Publications

May–June 2025
Article

Sustainability as a Business-Model Transformation

By: Ivanka Visnjic, Felipe Monteiro and Michael L. Tushman

Many global companies have made public commitments to sustainability targets. Fulfilling these commitments will require firms to transform their business models and organizational architectures. A few pioneers are leading the way, demonstrating that companies can make... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Business Model

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18 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

When It Comes to Climate Regulation, Energy Companies Take a More Nuanced View

Common wisdom holds that oil and gas companies, electric utilities, and other industries known for their large carbon emissions generally oppose clean energy policies. Now, a study of corporate advocacy spanning 30 years reveals that many companies are more flexible... View Details

Keywords: by Desmond Dodd; Energy; Utilities

29 May 2019
News

A Study of More Than 250 Platforms Reveals Why Most Fail

June 2013
Case

Multiasistencia: Redefining the Relationship with Its Service Professionals

By: F. Asis Martinez-Jerez, Maria Garcia Perez and Katherine M. Miller

Multiasistencia, a major Spanish BPO of insurance repairs, is changing the relational contract with its service professionals from a referral model to a guaranteed workload one. View Details

Keywords: Outsourcing; Incentives; Relational Contracts; Business Model; Motivation and Incentives; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Contracts; Insurance Industry; Spain

April 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Western Governors University: 10x Vision

By: William R. Kerr and Susie L. Ma

Western Governors University (WGU) was a nonprofit institution of higher education whose online learning model served more than 100,000 students in 2019 and was scaling rapidly. President Scott Pulsipher wanted to expand WGU’s reach to millions more with a plan called... View Details

Keywords: Online Education; Enrollment; Scaling; Higher Education; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Education Industry; United States

07 Jun 2023
Blog Post

My One Case: MBA Class of 2023 Looks Back

middle-skill workforce. What case made an impact on you and why?The “QuikTrip” case stands out for me. The case features a CEO who is expanding his business to a new market and must decide what kind of growth strategy to pursue. In the... View Details

Research Summary

Is Deposit Insurance a Good Idea, and if so, Who Should Pay for it?

Joint work with Alan Morrison, Saïd Business School, Oxford.

Deposit insurance schemes are becoming increasingly popular around the world and yet there is little understanding... View Details

June 2013
Supplement

Multiasistencia: Redefining the Relationship with its Service Professionals. Spreadsheet Supplement

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Multiasistencia, a major Spanish BPO of insurance repairs, is changing the relational contract with its service profesionals from a referral model to a guaranteed workload one. View Details

Keywords: Outsourcing; Incentives; Relational Contracts; Business Model; Motivation and Incentives; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Contracts; Insurance Industry; Spain

October 2013
Case

Lufa Farms

By: Jose B. Alvarez, Robert Mackalski, Annelena Loeb and Lisa Mazzanti

In 2013, Mohamed Hage, founder of the rooftop farming business called Lufa Farms, thought his company had reached a level of maturity where scaling the business model was the next logical step. With two greenhouses already in Canada, he was looking into other locations... View Details

Keywords: Rooftop Farms; Agriculture; Greenhouse; Technology; Expansion; Strategic Partnerships; Cultivation; Agribusiness; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Canada

Stephen A. Greyser is Richard P. Chapman Professor (Marketing/Communications) Emeritus, of the Harvard Business School, specializes in brand marketing, advertising, corporate communications, the business of sports, and nonprofit management. A... View Details

Keywords: sports

April 2012
Case

Novozymes: Cracking the Emerging Markets Code

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Karol Misztal

In 2011, the management of Novozymes, the industrial enzymes leader, reflected on the viability of their positioning in the fast growing, yet increasingly competitive Chinese market. Novozymes, a technological innovation pioneer, was prominent in China's premium enzyme... View Details

As the covid pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the... View Details

February 2000 (Revised November 2000)
Case

Women.com

By: Myra M. Hart and Sarah S. Khetani

Entrepreneurs Ellen Pack and Marleen McDaniel have founded a women's online network and watched it grow from an online subscription service in 1992 to one of the best known, widely visited women's networks on the web in 1999. While the company's vision has remained... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Partners and Partnerships; Initial Public Offering; Networks; Transition; Web Services Industry

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Research Summary

Managing Innovation

I continue to study the disruptive processes by which innovation transforms -- or fails to transform -- industries and companies. There are three elements to these transformations. The first is a technological enabler -- an innovation that makes complicated, expensive... View Details

19 Jul 2019
News

How To Innovate Inside Large Organizations

November 2007
Article

The Accidental Entrepreneur: The Emergent and Collective Process of User Entrepreneurship

By: Sonali K. Shah and Mary Tripsas

We develop a process model of how users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and commercialize their ideas. We compare and contrast our model to the classic model of the entrepreneurial process, highlighting the emergent and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Valuation; Business Model; Commercialization; Adoption; Adaptation; Product; Civil Society or Community

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April 2023
Case

Fizzy Fusion: When Data-Driven Decision Making Failed

By: Michael Parzen, Eddie Lin, Douglas Ng and Jessie Li

This is a case about a fictional New York beverage company called Fizzy Fusion. The business is facing supply chain and inventory management challenges with its new product, SparklingSip. Despite seeking help from a data science consulting firm, the machine learning... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Production; Risk and Uncertainty; Analytics and Data Science; Food and Beverage Industry