Publications

August 2021
Case

Apax Digital

By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

The Apax Digital team faced important decisions as they contemplated raising a second fund. Apax Digital Fund I was a $1.1 billion vehicle focused on mid-market growth equity and growth buyouts in the technology sector. The fund had performed well, and the Managing... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Acquisition; Investment Portfolio; Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

March 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Whole Foods Under Amazon

By: Dennis Campbell, Tatiana Sandino, James Barnett and Christine Snively

In August 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. Whole Foods was struggling with high costs and faced growing competition from traditional supermarkets offering more organic products. Prior to the acquisition, Whole Foods began rolling out a new... View Details

Keywords: Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Employee Relationship Management; Acquisition; Change Management; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry

31 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Can Amazon Do What Walmart Couldn’t, Stop the 'Wheel of Retailing'?

it, “The acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon (which took place after this month’s column was posted) shows that there still are vast opportunities for Amazon to avoid the mechanics of the wheel The wheel begins to turn only when volume... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

September 2019 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Othellonia: Growing a Mobile Game

By: Eva Ascarza, Tomomichi Amano and Sunil Gupta

In the summer of 2019, Yu Sasaki, Head of the Game Division of DeNA, a Japanese mobile gaming company, is evaluating various growth strategies for its recent game Othellonia. Sasaki needs to decide if he should focus on customer acquisition, retention, or monetization. View Details

Keywords: Targeting; Retention/churn; Freemium; Monetization; Customer Relationship Management; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Customers; Marketing Strategy; Retention; Acquisition; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Japan

April 2011 (Revised May 2011)
Case

EMC2: Delivering Customer Centricity

By: Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery

This case introduces the concept of customer centricity and traces its development at EMC, the world's leading data storage hardware and information management software company. EMC's customers had historically relied on EMC salespeople to guide them through the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Interpersonal Communication; Customer Relationship Management; Knowledge Acquisition; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Salesforce Management; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet; Information Technology Industry

2019
Working Paper

U.S. Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

The key pieces of antitrust legislation in the United States—the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Act of 1914—contain broad language that has afforded the courts wide latitude in interpreting and enforcing the law. This article chronicles the judiciary’s... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust; Trusts; Restraint Of Trade; Merger; Cartel; New Deal; Harvard School; Chicago School Of Law And Economics; Post-Chicago; Law; Competition; Policy; Vertical Integration; Horizontal Integration; Acquisition

Read Now

January 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Finova Group, Inc. (A), The

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Perry Fagan

Finova Group, a $14 billion commercial finance company, filed for Chapter 11 in early March 2001, in what was one of the largest U.S. bankruptcy filings of all time and the largest corporate bond default since the Great Depression. While in Chapter 11, Finova became... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Startups; Borrowing and Debt; Equity; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Debt Securities; Price; Crisis Management; Bids and Bidding; Partners and Partnerships; Strategy; Valuation; Financial Services Industry; United States

04 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Diversity Boosts Profits in Venture Capital Firms

“The more similar you are to someone, the more likely you are to work with them.” That homogeneity, however, came with a penalty: a clear lack in financial performance. Partners who came from the same school achieved an 11.5 percent lower success rate for View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Banking; Financial Services

May 2013
Case

Launching Krispy Natural: Cracking the Product Management Code

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Heather Beckham

Pemberton Products is a U.S. market leader in the cookie and bakery snacks segment of the sweet snack market. Looking to expand into the salty snack market, the company acquires Krispy Inc., a maker of salty snack crackers located in the southeastern U.S. To compete... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Competition; Organizational Culture; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Expansion; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Acquisition; Food and Beverage Industry; Ohio; United States

July 2017
Case

Centerbridge Partners and Great Wolf Resorts: Buying from a Highly Regarded Competitor

By: Josh Lerner, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal

The case examines the March 2015 Centerbridge Partners investment decision regarding whether to acquire Great Wolf Resorts, a North American family-oriented indoor water parks and hotel operator, from a private equity (PE) competitor, Apollo Global Management. The case... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Financing; Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities; CMBS; Secondary Buyouts; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Cost; Cost of Capital; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Accommodations Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

business for 20 years. Its acquisition of Jet.com, however, let Walmart aggressively expand the top line of its platform revenue and bring in a team that understood platforms. Although still far behind Amazon, Walmart’s View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Mar 2023
News

Step Change

adds, big acquisitions and IPOs started happening in the MENA region, catalyzing a virtuous cycle of entrepreneurial activity and investment: Amazon acquired Souq for $580 million in 2017 and Uber purchased Careem for $3.1 billion in... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; photographed by Abdelrahman Gabr – Koree; entrepreneurship; women; venture capital; Egypt; developing economies; Finance

13 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

7 Lessons for Navigating the Storm

CEO Dan Vasella made counterintuitive moves by expanding Novartis's generic drug, vaccines, and consumer health businesses in spending heavily on acquisitions to offer alternatives to patented drugs. Meanwhile, he focused Novartis's... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Web

2024 Reunion Presentations - Alumni

relationship between the Museum of Modern Art and its affiliate MoMA PS1. The relationship raises a number of business and corporate strategy questions regarding the use of acquisitions to foster organizational change and the evolution of... View Details

23 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative

crowdsourcing comes in-defining a challenge and offering an incentive, whether in status or money, can get people to self-select as resources to you. You may even want to hire some of them. So this strategy can play into talent View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons, Julia Hanna & Roger Thompson

August 2023
Case

Beamery: Using Skills and AI to Modernize HR

By: Boris Groysberg, Alexis Lefort, Susan Pinckney and Carolina Bartunek

Unicorn human relationships startup Beamery evaluates it's growth versus depth strategy as its strategic partners and customers could become future competitors in a quickly changing AI based human resources and talent management industry View Details