Publications

08 Jan 2020
Blog Post

Know Your Audience - Recruiting HBS Students for Private Equity

finance experience, they bring a combined 14 years of Career & Professional Development expertise, helping firms develop their HBS recruiting strategy and connect with students. What Students Want HBS student interest in Private... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital / Private Equity

March 2020 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Levi Strauss (A): A Pioneer Lost in the Wilderness

By: Joshua Margolis, Ashish Nanda, Margaret Cross, Imran Manji and Bismah Rahmat

In 2011, newly appointed CEO Chip Bergh needed to urgently turn around the iconic but floundering denim apparel firm, Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) Famous for its blue jeans, LS&Co. had suffered a decline in revenue of 29% from $6.8 billion in 1997 to $4.8 billion in... View Details

Keywords: Turnarounds; Transformation; Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Strategic Planning; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Product Marketing; Apparel and Accessories Industry

March 1996 (Revised November 1997)
Case

Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities

By: Alvin J. Silk and Lisa Klein Pearo

Dewar's is considering employing new media options. The company had committed resources to a new CD-ROM magazine, Launch, in 1994, as its first experiment with new media. During 1994, a number of additional opportunities have been presented to both Leo Burnett and S&S... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Cost Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Market Entry and Exit; Media; Corporate Strategy

01 Jun 2020
News

Check In

KHP’s investment strategy, if at all? MD: This downturn is terrible for the travel business, to be sure, but it does create significant investment opportunities. Our strategy has always been to find an existing hotel that we think would... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; hotels; COVID-19; real estate; Accommodation; Hospitality

January 2021
Supplement

Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California

February 2006
Case

Bumble and bumble: Building a Successful Business in Beauty and Fashion

By: Nancy F. Koehn and Erica Helms

Explores the creation and subsequent rise of Bumble and bumble, a trend-setting hair-care company. Analyzes the vision and achievements of the founding entrepreneur, Michael Gordon, and charts the evolution of the company within the $230 billion global beauty industry.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Brands and Branding; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Financial Condition; Business Growth and Maturation; Success; Distribution; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Fashion Industry

09 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 9

maintaining the company culture, finding adequate partners to preserve the quality of the "Buy a Pair, Give a Pair" program, and devising an integrated online and offline marketing strategy that fit the View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 1992 (Revised July 1994)
Case

MEM Company, Inc.: English Leather

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Laura Goode

In 1992, the president of MEM (a producer of personal care products, including men's fragrances) considered a redeployment of field sales efforts and changes in sales compensation policies. Any changes, moreover, must consider the context of strategic decisions... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Distribution Channels; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

01 Dec 2014
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for December 2014

Alumni Books Dual Momentum Investing: An Innovative Strategy for Higher Returns with Lower Risk by Gary Antonacci (MBA 1978) (McGraw-Hill) Antonacci explains his investing method, which combines U.S. stock, non-U.S. stock, and aggregate... View Details

19 Dec 2006
First Look

First Look: December 19, 2006

arise when cross-price elasticities are estimated for a set of brands expected to be substitutes. These anomalies are the occurrence of: (a) negatively signed cross-elasticities; and (b) sign asymmetries in pairs of cross price... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Sep 2015
First Look

September 29, 2015

as early as possible during EHR optimization. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49754 2015 Journal of Product & Brand Management The Nobel Prize: The Identity of a Corporate Heritage View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 1998 (Revised July 1999)
Case

Merrill Lynch's Acquisition of Mercury Asset Management

By: Andre F. Perold, Imran Ahmed and Randolph B Altschuler

In the Spring of 1998, Merrill Lynch faced an array of challenges and opportunities related to its global asset management business. The firm had recently completed its $5.3 billion cash acquisition of U.K.-based Mercury Asset Management, a transaction that made it one... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Asset Management; Currency; Financial Strategy; Global Strategy; Brands and Branding; Distribution; Production; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Retirement; Japan; Europe; United Kingdom

Find at Harvard

28 May 2019
News

Case Study: Building the Base

misjudged the results of the presidential election. A media junkie as far back as his middle school years and more recently at Nickelodeon’s strategy department, Patel realized he (like many others) had been consuming media that only... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

25 Feb 2020
News

In My Humble Opinion: Mr. Coffee

2018, Keller left his position as global president of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company to become CEO of Peet’s Coffee; in January, he was named CEO of JDE Peet’s, a merger that added a portfolio of coffee and tea brands represented in more... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

18 Oct 2016
First Look

October 18, 2016

difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts based upon their distance from the highway system. For the organized portion of the manufacturing sector, we find that GQ led to improvements in both urban and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Garage.com (A)

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Elizabeth Kind

Silicon Valley's Garage.com matches venture capital and corporate angel investors with high-tech start-ups that are looking for early stage funding. As a Web-based service, Garage.com fields inquiries from entrepreneurs and investors around the world, and is eager to... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Corporate Strategy; Business Growth and Maturation; Venture Capital; Investment; Internet and the Web; Expansion; Operations; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Technological Innovation; Brands and Branding; Information Technology Industry