Publications

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October 1997 (Revised June 1998)
Case

Woolworths South Africa

By: David B. Yoffie and Anthony St. George

Woolworths South Africa is one of the most successful retail chains in the country, modeled on Marks and Spencer of the United Kingdom. This case focuses on the sources of Woolworth's competitive advantage within South Africa and the challenges of growth in the wake of... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Growth Management; Global Strategy; Industry Structures; Marketing Strategy; Strategy; Business or Company Management; Retail Industry; South Africa

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May 2006
Case

A123Systems

By: H. Kent Bowen, Kenneth P Morse and Douglass Cannon

A 123Systems was a young company that was founded on basic materials science research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A co-founder of the company, Yet-Ming Chiang, was a full professor at MIT and served as scientific adviser. Intellectual property based... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Business Startups; Research and Development; Commercialization; Technological Innovation; Science-Based Business; Product Development; Battery Industry; Battery Industry; Massachusetts

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

group of retailers is challenging this notion of an industry built on the backs of crummy jobs, very prosperous companies that include Costco, Mercadona, Trader Joe's, and QuikTrip. What do they know that their competitors don't? In a new... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

28 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 28, 2009

forward? Purchase this case: http://hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=709404 Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation Harvard Business School Case 609-063 Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation has a horizontal firm structure in... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 May 2011
First Look

First Look: May 17

mechanics, types, and pricing. It then discusses the structure of the reinsurance industry and the impact of recent crises on this industry. Purchase this... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Novartis: A Transformative Deal

By: David Collis and Ashley Hartman

When Joe Jimenez became CEO of Swiss-based Novartis in 2010, replacing longtime CEO Dan Vasella, he assumed control of one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. Vasella, an avowed advocate of diversification, had expanded the scope of the company and... View Details

Keywords: Novartis; GlaxoSmithKline; Asset Swap; Acquisitions; Divestiture; Strategy Alignment; Pharmaceuticals; Strategy; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Consolidation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Pharmaceutical Industry

20 Aug 2013
First Look

First Look: August 20

Publications August 2013 Marketing Science Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus-Based Compensation Plans By: Chung, Doug J., Thomas Steenburgh, and K. Sudhir Abstract—We estimate a dynamic View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

18 Nov 2022
HBS Case

What Does It Take to Safeguard a Legacy in Asset Management?

Mehta in the HBS case study “Brown Capital Management.” At a time when many companies are seeking to address deep structural racism, Brown’s methods may provide an important blueprint. “An important question for organizations is how to... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

31 Aug 2021
Book

Feeling Powerless at Work? Time to Agitate, Innovate, and Orchestrate

withdrawing from the market. Some analysts have calculated that sales growth in the diamond industry dropped by as much as 60 percent between 2019 and 2020, lessening the power of De Beers and other diamond suppliers. “As the rise and... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

April 2020
Case

The Board's Role in Refocusing Bahrain Development Bank

By: Paul M. Healy and Alpana Thapar

In March 2016, Bahrain Development Bank’s (BDB) existing board term came to an end and Khalid Al Rumaihi was appointed the new chairman. Determining a need for change, he immediately overhauled the board and replaced BDB’s long-standing CEO. The new board quickly... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Governing and Advisory Boards; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Banking Industry; Bahrain

Research Summary

Overview

The overarching goal of my research is to produce works that are influential and informative to both academics and practitioners in the field of operations management. To accomplish this, I collaborate with industry partners who provide knowledge about their field,... View Details

10 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Top Scholars Say About Leadership

they operate. Political science, government, and history paid attention; and even the economist Joseph Schumpeter, with his notion of individuals who operate outside the social structure and who can then innovate, staked out a tradition... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

22 Oct 2019
Research & Ideas

Use Artificial Intelligence to Set Sales Targets That Motivate

data, the algorithm learns to predict the outcome from the input data. Unsupervised learning. In this case, using unlabeled data, the algorithm learns the inherent structure from the input data. Either machine learning approach is only as... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

18 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

After the 'Crypto Crash,' What's Next for Digital Currencies?

coordinate on for mediums of exchange, and a lot of the applications are technological in nature and novel (or at least unproven). And so, there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of the value of return is downstream, just like with tech... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Financial Services; Technology

11 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 11

entities. The strategy of a new evaluation system should adjust the structure of the original evaluation system with the idea of reform and require the development of the rule of law, including formulating relevant laws and the legal... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Aug 2014
First Look

First Look: August 12

become more fundamental as advertisers target their advertisements with greater precision. In the paper that follows, the author attempts to identify the circumstances that make advertisers most vulnerable, notes adjusted contract View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Winter 2016
Article

Analytics for an Online Retailer: Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization

By: Kris J. Ferreira, Bin Hong Alex Lee and David Simchi-Levi

We present our work with an online retailer, Rue La La, as an example of how a retailer can use its wealth of data to optimize pricing decisions on a daily basis. Rue La La is in the online fashion sample sales industry, where they offer extremely limited-time... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Price; Forecasting and Prediction; Revenue; Sales; Retail Industry

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May 2000 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Debt Policy at UST Inc.

UST, Inc. is a very profitable smokeless tobacco firm with low debt compared to other firms in the tobacco industry. The setting for the case is UST's recent decision to substantially alter its debt policy by borrowing $1 billion to finance its stock repurchase... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry