Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,592)
- Faculty Publications (240)
- Winter 2013
- Article
How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business
By: Frank V. Cespedes, James P. Dougherty and Ben S. Skinner III
How can businesses achieve profitable growth so that their costs don’t grow faster than sales? This article focuses on scaling a venture’s sales process and provides a methodology for identifying core customers and some implications for governance criteria and... View Details
- 2013
- Case
The COFCO Group
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming and Ziqian Zhao
COFCO was China's sole legitimate window for agricultural foreign trade before 1987. The reform of China's foreign trade system beginning in 1987 cost COFCO its monopoly position. Subsequently, the SOE giant capitalized on its foreign trade expertise to strategically... View Details
- 2013
- Teaching Note
The COFCO Group (TN)
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming and Ziqian Zhao
COFCO was China's sole legitimate window for agricultural foreign trade before 1987. The reform of China's foreign trade system beginning in 1987 cost COFCO its monopoly position. Subsequently, the SOE giant capitalized on its foreign trade expertise to strategically... View Details
- December 2012
- Case
Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit
By: Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison
Delwarca Software provides business software to large corporate clients around the world. The firm serves customers who prefer to assemble corporate solutions using a combination of software programs from various suppliers rather than implementing a single enterprise... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised November 2014)
- Case
Lit Motors
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden
In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim, had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled... View Details
- December 2012
- Article
The Microwork Solution: A New Approach to Outsourcing Can Support Economic Development—and Add to Your Bottom Line
By: Francesca Gino and Bradely R. Staats
What's the best way to lift people out of poverty? The social entrepreneurs in the new "impact sourcing" industry believe the answer is providing work, not aid. Their organizations hire people at the bottom of the pyramid to perform digital tasks such as transcribing... View Details
- September 2012 (Revised May 2015)
- Case
Philips-Visicu
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Natalie Kindred and Sara M. McKinley
Would the advent of global payment models and ACOs create sufficient demand for a telemedicine offering covering the care continuum, from hospitals to the home? This was the decision facing Royal Philips Electronics (Philips), the Netherlands-based producer of... View Details
Keywords: Health Care; Philips; Visicu; Telemedicine; eICU; Accountable Care Organization; ACO; Bundled Payment; Hospital To Home; Patient Monitoring Devices; Home Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Communication Technology; Quality; Safety; Performance Productivity; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Consumer Behavior; Emerging Markets; Health Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Netherlands
- August 2012 (Revised November 2012)
- Case
Colorscope, Inc. (Abridged)
By: V.G. Narayanan
A small company in the graphic design business faces severe price competition. The company must respond by cutting costs and making process improvements. View Details
- June 2012
- Article
Pricing to Create Shared Value
By: Marco Bertini and John T. Gourville
Many companies are in competition with their customers to extract as much value as possible from every transaction. Pricing is their weapon of choice, and consumers fight back by rooting out and disseminating pricing policies that seem unfair. The problem is that... View Details
- April 2012
- Case
Bayonne Packaging, Inc.
By: Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison
A printer and paper converter produces customized packaging used by industrial customers to deliver promotional materials, software, luxury beverages, and gift food and candy. The company specializes in creating innovative packaging solutions for its customers and... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
Is India's Manufacturing Sector Moving Away from Cities?
By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami and William R. Kerr
This paper investigates the urbanization of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise data from formal and informal sectors. We find that plants in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into rural locations, while the informal sector is moving... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
How Short-Termism Invites Corruption—And What to Do About It
Researchers and business leaders have long decried short-termism: the excessive focus of executives of publicly traded companies-along with fund managers and other investors-on short-term results. The central concern is that short-termism discourages long-term... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
Boston Children's Hospital: Measuring Patient Costs
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski and Jessica A. Hohman
The case describes two pilot projects on applying activity-based costing to measuring the cost of treating patients. It presents process maps and financial data relating to the processes used during (1) an office visit to a plastic surgeon for three different diagnoses... View Details
- November 29, 2011
- Article
The Role of The Board in Creating a Sustainable Strategy
By: Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
While conceptually elegant, the belief that a corporation's role is to maximize value for shareholders is under increasing challenge as society's expectations for companies change. An equally elegant new concept that takes account of these dual pressures has yet to... View Details
Keywords: Value Creation; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Expectations; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Practices and Processes; Decisions; Risk and Uncertainty; Cost vs Benefits; Information
- 2013
- Working Paper
The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying
By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra
We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details
- August 2011 (Revised October 2014)
- Supplement
High Wire Act: Credit Suisse and Contingent Capital (B)
By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia
The B case describes the process and terms of the very successful offerings of contingent capital in February 2011, as well as The Basel Committee's preliminary decision not to allow contingent capital to count as Tier 1 equity. View Details
Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Decisions; Financial Crisis; Finance; Capital; Financial Instruments; Leadership
- July – August 2011
- Article
The Paradox of Samsung's Rise
By: Tarun Khanna, Jaeyong Song and Kyungmook Lee
Twenty years ago, few people would have predicted that Samsung could transform itself from a low-cost original equipment manufacturer to a world leader in R&D, marketing, and design, with a brand more valuable than Pepsi, Nike, or American Express. Fewer still would... View Details
- May 2011
- Case
Baria Planning Solutions, Inc.: Fixing the Sales Process
By: Steven C. Wheelwright and William Schmidt
Baria Planning Solutions (BPS) is a consulting firm that specializes in using spend analysis to help companies identify savings through reduced procurement costs and improved supplier performance. Management is concerned about the disappointing performance of the sales... View Details
Keywords: Quantitative Analysis; Technology; Operations Management; Product Lines; Manufacturing; Capacity Planning; Production Planning; Production; Management Practices and Processes; Service Operations; Supply Chain Management; Salesforce Management; Planning; Consulting Industry; North and Central America
- Article
Shadow of the Contract: How Contract Structure Shapes Inter-Firm Dispute Resolution
By: Fabrice Lumineau and Deepak Malhotra
This paper investigates how contract structure influences inter-firm dispute resolution processes and outcomes by examining a unique dataset consisting of over 150,000 pages of documents relating to 102 business disputes. We find that the level of contractual detail... View Details
- July 2010
- Supplement
Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Pricing and Profitability Analysis (CW)
By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Pricing is one of the most difficult decisions marketers make and the one with the most direct and immediate impact on the firm's financial position. This toolkit will introduce the fundamental terminology and calculations associated with pricing and profitability... View Details