Publications

Discussions of the economic impact of open source software often generate more heat than light. Advocates passionately assert the benefits of open source while critics decry its effects. Missing from the debate is rigorous economic analysis and systematic economic... View Details

05 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

Companies vying to fill entry-level roles should take a page from AT&T and American Express and offer aggressive advancement opportunities to workers without college degrees to help expand the talent pool, says a new report. According to “The American Opportunity... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

01 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 1

we find evidence that proximity is positively associated with coordination and overall performance. Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/14-092_0272c9fd-0da7-4bad-811c-77eb8db9ef81.pdf Competing in New... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Frameworks - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

The Five Forces A Five Forces analysis can help companies assess which industries to compete in—and how to position themselves for success. Strategic Positioning Strategic positioning reflects choices a company makes about the kind of... View Details

October 2008
Article

It's Time to Make Management a True Profession

By: Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana

In the face of the recent institutional breakdown of trust in business, managers are losing legitimacy. To regain public trust, management needs to become a true profession in much the way medicine and law have, argue Khurana and Nohria of Harvard Business School. True... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Education; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Management; Trust; Value Creation

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13 Jan 2015
First Look

First Look: January 13

shortly after Comcast made steps to acquire NBCUniversal in 2010, saw subsequent success in the marketplace. Symphony is so powerful, in fact, that competing conglomerates are keen to buy some of NBCUniversal's cross-promotional strength,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Cold Calling - Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning

minutes but may go longer based on the instructor's cold calling philosophy and the opening student's level of preparation. Instructors must balance the objective of creating a substantive exchange with the student and the competing goal... View Details

01 Dec 2023
News

The Exchange: Help Wanted

Image by John Ritter The path to a job in the C-suite isn’t what it used to be. For many years, companies could lean on financial expertise and industry connections when recruiting candidates, but HBS professors Raffaella Sadun and Joseph Fuller say that so much has... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

05 Dec 2023
Cold Call Podcast

What Founders Get Wrong about Sales and Marketing

Keywords: Re: Mark N. Roberge

May–June 2025
Article

Slowly Varying Regression Under Sparsity

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Michael Lingzhi Li and Omar Skali Lami

We consider the problem of parameter estimation in slowly varying regression models with sparsity constraints. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer optimization problem and demonstrate that it can be reformulated exactly as a binary convex optimization problem... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

February 2022 (Revised May 2025)
Case

Resident 2020

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones

Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Business Growth and Maturation; Operations; Entrepreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Decisions; Marketing Strategy; Cash Flow; Demand and Consumers

February 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

BIM: Finding New Ways to Grow

By: Michael Chu and Gamze Yucaoglu

BIM, Turkey’s giant retailer with a hard-discount model for the popular segments, must decide whether to launch a brand-new format challenging the modern supermarkets. Since its founding in 1995, BIM has adhered to a business model based on a relentless focus on costs... View Details

Keywords: Turkey; Decision; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; For-Profit Firms; Business Model; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Growth and Development Strategy; Value Creation; Change Management; Decisions; Growth Management; Retail Industry; Turkey

March 2008
Course Overview Note

Dynamic Markets

By: Joshua D. Coval and Erik Stafford

The Dynamic Markets course at Harvard Business School is organized around the hands-on application of financial decision making in a wide variety of capital market settings. The course relies heavily on in-class simulations of a range of market settings where students... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Decision Making; Capital Markets; Competitive Strategy; Profit; Applications and Software; Information; Strategy; Price; Outcome or Result; Curriculum and Courses; Theory

November 2002 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Forest Stewardship Council

By: James E. Austin and Ezequiel Reficco

In just a few years the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) made impressive progress toward its mission of promoting "environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests." By 2001, 25.5 million hectares of forests in... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Corporate Governance; Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Competitive Strategy

March 2021 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Resident

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones

Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Business Growth and Maturation; Operations; Entrepreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Decisions; Marketing Strategy; Cash Flow; Demand and Consumers

2020
Book

Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company's Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy

By: Michael Beer

Is Silence Killing Your Strategy?
In his thirty years of working in corporations, Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer has witnessed firsthand how organizational silence derails strategic objectives. When employees can't speak truth to power, senior... View Details

Keywords: Honesty; Communication; Organizational Culture; Trust; Strategy; Performance Effectiveness

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April 2015 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Transformation of NCR

By: David Collis, Raffaella Sadun and Matthew Shaffer

During his tenure as CEO since 2005, Bill Nuti had moved NCR Corporation (originally National Cash Register) from its historical competence in hardware to become a provider of hardware and software for managing transactions across a range of industries and payments... View Details

Keywords: NCR; Hardware; Software; Acquisitions; Financial Services; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Transformation; Acquisition; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry

Article

Contested Meanings of Freedom: Workingmen's Wages, the Company Store System and the Godcharles v. Wigeman Decision

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

In 1886, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited employers from paying wages in company store scrip and mandated monthly wage payments. The court held that the legislature could not prescribe mandatory wage contracts for legally competent... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Rights; Fairness; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Pennsylvania

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