Publications

February 2017 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Kameda Seika: Cracking the U.S. Market

By: Elie Ofek, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

In spring 2016, Kameda’s CEO, Michiyasu Tanaka, is facing difficult questions from board members over the lackluster performance of the company’s U.S. subsidiary. Kameda was the leading player in the Japanese rice cracker market and was looking to expand overseas to... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Adaptation; Performance Improvement; Food and Beverage Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Japan; United States

February 2017
Teaching Note

Paez

By: Jill Avery

Paez, an Argentine start-up fashion brand, sold traditional alpargatas, a sleepy category that suddenly woke up when TOMS, a U.S. company, appropriated the traditional alpargata design, covered it with fashionable colors and prints, and tied it to a social cause.... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Competitive Strategy; Retailing; Go To Market Strategy; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Argentina; Latin America; South America; Europe

January 2017
Case

Expanding Ecommerce at Technos

By: Thales Teixeira, Rohit Deshpandé, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

Technos was the market leader in the Brazilian watch market. Its CEO had made a firm commitment to evolve the company’s marketing and commercial practices by focusing less on pushing product to retail clients and more on branding to end consumers to pull watches from... View Details

Article

Lessons From Hollywood: A New Approach To Funding R&D

By: Gary P. Pisano and Andrew W. Lo

Companies find it increasingly difficult to justify long-term, risky R&D investments—particularly in science-based fields such as biotechnology, advanced materials, and energy. We argue in this article that the traditional venture model has limits for such investments... View Details

Keywords: Financial Innovation; Financial Strategy; Project Management; R＆D; Start-up; Innovation Strategy; Business Model; Research and Development; Financial Management; Risk Management; Strategy

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November 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Deutsche Bank: Structured Retail Products

By: Boris Vallée and Jérôme Lenhardt

Describes how Deutsche Bank, a leading European bank, is deciding whether or not to launch a new structured retail product in Germany: an autocallable note. Will this product find a market and how does it fit into the bank’s product portfolio? The case investigates how... View Details

November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
Case

The Black List

By: Henry McGee and Sarah McAra

Franklin Leonard founded The Black List in 2005 as an innovative approach to identifying potential hit movie scripts via crowdsourcing. As the annual Black List proved to hold the scripts of some of Hollywood’s most successful films, from “Slumdog Millionaire” to... View Details

Keywords: Screenwriting; Independent Production; Hollywood; Film Development; Film Distribution; Film Financing; Manging Uncertainty; Barriers To Entry; Globalization; Digitalization; Film Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Media; Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; United States

September 2016 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Collage.com: Scaling a Distributed Organization

By: Christopher Stanton and Shikhar Ghosh

Kevin Borders and Joe Golden, co-founders and co-CEOs of Collage.com, must decide how to grow their custom photo-products startup in the face of fierce competition. From 2011 through 2016, the business evolved from a hobby to a startup with $22 million in revenue and... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Internet and the Web; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Employees; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

August 2016 (Revised June 2017)
Case

Oversight Systems

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amram Migdal

The case, set in May 2016, discusses sales strategy and managing sales and service at Oversight Systems, an Atlanta, Georgia–based software firm that developed analytics for organizations to monitor their data for errors, fraud, and operational inefficiencies. Included... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Sales Strategy; Entrepreneurial Sales; Entrepreneurial Sales And Marketing; Software Sales; Marketing; Marketing Management; Pricing; Salesforce Management; Distribution Channels; Marketing Strategy; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Atlanta; Georgia (state, US)

August 2016
Case

S'well: The Mass Market Decision

By: Youngme Moon

This case tells the story of how Sarah Kauss, a young female entrepreneur, built a premium water bottle brand from scratch. After having built a high-end brand, the key decision in the case is whether to begin expanding the S'well product portfolio to the mass market. View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Marketing; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Distribution; Strategy; United States

July 2016
Case

Spotify

By: Anita Elberse and Alexandre de Pfyffer

In November 2014, Spotify's chief content officer Ken Parks learns that record label Big Machine Records has requested the immediate removal of superstar artist Taylor Swift's entire catalogue from Spotify's music streaming service. Is it time for Spotify to reconsider... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Marketing; Superstar; Music; Entertainment Marketing; Media; Digital Technology; Creative Industries; Product Portfolio Management; General Management; Management; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Open Source Distribution; Creativity; Music Entertainment; Product Marketing; Music Industry

July 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Tolaram: Innovating in Africa

By: Derek van Bever and Efosa Ojomo

Tolaram is a Singaporean company that began operations selling textiles in Nigeria in the 1970s. Executives and brothers, Haresh and Sajesh Aswani, however, saw an opportunity to create an instant noodle market in the country. In 1988, they began importing Indomie... View Details

Keywords: Fast Moving Consumer Goods; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Vertical Integration; Emerging Markets; Consumer Products Industry; Nigeria; Africa

May 25, 2016
Comment

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

By: John A. Quelch

Healthcare and education are two issues in which citizens around the world, rich and poor, are passionately interested. It has long been appreciated that the way that a society treats its youngest and oldest members says much about its moral maturity. Economic... View Details

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May 2016 (Revised December 2016)
Case

Camposol

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

With $289 million in 2015 revenues, Camposol is a Peruvian grower, exporter, and marketer of fruits and vegetables, with a focus on the high-growth, high-margin blueberry category. Camposol aspires to become Peru’s first multinational branded produce company. It... View Details

May 2016 (Revised June 2017)
Case

India's Amul: Keeping Up with the Times

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Tarun Khanna, Namrata Arora and Tanya Bijlani

Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative founded in 1947—eight months before India's independence from British rule—and owned by over three million farmers in the state of Gujarat. It is India's largest food product marketing organization, selling 46 products, including... View Details

Keywords: Globalization; Expansion; Dairy; India; Cooperatives; Milk; Leadership; Agriculture; Agribusiness; Competition; Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; India

April 2016 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Moleskine (A)

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Raffaella Sadun and Kathy Qu

Describes the founding and growth challenges facing Moleskine, an Italian-based consumer products company known for its oilcloth-covered notebooks once used by Ernest Hemingway and Vincent van Gogh. CEO Arrigo Berni and co-founder Maria Sebregondi aim to transform the... View Details

Keywords: Creative Industries; Brand Building; Digital Innovation; Digital Services And Strategy; Process Improvement; Culture; Identity Construction; Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

Spring 2016
Article

Performance Responses to Competition Across Skill-Levels in Rank Order Tournaments: Field Evidence and Implications for Tournament Design

By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael E. Menietti

Tournaments are widely used in the economy to organize production and innovation. We study individual contestant-level data from 2,796 contestants in 774 software algorithm design contests with random assignment. Precisely conforming to theory predictions, the... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Innovation Strategy

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March 2016
Teaching Note

Catalina in the Digital Age

By: Uma R. Karmarkar and Robert J. Dolan

"Catalina in the Digital Age" considers how a company with a dominant market position should evolve its established product lines given the rise of novel digital technologies. Since its founding in 1983, Catalina had enjoyed a distinct position in the world of consumer... View Details

Keywords: Coupons; Information Technology; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Product Marketing; Retail Industry