Publications

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May 2016 (Revised September 2016)
Case

Hillside Beach Club: Delivering the Ultimate Family Vacation in the Mediterranean

By: Rajiv Lal and Gamze Yucaoglu

In 2015, Edip Ilkbahar, HBC’s founder and CEO, was looking over the plans for a new branch in Cyprus. Since the inception of the company by the Alarko Group of companies in 1994, Ilkbahar’s company had enjoyed high occupancy, high guest satisfaction, and high... View Details

November 2000 (Revised October 2005)
Case

TiVo

TiVo is a digital video recorder that allows viewers to watch what they want, when they want to watch it. Fourteen months into the launch, sales are very disappointing. Brodie Keast, VP of marketing and sales, wants to combine a catchy communications campaign, product... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Communications; Product Launch; Television Entertainment; Innovation and Invention; Electronics Industry

September 2022 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Wordle

By: Karen G. Mills, Christina Wallace, Ebehi Iyoha, Gabriella Elanbeck and Morgane Herculano

After sourdough bread, countertop chive gardens, and vaccine selfies came a pandemic-era trend that everyone seemed to be in on: one daily chance to guess a five-letter word and crow about your success on social media via little green and yellow squares. From a... View Details

Keywords: Games; Innovation; General Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Trends; Entrepreneurship; Bids and Bidding; Consumer Behavior; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

March 2003 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Bertelsmann AG

By: Bharat N. Anand, Michael G. Rukstad and Christoph Kostring

On July 28, 2002, Bertelsmann announced the firing of its CEO, Thomas Middelhoff, in a move that surprised industry observers, analysts, and many employees. Bertelsmann, a privately held company headquartered in Germany, was one of the largest global media... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Corporate Strategy; Entertainment; Media; Change Management; Integration; Resignation and Termination; Private Ownership; Initial Public Offering; Business Units; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Germany

October 2009 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Nettwerk: Digital Marketing in the Music Industry

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

How is music marketed in the digital era? Nettwerk Music Group built on its foundation as a social, grassroots marketer of music and artists and emerged as a leader in the Internet-enabled social media environment. For most of the past decade Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride... View Details

Keywords: Music Entertainment; Product Marketing; Network Effects; Sales; Social and Collaborative Networks; Online Technology; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

21 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

The $15 Billion Question: Have Loot Boxes Turned Video Gaming into Gambling?

attention share it captures, understanding why consumers engage with digital products is important beyond this market—for instance, gambling-like motives also drive media and entertainment consumption.”... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Media & Broadcasting; Media & Broadcasting

September 2004 (Revised February 2010)
Case

The Passion of the Christ (A)

By: John A. Quelch, Anita Elberse and Anna Harrington

Bob Berney, president of Newmarket Films, must decide on a distribution and marketing strategy for Mel Gibson's controversial new movie, The Passion of the Christ. Fueled by Gibson's star power as well as an extensive prescreening campaign among Christian leaders and... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Film Entertainment; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Distribution Channels; Religion; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

May 2004 (Revised March 2005)
Case

Music Downloads

By: David B. Yoffie and Deborah Freier

Examines the competition between competing music formats. In the '90s, the MP3 format challenged the traditional means of music distribution by allowing for storage of near CD-quality recordings at 1/10th of their previous size. The threat to traditional distribution... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Music Entertainment; Legal Liability; Distribution; Competition; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Information Infrastructure; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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June 2004 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Scientific-Atlantia (S-A), a leading manufacturer of cable TV equipment, is confronting strategic challenges in mid-2004. For decades, cable operators have faced high switching costs that have locked them into exclusive supply relationships with either S-A or its... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Competition; Industry Structures; Television Entertainment; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

October 2011 (Revised May 2015)
Case

The American Repertory Theater

By: Rohit Deshpande, Allen S. Grossman and Ryan Johnson

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 ownership over the theater experience, excited theatergoers by... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Arts; Business Model; Leading Change; Media; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Nonprofit Organizations; Competitive Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; North and Central America

15 Aug 2023
HBS Case

(Virtual) Reality Check: How Long Before We Live in the 'Metaverse'?

virtual-reality future yet to materialize as hoped by its biggest proponents. Chief among its backers: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who two years ago went so far as to change his social media company’s name to Meta and vowed to spend... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Technology; Computer; Information Technology

08 Jan 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, January 8, 2019

providing retail, housing and entertainment facilities that catered to Colombia’s middle class. While White Stone’s proposal would solve many of Jaguar’s challenges as a start-up real estate development company, the offer would also... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

15 Nov 2022
Op-Ed

Why TikTok Is Beating YouTube for Eyeball Time (It’s Not Just the Dance Videos)

third solution, based not on social media but on entertainment media. Entertainment algorithms loop back and forth from content that’s offered to a response detected until they... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

02 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 2

http://www.people.hbs.edu/rchua/JIBS_Intercultural_trust.pdf Evolve (Again) Author:Rosabeth M. Kanter Publication:Harvard Business Review 89, nos. 7-8 (July-August 2011) Abstract Frenzy over social networks and interactive media can... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2017 (Revised December 2018)
Case

Reawakening the Magic: Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company

By: David Collis and Ashley Hartman

Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Buzz Lightyear strolled down Main Street at the grand opening of Hong Kong Disney in the fall of 2005, pausing to snap selfies with enthusiastic children in Mickey Mouse ears. Bob Iger, newly appointed CEO of The Walt Disney Company,... View Details

Keywords: Franchise Management; Brand Management; Culture Change; Business Units; Acquisition Strategy; Technological Change; Disney; ESPN; Cord-cutting; Bob Iger; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Integration; Media; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

19 Mar 2013
First Look

First Look: March 19

tightly linked to changes in firm diversification and IT investments. These relationships depend crucially on the function involved: those closer to the product ("product" functions, e.g., marketing / R&D) behave differently... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Sep 2011
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Lady Gaga

Industries, which focuses entirely on the media and entertainment sector, and which includes sessions on basketball star LeBron James, online video aggregator Hulu, the NFL, and the Metropolitan Opera, among... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Entertainment & Recreation; Entertainment & Recreation

September 2019
Case

Netflix: A Creative Approach to Culture and Agility

By: Ranjay Gulati, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

By 2018, Netflix had been credited for revolutionizing how viewers consumed entertainment—shifting from ad-fueled linear network programming to a highly personalized, on-demand, all-you-can-consume, ad-free model. The company was riding a long wave of revenue and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Technologies; Streaming; Video On Demand; International Expansion; Leadership; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Style; Management Style; Organizational Culture; Entertainment; Media; Change Management; Expansion; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

March 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Reinventing Best Buy

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast... View Details