell

Describes how the "Moonshine Shop," a group of plant-savvy creative generalists, is helping a great industrial company become more innovative. Chronicles the history of the Moonshine Shop, its successes and failures, and describes innovations they've helped put in... View Details

Keywords: History; Business Model; Saving; Programs; Creativity; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Research and Development; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Business Processes; Aerospace Industry

December 12, 2009
Other Article

The Transformation of India: Incumbent Control, Reforms, and Newcomers

By: Laura Alfaro and Anusha Chari

What microeconomic forces drove the structural transformation of India's economy in recent decades? This column studies firm-level data and portrays a dynamic economy driven by the growth of private and foreign firms. But the Indian economy did not go through an... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Microeconomics; India

Read Now

18 Jun 2013
News

Megahit Marketing

July 2007 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Launching Telmore (A)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Celso Fernandez and Moritz Jobke

When the Danish mobile phone service provider Telmore entered the market in October 2000, few people took notice. Its business model was not perceived as particularly aggressive or threatening to the industry. Less than three years later, Telmore's creative adaptation... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Creativity; Adaptation; Competitive Advantage; Telecommunications Industry; Denmark

July 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Cirque du Soleil

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

Retaining talent is an issue for any company whose success relies on the creativity and excellence of its employees. This is especially true for Cirque du Soleil, the spectacularly successful "circus without animals," whose 2,100 employees include 500 artists--mimes,... View Details

Keywords: Retention; Employee Relationship Management; Business Strategy; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Culture; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

October 1997 (Revised July 1999)
Case

Best Buy

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Balaji Chakravarthy

Documents the evolution of Best Buy, an electronics retailer, from its founding in 1966 to its very successful "Concept 2" strategy in 1996, boosting its sales ($7.2 billion) past industry #1 Circuit City. Its CEO Richard Schulze offers a new vision (Concept 3) to... View Details

Keywords: History; Business Model; Competitive Strategy; Adaptation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customization and Personalization; Retail Industry

24 Aug 2016
News

Entrepreneurs versus regulators

06 Oct 2016
Blog Post

An Interview with Corporate Relations Director, Cathy Hutchinson

Tell us about your background before coming to HBS. I’m a born and raised New Englander. I grew up in the suburbs of Boston and then headed to Yale for college. I continued west to Los Angeles, where I worked in the media industry for 6... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Entertainment / Media / Sports

Derrick Bransby

Derrick studies how people in organizations collaborate to create, innovate, and learn in high-stakes, time-constrained situations when failure is (seemingly) not an option. His research employs field methods to explore the... View Details

02 Mar 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?

various free market mechanisms for addressing these issues. Where to start? Paul Jackson suggests that "The only thing the government should be involved with is controlling the drug, insurance, and medical industry advertising spending... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

Research Summary

Research Focus

By: Anita Elberse

My research focuses on "creative industries," defined as industries that supply goods that we commonly associate with artistic, cultural, or entertainment value -- including book and magazine publishing, film, music, television, video games, the performing... View Details

October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details