Publications

November 2015 (Revised January 2016)
Teaching Note

McDonald's Corporation: Managing a Sustainable Supply Chain—From Amazon Soya to Cage Free Eggs

By: Michael W. Toffel

This case provides an opportunity for students to consider how large, multinational corporations should respond when targeted by activists regarding environmental and social concerns in their supply chains. Greenpeace targeted McDonald's because its chicken supplier... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Supply Chain Management; Welfare; Service Industry; Service Industry; Service Industry; Brazil; United States; United Kingdom

07 Mar 2017
News

From Harvard to INSEAD: Change Management in a Disruptive World

(via INSEAD.edu) In a wide-ranging interview for the St. Gallen’s Symposium, published by the Huffington Post, Dr. Olivier Giscard D’Estaing (MBA 1951) talks about the deep roots of HBS within the foundation of INSEAD, the European... View Details

Keywords: Educational Services

April 2012 (Revised October 2013)
Supplement

eBay, Inc. and Amazon.com (B)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Anant Thaker

A decade after BusinessWeek declared the competitive battle between eBay, Inc., and Amazon.com "a defining moment for e-commerce," Amazon established itself as the leader. eBay must decide what strategy to use in order to regain the upper hand: maintain its current... View Details

10 Oct 2014
News

Chicago Alumni Connect Around a ‘Vision’ for the New HBS

integral part of my life,” said Griffin. “It helped me become the person I am today and that’s why it’s been so important for me to stay involved with the School throughout the years, as a member of the... View Details

Keywords: HBS Campaign

19 Dec 2014
News

Atlanta Alumni Connect Around a 'Vision' for the New HBS

throughout the world. “And the Campaign is about more than raising money,” he noted. “It provides an opportunity to inspire and engage the next generation of leaders at the School—to better connect alumni with each other and with HBS in powerful ways View Details

15 Feb 2022
Blog Post

Health Is Wealth | The Path To Creating A Venture

years as a time to experiment, to learn to launch something, but also to gain the skills on the operational side, and to expand my network. I was great at finance, I understood the healthcare market, but... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Health Care

23 May 2019
Book

These Entrepreneurs Take a Pragmatic Approach to Solving Social Problems

In 1908, Harvard Business School’s first dean, Edwin Francis Gay, welcomed the School’s inaugural class of 59 students by saying that HBS was challenged with encouraging its students to have the “intellectual respect for business as a profession, with the social... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Green Technology

SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?

Established in 2007, by early 2014 SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists. Yet, its founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss were... View Details

September 2013
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins

After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz sought to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes. Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide consumers with more accessible and interpretable... View Details

Keywords: Professor Elton Mayo: Professor Fritz Roethlisberger; George M. Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business, Professor Emeritus Ray A. Goldberg; Professor Abraham Zaleznik; Professor Alfred Chandler; Professor Michael Porter; Professor Robert S. Kaplan; Professor Michael C. Jensen; Professor C. Roland Christensen; Professor Robert Menton; Educational Services; Educational Services

18 Jan 2021
Book

How Thinking Like a Startup Helps Governments Solve More Problems

As we work on challenging public problems, embracing the entrepreneurial spirit can help in developing solutions, says Harvard Business School Professor Mitchell Weiss in a new book, We the Possibility:... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

09 May 2018
Research & Ideas

A Simple Way for Restaurant Inspectors to Improve Food Safety

more prone to rush a bit and not be as meticulous,” Toffel says. The level of inspector scrutiny also depended on whatever had been found at the prior inspection that day. In short, finding more violations... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Service; Service

01 Jun 1998
News

Long-Term Interest: Bill Crozier, a Banker Pegged to the Customer

employee job security may hurt some services businesses. "It seems to me that job security is a major element in employee productivity," he comments. "If staff members spend a... View Details

Keywords: Eileen K. McCluskey

01 Apr 2000
News

Q & A: A Conversation with IRS Chief Charles Rossotti

possible turnaround of this huge institution, one that affects everybody in the country. I saw it as an opportunity to bring about fundamental change at an agency that really needed it, to have an impact on View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

01 Sep 2012
News

An Intellectual Capital: Some Influential HBS Ideas, at a Glance

The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977), which traces the rise of corporate management, wins a Pulitzer Prize. 1980 Michael Porter publishes Competitive Strategy, the book that launches his career View Details

12 Feb 2025
Blog Post

How risk can be the key to a sustainable future with Sophie Levin (MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences 2022)

What were you doing prior to HBS? What made you decide to go to HBS? Before HBS, I worked at Tesla as a design engineer and project manager. I had the opportunity to work on groundbreaking products alongside... View Details

June 2019
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Expanding from One to Many Millions of Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira

By 2019, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were among the highest-growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products, or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two-Sided Markets; Digital Marketing; Customer Acquisition; Two-Sided Platforms; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Customers; Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation

September 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Module Note

Platform-Mediated Networks: Definitions and Core Concepts

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Defines platform-mediated networks and introduces concepts central to their study. First, it defines networks and network effects; explains how network effects influence users' willingness-to-pay for network access; describes factors that determine the strength of... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Network Effects; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms

21 May 2020
Blog Post

Creating a World with Trusted Leaders: An Open Letter from MBA Students

“We as MBA students have a voice and with that a duty to make the voices of those most-vulnerable heard.” Amy, Sarika, and Steve (HBS 2020) watched in awe View Details

February 2017
Case

Yemeksepeti: Growing and Expanding the Business Model through Data

By: William R. Kerr, Gamze Yucaoglu and Eren Kuzucu

In October 2016, Nevzat Aydin, co-founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti, the Turkish online food-ordering company, was looking over the company's quarterly results and projections for the upcoming year with his management team. It had been almost a year and a half since Aydin... View Details