Publications

September 2016 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Casper Sleep Inc.: Marketing the 'One Perfect Mattress for Everyone'

By: Robert J. Dolan

“A Warby Parker of mattresses? Somebody is going to do it. Why not us?” This was the topic of a conversation begun in spring 2013 among Gabe Flateman, Philip Krim, Neil Parikh, and T. Luke Sherwin. The four met as members of a New York City venture accelerator... View Details

Keywords: Mattress; Sleep; Marketing; Business Model; Marketing Channels; Adoption; Sales; Consumer Products Industry

Research Summary

Overview

By: Antonio Moreno

One major theme of Professor Moreno’s research has been retail channel integration and so-called “omnichannel retail.” In omnichannel retail, retailers provide their customers with a shopping experience that may involve different channels in a way that aims to be... View Details

March 2003
Article

Technological Development and Medical Productivity: The Diffusion of Angioplasty in New York State

By: David M. Cutler and Robert S. Huckman

A puzzling feature of many medical innovations is that they simultaneously appear to reduce unit costs and increase total costs. We consider this phenomenon by examining the diffusion of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA)—a treatment for coronary... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Performance Improvement; Product; New York (state, US)

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Research Summary

Lean Startup Management Practices

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Many information technology startups have embraced "lean startup" management practices. Lean startups confront high levels of uncertainty about both customer problems and product solutions: the strength of demand for new... View Details

16 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Luxury Isn’t What It Used to Be

refreshing their product lines and extending their brand to more affordable items. Pressure to innovate is intense, says HBS professor Nancy F. Koehn, a business historian and author of Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products

Article

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management

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September 2013 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Marquee: Reinventing the Business of Nightlife

By: Anita Elberse, Ryan Barlow and Sheldon Wong

In January 2013, nightlife impresarios Jason Strauss and Noah Tepperberg are celebrating the re-opening of their famed New York City–based nightclub Marquee. While most clubs are over within their first one and a half years, Strauss and Tepperberg managed to keep... View Details

Keywords: Creative Industries; Nightlife; Service Management; Entertainment; Fashion; Celebrities; Event Marketing; Risk Management; Customer Relationship Management; Change Management; Supply Chain Management; Music Entertainment; Product Marketing; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Las Vegas

February 2009 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Windows Vista

By: Benjamin Edelman

Microsoft designs, modifies, publicizes, and distributes Windows Vista—against a backdrop of consumers already largely satisfied with their existing Windows XP systems. Microsoft must decide what features to include and what to drop, how to compete with its own... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Demand and Consumers; Partners and Partnerships; Competition; Software; Computer Industry

Roberto Verganti is in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Design Theory and Practice for the double degree program MS/MBA conducted jointly by the Harvard Business School and the... View Details

Keywords: consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products

01 Nov 2016
First Look

First Look - November 1, 2016

Association for Consumer Research The Functional Alibi By: Keinan, Anat, Ran Kivetz, and Oded Netzer Abstract—Spending money on hedonic luxuries often seems wasteful, irrational, and even immoral. We propose that adding a small utilitarian View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2011 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Nanda Home: Preparing for Life after Clocky

By: Elie Ofek and Jill Avery

Gauri Nanda, the inventor of Clocky, the alarm clock that rolls off the bed stand and forces its owner to find it, has to make critical decisions regarding the future of her nascent company. As sales of Clocky show signs of declining, she must decide whether to... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Management; Electronics Industry

12 Feb 2015
Video

Collective Genius

Article

Medium-term Business Cycles

By: Diego Comin and Mark Gertler

Over the postwar period, many industrialized countries have experienced significant medium-frequency oscillations between periods of robust growth versus relative stagnation. Conventional business cycle filters, however, tend to sweep these oscillations into the trend.... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Fluctuation; Information Technology; Research and Development; Resource Allocation; Framework; Trends; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity