Publications

July 2020
Case

Kathy Fish at Procter & Gamble: Navigating Industry Disruption by Disrupting from Within

By: Emily Truelove, Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble’s Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world’s leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady... View Details

Keywords: Female Protagonist; Organizational Change; Organizational Behavior; Culture Change; Digital; Innovation; Lean Startup; Experimentation; Metrics; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruption; Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation

September 2020
Case

Drinkworks: Home Bar by Keurig

By: Sunil Gupta, Jonathan Levav and Julia Kelley

In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company’s upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an... View Details

November 2008
Case

The Hong Kong & China Gas Company Ltd.: Negotiating Joint Ventures in China

By: James K. Sebenius, Michael Shih-ta Chen and Medha Samant

To deliver 5-6 major new Chinese joint ventures annually, Hong Kong China Gas executives began extracting cross-border negotiating lessons from their 80 existing Chinese JVs. Chairman Alfred Chan and CEO Peter Wong knew that HKGC's growth strategy required significant... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Negotiation Tactics; Interests; Cooperation; Expansion; Utilities Industry; Hong Kong

October 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Pilgrim Bank (A): Customer Profitability

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Provides a context in which students can explore managerial decision making that is critically informed by data analysis. The setting is a retail bank and the decision making relates to the bank's policy toward online banking. The management team is evaluating whether... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Customers; Profit; Banking Industry

December 1998 (Revised May 1999)
Exercise

Negotiating Peace Accords in Bellicoso for the Leader of the Student Revolutionary Front (SRF): General Instructions and Confidential Information

Bellicoso is a multi-party conflict resolution simulation based loosely on the bitter civil war in El Salvador. It is designed to explore issues in: 1) the management of interactions between external negotiations between sides and internal negotiations within them, 2)... View Details

Keywords: War; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Participants; Government and Politics; Conflict and Resolution; El Salvador

Find at Harvard

Christopher Graham is a Senior Managing Director and Head of Global Investment Strategy at Starwood Capital Group, where he focuses on our various investment strategies globally, and advises and mentors our investment teams around the world. He is also a... View Details

11 Apr 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching a ‘Lean Startup’ Strategy

doing that, and waste a lot of money on sales and marketing trying to sell that wrong product," says Tom Eisenmann, a professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. "It takes a lot of time, time... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Computer

September 2009 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Integrated Project Delivery at Autodesk, Inc. (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Faaiza Rashid

Describes Autodesk's engagement in Integrated Project Delivery—a new model of risk management, inter-firm teamwork, and multi-objective (aesthetic, cost, and sustainability) optimization in building projects. In 2008, Autodesk, Inc., the world's largest design software... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Headquarters; Design; Risk Management; Business Processes; Projects; Groups and Teams; Partners and Partnerships; Cooperation; Construction Industry; Service Industry

June 2013 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Governance and Sustainability at Nike (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Nien-hê Hsieh and Lara Adamsons

Two members of Nike's executive team must decide what sustainability targets to propose to Nike's CEO and to the corporate responsibility committee of Nike's board of directors. Set in 2012, the case traces the evolution of Nike's approach to environmental and social... View Details

Keywords: Nike; Hannah Jones; Mark Parker; Phil Knight; Philip Knight; Eric Sprunk; Jill Ker Conway; Phyllis Wise; Don Blair; Sustainable Business And Innovation; SB＆I; Flyknit; DyeCoo; Footwear; Athletic Footwear; Apparel; Athletic Apparel; Sustainability; Greenpeace; Detox Campaign; Dirty Laundry; Water; Water Use; Water Pollution; Water Resources; Corporate Responsibility Committee; Judgment; Board Of Directors; Board Committees; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Footwear Industry; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Ethics; Fairness; Globalized Firms and Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance; Alignment; Supply Chain; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Judgments; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Asia; China; United States; Oregon; Portland

27 Oct 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Achieving Excellence in Nonprofits

and executive management team is alike; every unhappy board and executive management team is unhappy in its own special way. In high-performing... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

May 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Case

United States Army

By: Rajiv Lal and Laura Coleman

After three months of close collaboration, the Leo Burnett USA/Worldwide agency and partner Cartel and Images advertising/creative team were poised to unveil to senior Army officials at the Pentagon their replacement to the "Be All You Can Be" campaign to help increase... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Decisions; Globalization; Recruitment; Management Teams; Marketing Strategy; United States

July 2019
Case

Piramal Foundation: The Business of Philanthropy

By: Vikram Gandhi and Mahima Rao-Kachroo

The Piramal Foundation was launched by diversfied Indian conglomerate, the Piramal Group, to improve the healthcare services and quality of education of India’s economically and socially disadvantaged. The foundation operates under three verticals—‘Piramal Foundation... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Education; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Improvement; Growth and Development Strategy; Education Industry; Health Industry; India

Research Summary

Developing Organizational Capabilities to Compete

By: Michael Beer

Michael Beer’s current research focuses on the question of what makes an Effective Organization. Based on his extensive research and practice about this question Beer has identified six highly interrelated core capabilities:

Capacity of the... View Details

October 2014
Article

The Transparency Trap

By: Ethan Bernstein

To get people to be more creative and productive, managers increase transparency with open workspaces and access to real-time data. But less transparent work environments can yield more-transparent employees. Employees perform better when they can try out new ideas and... View Details

Find at Harvard

March 2007 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Cherrypicks

By: William R. Kerr

Cherrypicks is a Hong Kong communications start-up approaching a large Korean mobile operator for a partnership to take the operator's products to markets outside of Korea. SK Telecom's (SKT) Ring Back Tones (RBT) product is a spectacular success in South Korea, but... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Communication Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Partners and Partnerships; Communications Industry; China; Hong Kong; South Korea

December 2005 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Innovation and Collaboration at Merrill Lynch

By: Boris Groysberg and Ingrid Vargas

In the spring of 2005, Candace Browning, head of Global Securities Research and Economics at Merrill Lynch, led about 500 Merrill Lynch analysts worldwide in a collaborative effort to produce innovative research, most of them accustomed to working independently in... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Groups and Teams; Management Teams; Decision Making; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Negotiation; Mathematical Methods; Strategy; Human Resources; Motivation and Incentives; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

August 2002
Case

Trilogy University

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Paley

In early 2001, Trilogy Software faced a slowdown in its business, a large number of unsuccessful customer deployments, and an overall weakening in the enterprise software market. In response, the company revamped its business model and restructured the organization.... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Alignment; Restructuring; Organizational Structure; Change Management; Business Strategy; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Information Technology Industry