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22 May 2019
Blog Post

What is FIELD Global Immersion?

meet in person with their GP and local consumers. To maximize the experience, students are asked to travel to a city and country in which they have no significant prior work, travel or life experience. See members of the Class of 2020 find out where they’re going View Details

Article

Channel Integration, Sales Dispersion, and Inventory Management

By: Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Ioannis Stamatopoulos

We study the effects of the introduction of cross-channel functionalities on the overall sales dispersion of retailers and the implications of these effects for inventory management. To do that, we analyze data from a leading U.S. retailer who introduced a... View Details

Keywords: Retail Operations; Online Retail; Channel Integration; Sales Dispersion; Long Tail; Empirical Operations; Inventory Management; Omnichannel Retail; Marketing Channels; Integration; Sales; Logistics; Operations; Management; Retail Industry

Article

Managing Climate Change: Lessons from the U.S. Navy

By: Forest Reinhardt and Michael W. Toffel

The U.S. Navy operates on the front lines of climate change. It manages tens of billions of dollars in assets on every continent and on every ocean, which take many years to design and build and then have decades of useful life. This means that it needs to understand... View Details

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April 2018
Article

Elite Strategies and Incremental Policy Change: The Expansion of Primary Education in India

By: Akshay Mangla

This article analyzes India’s recent enactment of universal primary education. This programmatic policy change is puzzling given the clientelistic features of Indian democracy. Drawing on interviews and official documents, I demonstrate the catalytic role of committed... View Details

Keywords: Education; Policy Change; Policy Elites; Institutions; India; Early Childhood Education; Policy; Education Industry; India

June 2005 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Alex Montana at ESH Manufacturing Co.

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Kernish

Alex Montana sat at his desk pondering the career decision before him. Alex was director of the North American division of ESH Manufacturing, a $4.6 billion, Cleveland-based company with operations on three continents. ESH's CEO had just offered Montana a promotion to... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Development and Career; Work-Life Balance; Manufacturing Industry; Cleveland

2007
Article

Convictions, Conventions and the Operational Risk Maze—The Cases of Three Financial Services Institutions

By: Anette Mikes

Making sense of operational risk practices in the financial services sector is a challenge. There is a temptation to explain the wide variety of approaches as a characteristic of the early stage of development in which the genre resides.
Based on the evidence of... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Risk Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Conflict and Resolution; Organizations; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Bodies at Risk: Chemicals Testing in the United States and Europe

This book project examines environmental regulation comparatively between the United States and Europe, with a focus on testing programs and controls on the manufacture of commodity and specialty chemicals. Findings thus far indicate that different relations among... View Details

Research Summary

Consumer Habituation

This paper examines how consumers willingness to pay for goods is determined by past patterns of consumption. The central result is a theorem of interior maximum, which states that willingness to pay for a good is maximized at a moderate level of habitual... View Details

March 2025
Supplement

Intuition Robotics: An AI Companion for Older Adults (B)

By: Amit Goldenberg, Elie Ofek and Orna Dan

Two years after Intuition Robotics opted to pursue a business-to-government contract with the New York State Office of the Aging, and put direct-to-consumer efforts on the back burner, it was at a crossroads. The partnership had been successful, and the company had... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; AI and Machine Learning; Resource Allocation; Business and Government Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Health Industry; Technology Industry; New York (state, US); United States

Research Summary

Do Measures of Financial Constraints Measure Financial Constraints?

Financial constraints are fundamental to empirical research in finance and economics. In joint work with Alexander Ljunqvist, we propose two novel tests to evaluate how well measures of financial constraints actually capture constraints. We find that firms... View Details

August 2019
Case

Kazakhstan Railways: From the Middle of Nowhere to a Center of Trade?

By: Willy Shih and Esel Çekin

This case describes the evolution of Kazakhstan's rail connectivity strategy post-collapse of the Soviet Union and its now central role in China's Belt and Road Initiative. This meant shifting from a north-south orientation towards an east-west one, as well as the... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitics; China’s Infrastructure Exports: The ‘Belt And Road’ Initiative; Logistics; Trade; Economic Growth; Geopolitical Units; Geography; Rail Transportation; Rail Industry; Transportation Industry; Central Asia; Kazakhstan; China

February 2018
Case

Wiikano Orchards

By: Benson P. Shapiro and Katherine B. Hartman

Wiikano Orchards, a family-owned business, faces declining demand in a commodity industry. The president is considering rebranding Wiikano's apple juice, increasing its prices and promotions. If this proposal succeeds, wholesalers and retailers would be more likely to... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Price; Marketing Communications; Product Marketing; Food and Beverage Industry

July 2005 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Narayana Murthy and Compassionate Capitalism

By: William W. George, Shailendra Jit Singh and Andrew N. McLean

Narayana Murthy's roles at Infosys Technologies--as a co-founder, longtime CEO, and nonexecutive chairman and chief mentor--has been marked by explosive growth, demanding management challenges, and widely lauded company leadership. His personal leadership philosophy... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Economic Systems; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Biography; Leadership; Business or Company Management; Information Technology Industry; India

12 Feb 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Platform Competition, Compatibility, and Social Efficiency

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Francisco Ruiz-Aliseda; Computer

October 2005
Case

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool 2005

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Mary L. Shelman

CEO Mayo Schmidt had just guided his firm through five difficult years. Survival had come with the difficult decision to change the 80-year-old agricultural cooperative into a Canadian business corporation. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) now faced the future with a... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Capital; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Demand and Consumers; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and serve on many established and start-up corporate health care/medical... View Details

Keywords: health care; insurance industry; medical devices; retailing; digital health

March 2020
Case

Sizmek Chapter 11: Surviving Walled Gardens in Their Ad Tech Empire

By: Ayelet Israeli, Danilo Tauro and Sarah Gulick

This case provides a post-mortem of the advertising technology (adtech) company Sizmek. Sizmek grew via multiple acquisitions, with the vision of becoming an integrated adtech company that could leverage AI to buy digital media, while creating and serving display and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Competition; Marketing; Advertising Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; Europe

July 2018
Teaching Note

Cumplo.com

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-039. Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-039. Cumplo is a Chilean-based fin-tech startup that provides investors and small businesses with opportunities to access loans and investments in ways distinct from traditional financial institutions in... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Alternative Finance; Crowdfunding; Crowdlending; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Financial Services Industry; Latin America; South America; Chile