Publications

May 2013
Supplement

Transport Corporation of India (D): Business Development across Divisions

By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi

Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Business Divisions; Sales; Transportation Industry; India

May 2013
Case

Transport Corporation of India (A): The Cross-selling Conundrum

By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi

Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Business Divisions; Performance; Sales; Transportation Industry; India

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Jumia's Path to Profitability

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details

30 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 30, 2008

and service quality. Using longitudinal data from stores of a large retailer, I find that increasing the amount of labor at a store is associated with an increase in profitability through its impact on conformance quality but not its... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Bank of America (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how Bank of America is creating a system for product and service innovation in its retail banking business. Emphasis is placed on the role of experimentation in some two-dozen real-life "laboratories" that serve as fully operating banking branches and as... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Problems and Challenges; Innovation and Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Change; Failure; Banks and Banking; Learning; Banking Industry

24 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Can Obamacare Be Saved?

providers to improve services to Americans. Source: gpointstudio In 2015, there was an average of 6.9 plans to choose from in each state. This fell to 6.5 in 2016, and even before Aetna's decision, the Kaiser Family Foundation projected... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch and Emily Boudreau; Insurance; Health

23 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 23

Incumbents Fare in the Face of Increased Service Competition? Authors:Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell, and Frances X. Frei Abstract We explore the conditions under which service competition leads to customer... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

2008
Working Paper

The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns

By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy

This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Investment Portfolio; Governing and Advisory Boards; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Social and Collaborative Networks; Financial Services Industry

Read Now

March 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Masterpiece for the Masses: The First Art Exchange ARTEX

By: Lauren Cohen, Anastasiya Siroochenko (Siro) and Sophia Pan

Yassir Benjelloun-Touimi, CEO of ARTEX, aspired to marry the world of art and finance. Hoping to promote transparent, fractionalized ownership of renowned artwork, the founder had spent years contemplating the birth of an art stock market. This exchange would allow... View Details

February 2025
Case

Luca de Meo at Renault Group (A)

By: Emily Truelove, Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

When Luca de Meo became CEO of Renault Group in 2020, the 122-year-old French automaker faced financial challenges and the double technological disruption of the automotive industry: the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) and the rise of software-defined vehicles (SDVs).... View Details

October 2001 (Revised April 2002)
Case

America Online, Inc.: Disclosure Strategy

By: Amy P. Hutton and David Lane

Since going public, AOL had disclosed on a quarterly basis supplemental metrics meant to give analysts and investors a way of tracking growth in its subscriber base and the value created through its marketing efforts. These metrics gave management's conversations with... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Internet and the Web; Change Management; Internet and the Web; Corporate Disclosure; Media; Digital Marketing; Information Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

Find at Harvard

01 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 1

Exploiting novel data on the educational backgrounds of sell side equity analysts and senior officers of firms, we test the hypothesis that analysts' school ties to senior officers impart comparative information advantages in the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2022
Case

Deborah Quazzo at GSV Ventures

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael D. Smith and Nicole Tempest Keller

As COVID-19 swept across the globe in 2020, the education sector faced unprecedented disruption. Schools and colleges worldwide shut down, forcing over a billion students and teachers to move to online learning. Investor interest in the EdTech space exploded as... View Details

Keywords: Edtech; Technology; Online Learning; COVID-19 Pandemic; Education; Information Technology; Venture Capital; Change Management; Strategy; Education Industry; Education Industry; Chicago; California

24 Nov 2008
Research & Ideas

Harvard Business School Discusses Future of the MBA

MBAs a year, with upwards of 150,000 of those in the United States alone. At HBS, the business of business education is thriving. Applications are on the rise again after trending downward for several years. Only one out of nine... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson & HBS Bulletin; Education

04 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon

panel discussion held at Harvard Business School, where several experts talked about how to treat the troubled industry at a time when the year-old Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 is still in its relative infancy.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

April 2009
Case

Invest Early: Early Childhood Development in a Rural Community

By: Stacey M. Childress and Geoff Eckman Marietta

Invest Early was an early childhood development partnership in rural northern Minnesota between 14 different organizations, which worked together through an advisory board, governing board, and leadership team in order to deliver coordinated early childhood services to... View Details

Keywords: Early Childhood Education; Rural Scope; Management Teams; Managerial Roles; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business and Community Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Social and Collaborative Networks

Find at Harvard

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Oklahoma VISION Project

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Susan Saltrick

Describes the two-year-old pilot phase of a public/private initiative in Oklahoma called the Virtual Internet School in Oklahoma Network (VISION) project. VISION was a first-of-its-kind, standards-based, vendor-neutral technology infrastructure developed to enable... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Internet and the Web; Performance Evaluation; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Service Delivery; Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurship; Education; Education Industry; Education Industry; Oklahoma; Western United States

Find at Harvard

September 2004 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Hedging Currency Risks at AIFS

By: Mihir A. Desai, Vincent Dessain and Anders Sjoman

The American Institute for Foreign Studies (AIFS) organizes study abroad programs and cultural exchanges for American students. The firm's revenues are mainly in U.S. dollars, but most of its costs are in eurodollars and British pounds. The company's controllers review... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Investment Funds; Financial Strategy; Forecasting and Prediction; Revenue; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Currency; Currency Exchange Rate; Education Industry; North and Central America