Publications

10 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

Long-Tail Economics? Give Me Blockbusters!

test kits to fund frontier research into cardio diagnostics. More risky than pursuing blockbusters is not to pursue them, to condemn your enterprise to a lifetime of slave labor harvesting the long tail of micro-opportunities rather than... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Entertainment & Recreation; Pharmaceutical

April 2025
Case

Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Allison Ciechanover and George Gonzalez

In early 2025, Salesforce was a global leader in cloud-based enterprise software, best known for pioneering customer relationship management (CRM) delivered as a service. Over the past two decades, the company had expanded into marketing, customer service, analytics,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customer Relationship Management; Price; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Sales; Business Strategy; Ethics; Product Launch; Technology Industry; United States

September 2003
Case

Growing Up in China: The Financing of BabyCare Ltd.

By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen

The CFO of this infant nutritional products company must choose among competing financing offers. The interplay of Chinese legal and customs restrictions and venture capitalists' bargaining techniques challenge the CFO to navigate a tricky negotiation and to devise a... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Working Capital; Emerging Markets; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; China

March 2013 (Revised May 2013)
Case

Omar Ishrak: Building Medtronic Globally

By: Bill George and Natalie Kindred

Omar Ishrak, Medtronic's first non-American CEO, aims to reinvigorate the medical device maker's growth by focusing on emerging markets, therapy innovation, and creative business models. In 2012, budget constraints in mature economies, the lack of new medical therapies... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Medical Devices; Medtronic; Globalization; Innovation; Reverse Innovation; Leadership; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Management Teams; Business Model; Emerging Markets; Global Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Acquisition; Innovation and Invention; Manufacturing Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; China

29 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 29

2008, the company started providing non-GAAP supplemental numbers where substantially all of the revenue was recognized upfront. Market participants' reactions to the disclosure were mixed. Was Apple "right" in arguing that... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 Dec 2016
Research & Ideas

The 10 Most Popular Stories of 2016

the chicken-and-egg challenge of how companies can attract their first customers. Donald Trump’s Winning Marketing Manual Donald Trump's upset election win offers six lessons for marketing professionals,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Web

Finance - Faculty & Research

By: Philippe van der Beck , Lorenzo Bretscher and Zhiyu Julie Fu Gross trading volumes in financial markets are large and far exceed return volatility. In contrast, “net volume”—trading from persistent portfolio reallocations—is... View Details

February 9, 2022
Article

What's the Optimal Workplace for Your Organization?

By: Maria P. Roche and Andy Wu

More than two years in the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are struggling with how to reimagine their workspaces for their strategic needs. Too often, leaders push the decision down the road when, in fact, taking decisive action now can pay off later. But how do you... View Details

Keywords: Workplace; Organization; Hybrid Organizations; Office Space; Growth; Remote Work; Strategy; Organizations; Growth and Development; Working Conditions

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Read Now

August 1998 (Revised October 1998)
Case

Disney's "The Lion King" (A): The $2 Billion Movie

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

In 1994, just 10 years after its filmed entertainment division lost $33 million, Disney's animated creation "The Lion King" became the second highest grossing film ever. In addition to drawing $740 million in worldwide box office sales, its merchandise sales exceeded... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Marketing Strategy; Expansion; Creativity; Film Entertainment; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Product Development; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Retail Industry

23 May 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Board Games: Timing of Independent Directors’ Dissent in China

Keywords: by Juan Ma & Tarun Khanna

Research Summary

Understanding Customers

In conventional business case studies, protagonists almost never have the option of stepping back to seek a new understanding of the customer. But to be effective in practice, managers need both the self-assurance and ability to initiate and pursue, with rigor and... View Details

April 2017 (Revised May 2017)
Case

GE Capital After the Crisis

By: John C. Coates, John D. Dionne and David S. Scharfstein

Keith Sherin, CEO of GE Capital, faced a decision on which hinged billions of dollars and the fate of one of America’s most storied companies. On his desk sat two secret analyses: Project Beacon, a proposal to spin off most of GE Capital to GE shareholders, and... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Institutions; Strategy

19 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 19

implications of our findings for the literature on absorptive capacity and open and distributed innovation. Download the paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802696 Do Market Leaders Lead in Business Process... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

27 Jun 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, June 27

they overcame huge obstacles to execute their strategies in industries as diverse as renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, eco-tourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The pioneering efforts to build certification schemes... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Jul 2008
Op-Ed

Why the U.S. Should Encourage FDI

Last year, foreign investors set new records for their acquisition activity in the United States. And 2008 began with nearly daily stories of American financial executives courting foreign direct investors, particularly sovereign wealth... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

2018
Working Paper

Detecting Anomalies: The Relevance and Power of Standard Asset Pricing Tests

By: Malcolm Baker, Patrick Luo and Ryan Taliaferro

The two standard approaches for identifying capital market anomalies are cross-sectional coefficient tests, in the spirit of Fama and MacBeth (1973), and time-series intercept tests, in the spirit of Jensen (1968). A new signal can pass the first test, which we label a... View Details

Keywords: Investment Management; Anomalies; Portfolio Construction; Transaction Costs; Investment; Management; Asset Pricing; Market Transactions; Cost