Publications

May 2009 (Revised January 2011)
Case

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh, Jill Avery and Naseem Ashraf Dahod

This case introduces the concept of inbound marketing, pulling customer prospects toward a business through the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications like blogging, search engine optimization, and social media. Students follow the growth of HubSpot, an entrepreneurial... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Entrepreneurship; Price; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Communications; Social and Collaborative Networks; Segmentation; Web

2013
Article

The Strategic Fitness Process: A Collaborative Action Research Method for Developing Organizational Prototypes and Dynamic Capabilities

By: Michael Beer

Organizations underperform and sometimes fail because their leaders are unable to learn the unvarnished truth from relevant stakeholders about how the design and behavior of the organization is misaligned with its goals and strategy. The Strategic Fitness Process (SFP)... View Details

Keywords: Organization Alignment; Dynamic Capabilities; Organization Design; Organizational Prototyping; Organizational Silence; Organizational Learning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Organizational Design

16 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

Is Your Workplace Biased Against Introverts?

passion “can end up affecting your work performance negatively because you’re more emotionally exhausted,” Jachimowicz says. You Might Also Like: Passion at Work Is a Good Thing—But Only If Bosses Know How to View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

June 18, 2019
Article

Research: Investors Reward Companies That Talk Up Their Digital Initiatives

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Wilbur Chen

A study of how companies disclose their digital initiatives on earnings calls and written communications finds that more firms are using these technologies, that financial markets reward companies that disclose such initiatives, but that financial performance... View Details

Keywords: Digital Technologies; Disclosure; Investment; Performance Improvement

Register to Read

Research Summary

By: Srikant M. Datar

Datar's research interests are in the cost management and management control areas. He has published his research on activity-based management, quality, productivity, time-based competition, new product development, bottleneck management, incentives and ... View Details

fall 1995
Article

Standard Setting Consortia, Antitrust, and High-Technology Industries

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

Examines the antitrust treatment of private-sector standard setting in the U.S. Applicability of law and decision-making issues in high technology industries; Examination of cost-based facilitating theory; Approach to evaluate the reasonableness of a standard. View Details

Keywords: Private Sector; Information Technology; Law; Decision Making; Cost; Theory; Performance Evaluation; Standards; United States

04 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

How Female Stars Succeed in New Jobs

If a successful analyst is hired by another organization, chances are both his work performance and the market value of his new company will not reap the expected benefits; they might even lose altitude. So discovered HBS professor Boris... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

March 1994 (Revised May 1994)
Case

Lisa Benton (A)

By: Linda A. Hill

Lisa Benton is in her fourth month as an assistant product manager at Houseworld, a leading consumer products company. She has been on the job since graduating from the Harvard Business School, and she has been frustrated from the start by a lack of responsibility, by... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Jobs and Positions; Power and Influence; Relationships; Consumer Products Industry

12 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

The Value of a ‘Portable’ Career

League in the MIT Sloan Management Review. "As research on the National Football League reveals, sometimes the specific nature of a job determines whether a great performer at one company can replicate that... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Sports

2008
Book

Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize... View Details

Keywords: Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Operations; Performance; Strategic Planning; Business Strategy

August 1993 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Filene's Basement

By: David E. Bell and Dinny Starr

Filene's Basement is in the process of deciding where, and if, to locate two new stores in its new Chicago area of operations. The existing Chicago area stores have been performing well, however, management is concerned with over saturation of the market. At the time... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Business Processes

September 2018 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Zebra Medical Vision

By: Shane Greenstein and Sarah Gulick

An Israeli startup founded in 2014, Zebra Medical Vision developed algorithms that produced diagnoses from X-rays, mammograms, and CT-scans. The algorithms used deep learning and digitized radiology scans to create software that could assist doctors in making... View Details

2017
Chapter

Are Founder CEOs Good Managers?

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Megan Lawrence and Raffaella Sadun

We investigate the management practices adopted by firms where the founders are also the CEOs using data from the World Management Survey. We find that founder CEO firms have the lowest management scores of any owner-manager pair type and that this difference is... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance

October 13, 2021
Editorial

How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now

By: Daniel Stein, Nick Hobson, Jon M. Jachimowicz and Ashley Whillans

A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in... View Details

Keywords: Employee Retention; Employee Engagement; Employee Relationship Management; Work-Life Balance

06 Nov 2021
News

Employers Partner with Community Colleges to Fill the Talent Pipeline

20 Dec 2006
Working Paper Summaries

The Demise of Cost and Profit Centers

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

Research Summary

Overview

By: Isamar Troncoso

Professor Troncoso's research explores problems related to digital marketplaces and AI applications in marketing, and combines toolkits from econometrics, causal inference, and machine learning. She has studied how different platform design choices can lead to... View Details

October 1989 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Texas Eastman Co.

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The company as part of a commitment to Total Quality Management has installed a computer system that accumulates 30,000 observations on its processes every 2-4 hours. Operating people have found the monthly summaries of financial performance not too useful in this... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Information Technology; Reports; Business or Company Management

November–December 2014
Article

Fairness and Efficiency in Multiportfolio Optimization

By: Dan A. Iancu and Nikolaos Trichakis

We deal with the problem faced by a portfolio manager in charge of multiple accounts. We argue that because of market impact costs, this setting differs in several subtle ways from the classical (single account) case, with the key distinction being that the performance... View Details