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Publications
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- Faculty Publications (539)
- January 2021
- Case
Saham Group: It's In the Genes
By: Christina R. Wing and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in August 2020 as Moulay Mhamed Elalamy (Mhamed), CEO of the Saham Group (the Group), a pan-African investment company that operates a variety of businesses out of Morocco, contemplates the Group’s identity, its investment strategy, and how to navigate... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Juno (A): Leveraging Student Power
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Kathleen L. McGinn and Amy Klopfenstein
In March 2020, Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal were in the midst of preparing the annual auction for their student loan assistance startup, Juno. Both current MBA students at Harvard Business School, the duo founded Juno in 2018 to leverage student bargaining power... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Cost vs Benefits; Education; Higher Education; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Negotiation; Agreements and Arrangements; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Deal; Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Types; Education Industry; Education Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Jumia's Path to Profitability
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Business Models; Business Model; Business Startups; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Africa
- January 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Pearson: Efficacy 2.0
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and James Weber
Pearson, which billed itself as the "world's learning company," faced a host of critical decisions in mid-2020. Several years prior, it had embarked on a new path that put the learner at the heart of the business and committed to a new strategic orientation. The new... View Details
- January 2021
- Article
Sales Hiring Is Hard to Do (Don't Make It Harder)
In the aggregate, hiring in sales is more expensive than many companies’ cap-ex decisions. But it rarely gets the same attention and companies fail to deal with challenges inherent in sales hiring. Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Responsive Working at PepsiCo UK (A): Streamlining a Turnaround
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Nancy Boghossian Staples
Facing a significant decline in revenues in 2016, David Gwilliam, Head of Transformation at PepsiCo UK introduced a new way of working (“Responsive Working”), which encompasses a set of work practices and some new team structures. The work practices comprise a set of 9... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial... View Details
- November 2020
- Case
Guild Education: Unlocking Opportunity for America's Workforce
By: William A. Sahlman, Michael D. Smith, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar
Founded in 2015, Guild Education is an education marketplace that connects employers and universities to provide employees with ‘education as a benefit.’ The Denver-based company is transforming traditional tuition assistance programs by facilitating direct payment by... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Wladimir Klitschko: F.A.C.E. Your Challenges
By: Boris Groysberg, Michael Norris and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In 2020, Olympic goal medal winning boxer and former heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko had built himself a “second ring” to continue his career after retiring from professional boxing. He was a hotelier, boxing promoter, author, teacher, speaker, and had... View Details
- September 2020
- Teaching Note
Miami's Tech Future (A): Twenty-first Century Changes and Challenges
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim
In the decade starting in 2000, a new mayor focused on infrastructure and leadership from a foundation investing in arts and culture helped the Miami region transform and attract younger people to a newly vibrant central city and arts district. In 2011, the Knight... View Details
- September 2020
- Teaching Note
Miami's Tech Future (C): Reaching Another Miami
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim
The effects of Miami’s startup scene have not reached many “left-behind” lower-income Black communities, which are disproportionately affected by problems such as segregation and racial discrimination, lack of transportation access, crime, education quality, government... View Details
Keywords: Technology; Change; Transformation; Progress; Community; Scaling; Income Inequality; Racism; Community Impact; Community Relations; Change Management; Business Startups; Information Technology; Diversity; Race; Equality and Inequality; Social Issues; Business and Community Relations; Miami; Florida
- August 2020
- Teaching Note
Sesame Workshop (C): Mission Critical Responses to Global and National Crises
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim
Teaching Note for Case No. 321-016. Beginning in March 2020, Sesame Workshop navigated a global pandemic, which caused unemployment, businesses shutdowns, school closures, and remote work environments along with a racial justice crisis, with a renewed mission that led... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised October 2024)
- Case
Digital Marketing at HBS Online
By: Sunil Gupta and Rajiv Lal
In July 2020, the management team of Harvard Business School Online (HBS Online) had to decide how to allocate its marketing budget for fiscal year 2021 between various digital channels and its portfolio of courses. Since its launch in 2014, HBS Online had grown to... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
George Soros: The Stateless Statesman
By: Geoffrey Jones and Wendy Ying
This case traces the business career and philanthropic activities of George Soros. The Hungarian-born Soros made a fortune as a hedge fund investor after establishing Quantum Fund on the tax haven island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles in 1973 where he was... View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Sesame Workshop (C): Mission Critical Responses to Global and National Crises
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim
Beginning in March 2020, Sesame Workshop navigated a global pandemic and racial justice crisis, which caused unemployment, business shutdowns, school closures, and remote work. The CEO and team responded with new partnership using its assets and reinforcing its... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Healthy Business? Managerial Education and Management in Healthcare
By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals that are closer to universities offering both medical education... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Carole Carlson
This case describes a difficult choice faced by Victor Wang, Managing Director of Singapore-based Eurasian Brewing Company (EBC), concerning the competing product launch plans of Le Jie, Vice President of EBC's China and East Asian operations, and Vivian Chin, EBC's... View Details
- March 11, 2020
- Editorial
A Bolder Vision for Business Schools
By: P. Tufano
Business schools teach to a model that dates back to the 1950s. Given the growing demands on business to take a lead in confronting societal challenges, business schools need to update how they train business leaders and how they compete, argues Oxford’s Saïd School... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Effects of Hierarchy on Learning and Performance in Business Experimentation
By: Sourobh Ghosh, Stefan Thomke and Hazjier Pourkhalkhali
Do senior managers help or hurt business experiments? Despite the widespread adoption of business experiments to guide strategic decision-making, we lack a scholarly understanding of what role senior managers play in firm experimentation. Using proprietary data of live... View Details