Publications

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

28 May 2013
News

What the U.S. Can Learn From Healthcare Delivery Overseas

30 Apr 2024
Video

What Managers Can Learn from Jazz Improvisation

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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November 2022
Case

Goonj: Growing in the Face of a Pandemic

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Priyank Narayan

Founded by the husband and wife team of Anshu and Meenakshi Gupta in 1999, Goonj had quickly emerged as one of the leading disaster relief and rural development organizations in India. Their main mode of development was through providing a clothing kit to the village... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Management; Family Business; Natural Disasters; Social Issues; Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business and Community Relations; Strategy; India

September 1997 (Revised October 1997)
Case

Emmet Stephenson: Profile of an Entrepreneur

By: Ashish Nanda

Profiles the career of a Emmet Stephenson, the founder of over a dozen successful companies, as a model of entrepreneurship and management. View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career

13 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: Leadership Roles

Editor's note: This is part of a series of occasional columns on managing the family business written by Senior Lecturer John A. Davis. In this article, Davis discusses leadership roles. Part Two: Structuring Leadership Roles My previous... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Davis

March 2016 (Revised May 2021)
Supplement

IBM and the Reinvention of High School (C): Toward P-TECH's Rapid National Expansion

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Kelsi Stine-Rowe

In early 2016, Stanley Litow, IBM's Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of the IBM International Foundation, made his travel arrangements for still another flight from New York to discuss possibilities for application of a new... View Details

Keywords: IBM; P-TECH; Stanley Litow: Robin Willner; Cuomo; Scaling; Innovation; New York State; New York City; Business Model; Innovation Strategy; Innovation Leadership; Education; Business and Community Relations; Change; Growth and Development; Technology Industry; New York (state, US); New York (city, NY)

October 2022 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Cigna-Express Scripts: Can a Vertical Merger Rescue an Industry Under Attack?

By: Leemore Dafny

In Fall 2019, Cigna Corporation – a global health services company with a significant presence in the U.S. employer-sponsored health insurance market - was digesting its $54 billion acquisition of Express Scripts, Inc. (ESI), a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM)... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Vertical Integration; Insurance Industry

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

May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Airbnb During the Pandemic: Stakeholder Capitalism Faces a Critical Test

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison Ciechanover

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 sudden... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Leadership; Digital Platforms; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Value Creation; Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Travel Industry; Tourism Industry; Service Industry; United States

October 2008 (Revised October 2009)
Case

New Century Financial Corporation

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Suraj Srinivasan and Aldo Sesia

After years of rapid growth and stock price appreciation, New Century Financial Corporation, one of the largest subprime loan originators in the U.S., reported accounting problems in early 2007. The resulting liquidity crisis forced the company to file for Chapter 11... View Details

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Financial Reporting; Business Model; Financial Crisis; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Mortgages; Financial Services Industry; United States

04 Feb 2008
Research & Ideas

Putting Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector

health care. But the truth is that many of these efforts, despite best intentions, have not solved the issues they target, says Harvard Business School professor Jane Wei-Skillern. "Traditional approaches are still falling short,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

August 2008 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Lan Airlines in 2008: Connecting the World to Latin America

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Jorge Tarzijan and Mitchel Jordan

Lan Airlines operates three distinct models: low-cost for domestic short-haul flights, full-service for international routes; and an international cargo business, the latter of which makes up 33% of Lan's overall revenues (markedly different from many U.S. legacy... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Air Transportation Industry; Latin America

March 1996 (Revised February 1997)
Case

Change Agent Program at Siemens Nixdorf, The

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, John F. McGuire and Afroze A Mohammed

To change its culture, the German computer giant Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems launched a program to train 21 "change agents" who would lead entrepreneurial projects designed to get results and to serve as models of a new style. View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Organizational Culture; Training; Leadership Development; Programs; Human Resources; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Computer Industry; Germany

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April 2000 (Revised April 2004)
Case

TixToGo: Financing a Silicon Valley Start-up

Describes TixToGo, a Silicon Valley start-up company that offers online solutions to individuals and organizations that want to offer activities and/or collect registration fees for events over the Internet. A serial entrepreneur and his partner started the company in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; San Francisco

2009
Chapter

Plant-Size Distribution and Cross-Country Income Differences

By: Laura Alfaro, Andrew Charlton and Fabio Kanczuk

We investigate, using plant-level data for 79 developed and developing countries, whether differences in the allocation of resources across heterogeneous plants are a significant determinant of cross-country differences in income per worker. For this purpose, we use a... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Developing Countries and Economies; Wages; Resource Allocation; Mathematical Methods

2008
Working Paper

Firm-Size Distribution and Cross-Country Income Differences

By: Laura Alfaro, Andrew Charlton and Fabio Kanczuk

We investigate, using plant-level data for 79 developed and developing countries, whether differences in the allocation of resources across heterogeneous plants are a significant determinant of cross-country differences in income per worker. For this purpose, we use a... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Developing Countries and Economies; Wages; Resource Allocation; Mathematical Methods