Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,370)
- Faculty Publications (1,060)
- July 2022
- Case
General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (A)
By: Debora L. Spar and Alicia Dadlani
Jeff Harmening, CEO of General Mills, one of the world's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereals and packaged foods, was deeply disturbed and instantly aware that he and General Mills would need to respond. George Floyd, an African-American man who had been accused... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Background Note
Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor
Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost... View Details
Keywords: Grocery Delivery; Grocery; Digitalization; Fulfillment; Delivery; Supply Chain; Disruption; Food; Supply Chain Management; Market Design; Trends; Value Creation; Goods and Commodities; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Transformation; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; United States; China
- June 9, 2023
- Article
A Radical Treatment for Insulin Pricing
By: Leemore S. Dafny
In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first interchangeable biosimilar for long-acting insulin, which many hoped would be substantially cheaper than the reference branded product. I explain why prices have barely changed, and argue that a... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Note
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-419. On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign
This case provides an overview of “Franz for Life,” an advertising campaign that independent advertising agency Mekanism created and executed to revitalize the brand image of Franzia, a low-cost boxed wine. For several years, Franzia’s popularity declined among... View Details
- May 2022
- Supplement
Thinking Outside the Wine Box (B): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign
This case reveals the events that took place after the conclusion of the case “Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign.” After reviewing Mekanism’s pitches for the Franz for Life 2.0 campaign, TWG executives felt that the proposed... View Details
- May 2022
- Supplement
Thinking Outside the Wine Box (C): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign
This case reveals the events that took place after the conclusion of the cases “Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A-B): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign.” After selecting a creative direction for the Franz for Life 2.0 campaign, independent advertising agency... View Details
- May 2022
- Supplement
Maestro Pizza (B): The Competition Awakens
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais
Maestro pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Positioning; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Forecasting and Prediction; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Production; Service Delivery; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Statements; Cost Management; Analysis; Quality; Performance Consistency; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Family Ownership; Food and Beverage Industry; Saudi Arabia; Middle East
- May 2022
- Supplement
Maestro Pizza (C): Taking the Fight Outside
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais
Maestro pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Positioning; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Forecasting and Prediction; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Production; Service Delivery; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Statements; Cost Management; Analysis; Quality; Performance Consistency; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Family Ownership; Food and Beverage Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia
- May 2022
- Case
Maestro Pizza: Coming in Hot!
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais
Maestro Pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Positioning; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Forecasting and Prediction; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Production; Service Delivery; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Statements; Cost Management; Analysis; Quality; Performance Consistency; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Family Ownership; Food and Beverage Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia
- 2022
- Working Paper
An Anatomy of Performance Monitoring
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Performance monitoring is a mainstay management tool in most organizations. Yet we still know little about whether—and why—better monitoring yields better performance in practice. To shed light on these questions, we study the introduction of a performance monitoring... View Details
Keywords: Performance Monitoring; Worker Skills; Skill Depreciation; Managerial Inattention; On-the-job Training; Productivity; Multitasking; Quick Serve Restaurants; Performance Evaluation; Employees; Competency and Skills; Training; Performance Productivity; Management; Information Technology; Food and Beverage Industry; Puerto Rico
- March 2022 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Hometown Foods: Changing Price amid Inflation
During the early part of the 2021 Covid-19 pandemic, Hometown Foods, a large seller of flour-based products, thrived as consumers hoarded baked goods and took up baking to pass the time and find comfort. Then, amid growing shortages in commodities, a vaccine arrived,... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Sunōmi Switchel: Time to Switch?
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Shani Carter McKinney and Alexandra Horvitz
Nicole Blank has bootstrapped her functional beverage company, Sunōmi Switchel, to contracts with leading grocery retailers. She is now faced with a series of choices for if and how to continue to grow the business. View Details
- February 2022
- Case
Toraya
By: Lauren Cohen and Akiko Kanno
Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Ample Hills Creamery
By: Tom Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Tom Quinn
Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive flavors and clever marketing, husband-and-wife founders Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna built a premium, artisanal dessert empire of 16 retail... View Details
- February 2022
- Supplement
SpartanNash Company: The Amazon Warrants (A)
By: Benjamin C. Esty, E. Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher
As of 12/31/21, Amazon held $22 billion of equity and warrants in related companies. In fact, it often requests a free grant of warrants when it enters into a new commercial agreement with a supplier. Over the past 20 years, Amazon has gotten warrants almost 20... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
US Foods: Driving Post-Pandemic Success?
By: David E. Bell, Olivia Hull and Amy Klopfenstein
In November 2021, US Foods CEO Pietro Satriano must decide his company’s trajectory following the COVID-19 pandemic. US Foods suffered due to business closures and social distancing during the height of the pandemic. While the situation improved following the return of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Agribusiness; Food; Goods and Commodities; Jobs and Positions; Job Design and Levels; Job Offer; Labor; Employment; Human Capital; Wages; Working Conditions; Operations; Distribution Channels; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Infrastructure; Logistics; Product Development; Diversification; Product Design; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Supply Chain Management; Social Psychology; Motivation and Incentives; Transportation; Truck Transportation; Transportation Networks; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States
- February 2022 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Aleph Farms: A New Culture of Meat
By: Elie Ofek and Jeff Huizinga
Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech start-up, was hoping to play a major role in disrupting the conventional meat sector. Compared to intensive agricultural practices, Aleph’s cultured (or lab-grown) meat solution held the promise of considerably reducing greenhouse gas... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Adoption; Go To Market Strategy; Industry Evolution; Food Industry; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Marketing Of Innovations; Brand Building; Capital Expenditures-equipment; Disruption; Green Technology; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Market Entry and Exit; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry
- February 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Buddy Valastro: Cake Boss
By: Boris Groysberg, Evan M.S. Hecht and Katherine Connolly Baden
Buddy Valastro, celebrity baker and business owner, inherited his father’s bakery—Carlo’s Bake Shop of Hoboken, New Jersey—at the age of seventeen. He had willed the shop to survive and gone on to fame through his television show, “Cake Boss”—the name most people now... View Details
Keywords: Bakery; Entrepreneur; Scalability; Digital; Systems; Process Improvement; Team Effectiveness; Team Building; COVID-19 Pandemic; Food; Entrepreneurship; Family Business; Crisis Management; Change Management; Leadership; Creativity; Operations; Groups and Teams; Brands and Branding; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- February 2022
- Article
Sugar-sweetened Beverage Purchases and Intake at Event Arenas with and without a Portion Size Cap
By: Sheri Volger, James Scott Parrott, Brian Elbel, Leslie K. John, Jason P. Block, Pamela Rothpletz-Puglia and Christina A. Roberto
This is the first real-world study to examine the association between a voluntary 16-ounce (oz.) portion-size cap on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) at a sporting arena on volume of SSBs and food calories purchased and consumed during basketball games. Cross-sectional... View Details