Publications

December 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Bed Bath & Beyond: The New Strategy to Drive Shareholder Value

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher

At one time, Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the most successful specialty retailers in the United States—its growth and profit margins far exceeded both peer retailers in the home goods market as well as many other discount retailers. But in 2014, its stock price peaked,... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation; Diversification; Corporate Governance; Leading Change; Performance Evaluation; Valuation; Investment Activism; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

November–December 2024
Article

Scaling Up Transformational Innovations

By: Peter Koen, Ananya Sheth, Mike DiPaola and Linda A. Hill

For large companies operating in mature sectors—such as Procter & Gamble in consumer goods, Apple in consumer electronics, and Adobe in cloud software—driving growth is a perennial challenge. Growth through acquisition is always an option, but companies often quickly... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

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17 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

Can Autonomous Vehicles Drive with Common Sense?

updates. The process will also include adjusting to, and even setting, consumer expectations as people get more used to seeing AVs on the road, and start adjusting their own driving habits to anticipate how... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

28 Jun 2004
Research & Ideas

How to Avoid a Price Increase

standard size, as in the case of eggs and butter. If dairy firms were to sell butter in slightly less than one-pound packages, consumers would notice. In these cases, one could expect more resistance and... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

11 Oct 2006
What Do You Think?

How Do We Respond to the “Dependency Ratio” Dilemma?

these trends impact social costs so favorably that they could render dependency ratios largely meaningless? What do you think? Original Article Without knowing it, we have already heard a great deal about "dependency ratios." We can View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

2016
Book

Innovation Equity: Assessing and Managing the Monetary Value of New Products and Services

By: Elie Ofek, Eitan Muller and Barak Libai

This book bridges the gap between what academics know, and what innovation stakeholders—from managers, to investors, to analysts, to consumers—need to know about how new products and services are expected to perform in the marketplace. The book develops a compelling... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Technology Diffusion; New Products; Customer Lifetime Value; Monetization Strategy; Social Influence; Innovation Adoption; Forecasting Demand; Commercialization; Marketing Strategy; Practice; Customer Value and Value Chain; Research; Innovation and Management; Technology Adoption; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Development

June 2014
Article

The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity

By: Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino and Anat Keinan

We examine how people react to nonconforming behaviors, such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Consumer Behavior

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March – April 2009
Article

Market Research and Innovation Strategy in a Duopoly

By: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek

We model a duopoly in which ex-ante identical firms must decide where to direct their innovation efforts. The firms face market uncertainty about consumers' preferences for innovation on two product attributes and technology uncertainty about the success of their R&D... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Innovation and Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Research and Development; Competitive Strategy

2009
Chapter

Nonlinear Pricing

By: Raghuram Iyengar and Sunil Gupta

A nonlinear pricing schedule refers to any pricing structure where the total charges payable by customers are not proportional to the quantity of their consumed services. We begin the chapter with a discussion of the broad applicability of nonlinear pricing schemes. We... View Details

Keywords: Price; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Monopoly; Service Operations; Research

October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

FARM Rio: Bringing a Brazilian Fashion Brand to the World

By: Isamar Troncoso and Jill Avery

FARM Rio, a twenty-six year old Brazilian fashion brand, had recently put down roots in the U.S. The brand, known for its bold, colorful, nature-inspired tropical prints, was testing the waters in Europe to assess if and how the brand should further expand globally.... View Details

Keywords: Global Marketing; Go-to-market Strategy; Global Branding; Brand Positioning; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Market Entry and Exit; Distribution Channels; Expansion; Fashion Industry; Brazil; United States; Europe

30 Apr 2020
News

Leading Your Team Past the Peak of a Crisis

04 Feb 2025
HBS Seminar

Anocha Aribarg, University of Michigan

September 2020
Article

Relaxing Household Liquidity Constraints Through Social Security

By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller and Natasha Sarin

More than a quarter of working-age households in the United States do not have sufficient savings to cover their expenditures after a month of unemployment. Recent proposals suggest giving workers early access to a small portion of their future Social Security benefits... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Personal Finance; Employment; Welfare; Insurance; Government Legislation

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In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled... View Details

12 Mar 2019
Blog Post

What I Learned in the Africa Rising Short Intensive Program

their attempt to enter or thrive in African markets tended to set unrealistic time expectations for their operating teams and/or made unrealistic promises to their investors. Against this backdrop of unrealistic View Details

October 2009 (Revised December 2010)
Case

GE Money Bank: The M-Budget Card Initiative

By: Michael L. Tushman, Sebastian Raisch and Christian Welling

The M-Budget Card case study is about mastering the challenges of an exploratory strategic initiative in a context marked by time pressure and frequent change. M-Budget was the first of a series of highly successful projects that established GE Money Bank as a leader... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Credit Cards; Leading Change; Product Launch; Product Development; Groups and Teams; Banking Industry; Switzerland