Publications

December 2016
Case

thredUP: Think Secondhand First

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

In the fall of 2016, the management team at thredUP, the largest U.S. online retailer of second hand clothing, is deciding whether to expand into international markets. Over the past 12 months the 7-year-old startup, which had raised over $130 million in venture... View Details

Keywords: Scaling Start-ups; International Expansion; Online Consignment; Apparel; Internet and the Web; Expansion; Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Business Startups; E-commerce; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; San Francisco

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: The Business of Crowdsourcing

Gaining the community's trust is vital to building a successful business with crowdsourcing, agreed business leaders at the Digital Initiative Summit at Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

15 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Business IT Innovation is so Difficult

"When you talk to people on the front lines, they know this is complicated and hard," she says. Communication Breakdown Investing in technology change without organizational change won't work either. For the Harvard Business Review... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

April 2021
Case

Etsy: Crafting a Turnaround to Save the Business and Its Soul

By: Ranjay Gulati, Luciana Silvestri and Monte Burke

Etsy, the online seller of handmade goods, was founded in 2005 on an almost utopian ideal—a responsible, caring company that offered individual crafters a place to sell their wares, a wholesome alternative to companies that sold mass-manufactured products. The company... View Details

Keywords: Turnaround; Organizational Culture; Financial Condition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mission and Purpose; Transformation; Leadership

February 2015 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Quincy Apparel (A)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lisa Mazzanti

Quincy Apparel designs, manufactures and sells work apparel for young professional women that offers the fit and feel of high-end brands at a lower price. In late 2012, Quincy's cofounders are debating how to approach a crucial board meeting. Their seed-stage startup... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Failure; Online Retail; Women's Apparel; Business Startups; Business Plan; Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Production; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Fashion Industry; New York (city, NY)

13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Making Biotech Work as a Business

is ever going to leap ahead. The main barrier, according to Pisano, is the lack of integration among costs, rules, technologies, and disciplines. In a presentation at the Harvard Business School Alumni Healthcare Conference, held last... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Biotechnology; Health; Technology

December 2020 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Komatsu and Smart Construction

By: Rajiv Lal, David J. Collis and Akiko Saito

Komatsu, Japan's leading construction equipment manufacturer, is considering investing in a digital platform "Smart Construction" that will digitise the entire work process on a construction site, allowing for substantial reductions in cost and time while improving... View Details

Keywords: Platform; Digital Business; Construction; Business Model; Strategy; Technology Adoption; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Construction Industry; Japan

21 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Fighting the COVID Blues: Advice from Business Research

We asked Harvard Business School experts who study well-being to share strategies for coping with this unsettling period to prevent the coronavirus blues from taking a huge toll, both personally and professionally. “You're not going to be... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman and Danielle Kost

18 Aug 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Business Plan Contest: 15 Years of Building Better Entrepreneurs

the past fifteen years of the contest, it's extraordinary." The Art Of The Pivot A few common experiences filter to the surface in conversations with past contest participants, whether their venture sells crème brûlée or online video... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

February 2017
Case

Yemeksepeti: Growing and Expanding the Business Model through Data

By: William R. Kerr, Gamze Yucaoglu and Eren Kuzucu

In October 2016, Nevzat Aydin, co-founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti, the Turkish online food-ordering company, was looking over the company's quarterly results and projections for the upcoming year with his management team. It had been almost a year and a half since Aydin... View Details

16 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

Reintroducing Intellectual Ambition to the Study of Business History

The 85-year-old Business History Review, published quarterly by Harvard Business School, is the acknowledged leading peer-reviewed journal in the field. (BHR has recently been made available View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones & Walter Friedman

25 May 2016
Research & Ideas

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

explore interactions between private business and public health, and demonstrate how consumers can create better and less expensive care for themselves. Book Excerpt: Consumer Power in Shaping Public Health Healthcare and education are... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Health

07 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

How to Help Small Businesses Survive COVID's Next Phase

number of tough moments,” says Karen G. Mills, senior fellow at Harvard Business School. “I’m quite concerned that we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg of business closures.” Yelp, the View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Food & Beverage; Service

January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Rural Taobao: Alibaba's Expansion into Rural E-Commerce

By: Tarun Khanna, Ryan Allen, Adam Frost and Wesley Koo

Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China’s remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed “1.0” and “2.0,” Alibaba had partnered with local businesses... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Business Growth; Ecommerce; Corporate Social Responsibility; Business And Government; Emerging Market; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Emerging Markets; Rural Scope; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Decision Making; E-commerce; China

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