Publications

11 May 2016
Research & Ideas

Fix This! Why is it so Painful to Buy a New Car?

prices. And high-end dealerships can make car buying feel like a trip to the spa. But overall, little has changed in the high-pressure business of selling vehicles. So what should the industry be doing to make customers feel better about... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Auto

01 Jan 2013
News

Thai Lee, MBA 1985

revenue. As a new CEO, Lee again operated with a long-term perspective, gradually building a company where people wanted to work, creating hundreds of jobs, and fostering a community of employees who worked together to meet the same goal: to exceed View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

26 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 26, 2018

sellers' product spaces. We find evidence consistent with the former explanation: the likelihood of Amazon's entry is positively correlated with the popularity and customer ratings of third-party sellers' products. We also find that... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

12 Mar 2014
Lessons from the Classroom

Managing the Family Business: Firing the CEO

Long-term high performance family companies live by their core values: quality, customer service, environmental concern, respect for employees. Nothing is more detrimental to the core values and culture of a company than to see the CEO... View Details

03 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 3

growth in 2011 and beyond, executives contemplated how to best apply their purchasing and supply chain knowledge into new international markets. Purchase this case:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/512004-PDF-ENG Customer Visits for... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

01 Mar 2024
News

The Internet's Next Frontier

While the Crypto, Fintech, and Web3 Lab—one of 13 labs contained within Harvard’s Digital Data Design Institute—might not have the Bunsen burners and test tubes found in science and engineering labs, it does share a philosophical construct: it is a sandbox—an... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie

12 Jul 2011
First Look

First Look: July 12

amplify pressures to improve. Examining organizational responses to a change in a prominent information disclosure program, we provide some of the first empirical evidence characterizing organizations' heterogeneous responses to information disclosure regulations. We... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Uncle Nearest: Creating a Legacy

By: Hise Gibson, Archie L. Jones, Nicole Gilmore and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Fawn Weaver, as a Black woman and industry outsider in a capital-intensive, highly regulated, competitive and male-dominated spirits industry, successfully overcame numerous obstacles to launch a premium American whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest in 2017, which became the... View Details

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

S. Grossman, and Ryan JohnsonHarvard Business School Case 512-026 When Diane Paulus, artistic director and CEO of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) first started in 2008, she attracted media coverage around an aesthetic that aimed to give the audience more View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2024
Case

Nomad: A License to Bank

By: Paul A. Gompers and Pedro Levindo

In late 2023, Lucas Vargas, CEO and co-founder of Nomad, a fintech that offered financial services in the United States for Brazilian residents, had to decide what to do to ensure the company’s continued expansion. Nomad launched its first product, a U.S. digital bank... View Details

20 Mar 2000
Research & Ideas

Incubators: The New Venture Capitalists?

sometime incubate those. We sometimes partner with people that have those. But what we do is create economic coalitions between those atomic units in order to provide for the delivery to the customer of a complete solution." With... View Details

Keywords: by Kenneth Liss

08 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: Nov. 8

Abstract In many service industries, companies compete with each other on the basis of the waiting time their customers experience, along with other strategic instruments such as the price they charge for their service. The objective of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Sep 2023
Blog Post

MBAs Accelerate Their Social Enterprise Ventures

solar-powered irrigation for Indian farmers. While solar irrigation can reduce agricultural production costs by up to 25% and eliminate 132M tons of CO2 emissions annually, upfront costs remain a barrier. Solara aims to make ownership... View Details

July 2005 (Revised September 2016)
Case

24 Hour Fitness (A): The Rise, 1983–2004

By: John R. Wells, Elizabeth A. Raabe and Gabriel Ellsworth

In October 2004, Mark S. Mastrov, CEO of 24 Hour Fitness, reflected on how far his company had come in just over 20 years. From humble beginnings in 1983 in San Leandro, California, 24 Hour Fitness had grown to become the largest privately-owned health-club chain in... View Details

Keywords: 24 Hour Fitness; Mark Mastrov; Health Clubs; Fitness; Gyms; Chain; Weight Loss; Exercise; Personal Training; Retention; Sales Force Compensation; Incentive Systems; Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Private Equity; Revenue; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Nutrition; Business History; Employees; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Human Capital; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Service Operations; Private Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Salesforce Management; Sports; Strategy; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Segmentation; Information Technology; Internet; Technology Platform; Web; Web Sites; Capital Structure; Performance; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; United States; California; San Francisco

March 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Darktrace: Scaling Cybersecurity and AI (A)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Alexis Lefort

In 2023, Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson was contemplating her growth strategy at a leading U.K.-based cybersecurity venture, launched in 2013 by a group of anti-terror cyber specialists, University of Cambridge mathematicians, and artificial intelligence (AI) experts.... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Talent; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Cybersecurity; Leadership; Business Growth and Maturation; Recruitment; Resignation and Termination; AI and Machine Learning; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Europe; United States

Web

Courses by Faculty Unit - Course Catalog

Exploring Japan's Innovation Ecosystem (also listed under Strategy) Ramon Casadesus-Masanell Tomomichi Amano January 2026 J 3.0 Innovation and Renovation: Optimizing Product Line Architecture Tomomichi Amano Spring 2026 Q4 1.5 Managing View Details

September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
Case

On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb

Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details

February 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup

By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney

The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details