Publications

October 2012 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Predilytics

By: Robert F. Higgins and Annelena Lobb

The management team at Predilytics, a healthcare analytics firm, must decide whether to accept a Series A venture capital financing deal. The company provided analytic services to healthcare plans, typically Medicare Advantage plans, in efforts to draw conclusions from... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Healthcare; Medicare; Health Care and Treatment; Mathematical Methods; Health Industry; New England; United States

04 Dec 2017
News

How a Fast-Growing Startup Built Its Sales Team for Long-Term Success

Jenny Wang

Jenny Shan Wang is a doctoral student in the Technology and Operations Management program at Harvard Business School (HBS). She is broadly interested in interpretable machine learning (ML), identity and inequality, and improving existing methods... View Details

January 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk (A)

By: Clayton M. Christensen

Hewlett-Packard decided that, to grow more rapidly, it needed to design a revolutionary disk drive product that would create an entirely new market or application for magnetic recording technology. The company followed most of the "rules" good managers follow in such... View Details

Keywords: Management; Information Infrastructure; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Computer Industry; United States

June 2022 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Strategic Innovation at the United Nations: A Network of Ecosystems

By: Frank Nagle, Elizabeth J. Altman and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2021, Gina Lucarelli, leader of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs, prepared for a meeting with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. The two planned to discuss the future of the Accelerator Labs, a network of social innovation labs located... View Details

Keywords: Change; Disruption; Transformation; Change Management; Education; Learning; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Range; Local Range; Geopolitical Units; Country; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology; Information Management; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Psychology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Society; Social Issues; Welfare; Strategy; Cooperation; Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; North and Central America

Many companies operate units that are dispersed across different types of markets, serving significantly diverging customer bases. Such dispersion is likely to compromise headquarters' ability to control local managers' behavior and satisfy the needs of different... View Details

November 2005 (Revised December 2016)
Case

Bally Total Fitness (A): The Rise, 1962–2004

By: John R. Wells, Elizabeth A. Raabe and Gabriel Ellsworth

From a single, modest club in 1962, Bally Total Fitness had grown to become—in management’s words—the “largest and only nationwide commercial operator of fitness centers” in the United States in 2004. Bally had faced its share of challenges, but the last couple of... View Details

Keywords: Bally Total Fitness; Fitness; Gyms; Health Clubs; Chain; Securities And Exchange Commission; Paul Toback; Weight Loss; Exercise; Contracts; Personal Training; Retention; Accounting; Accounting Audits; Accrual Accounting; Finance; Advertising; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Customers; Customer Satisfaction; Public Equity; Financing and Loans; Revenue; Revenue Recognition; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Health; Nutrition; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Management; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business Strategy; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Segmentation; Trends; Cost Management; Profit; Growth and Development; Leadership Style; Five Forces Framework; Private Ownership; Opportunities; Motivation and Incentives; Competitive Strategy; Health Industry; United States; Illinois; Chicago

Trevor Fetter is a Senior Lecturer and the Henry B. Arthur Fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has been on the faculty since 2019. He teaches two MBA required courses: Financial Reporting and Control and Leadership and Corporate Accountability. He has also... View Details

August 2021
Case

Orchadio's First Two Split Experiments

By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Marco Iansiti and David Lane

Orchadio, a direct-to-consumer grocery business, needs to conduct its first two A/B tests—one to evaluate the effectiveness and functioning of its newly redesigned website, and one to market-test four versions of a new banner for the website. To do so, it will rely on... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Measurement and Metrics; Customization and Personalization; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

May 2014
Case

Groupon, Inc.

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Blythe J. McGarvie and James Weber

Internet coupon site "Groupon" grew revenues rapidly and went public, but struggled to impress investors or operate profitably. Did it have a sustainable business model? Groupon sold coupons called Groupons which purchasers used to acquire goods or services at... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Corporate Governance; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Organizational Culture; Strategy; Web Services Industry; United States

Professor Bradley is the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. In addition to teaching Management and Strategy in the Owner President Management Program and leading an... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; financial services; health care; high technology; internet; pharmaceuticals; telecommunications

February 2021
Case

Enterprise Agility at Komerční Banka

By: Euvin Naidoo, Suraj Srinivasan and Sarah Gulick

In 2017, Jan Juchelka, the new CEO of Komerční Banka, identified the need for the bank to start an enterprise wide agile transformation. He started by working to create a sense of urgency to kick-start a process to enable the level of service delivery to customers he... View Details

Keywords: Agile; Agility; Transformation; Organizational Structure; Business Headquarters; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Systems; Banking Industry; Czech Republic

09 Mar 2023
HBS Seminar

Gerard Cachon, Wharton

June 2023
Exercise

Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise Instructions

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complimentary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides - consumers and those providing applications or services - need access to the same platform to interact. A... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategies; Technology Platform; Customer Acquisition; Network Effects; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Strategy

March 2005
Case

Henkel Iberica (A)

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

In 2002, Esteban Garriga, customer service director at Henkel Iberica, questions whether Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) would help manage retail promotions and limit their impact on the stock-outs and obsolete inventory. Describes the... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Forecasting and Prediction; Price; Distribution Channels; Strategic Planning; Commercialization; Valuation; Rail Industry; Germany; Spain

13 Apr 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Incorporating Price and Inventory Endogeneity in Firm-Level Sales Forecasting

Keywords: by Saravanan Kesavan, Vishal Gaur & Ananth Raman; Retail

2013
Working Paper

The Impact of Conformance and Experiential Quality on Healthcare Cost and Clinical Performance

By: Claire Senot, Aravind Chandrasekaran, Peter T. Ward and Anita L. Tucker

The quality of operational processes is an important driver of performance in hospitals. In particular, processes that reliably deliver both evidence-based and patient-centered care, which we call conformance and experiential quality, respectively, have been argued to... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Experiential Quality; Conformance Quality; Clinical Outcomes; Cost Efficiency; Quality; Service Operations; Health Care and Treatment; Performance; Outcome or Result; Health Industry

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July 2016
Case

Cataumet Boats, Inc.

By: W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis

Jaime Giancola, an MBA student, has recently completed an operations management course in which aggregate production planning (APP) was one of the topics. She believes that her family's business, Cataumet Boats, which her grandparents started and which her mother and... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Family Business; Production; Cost Management; Transportation; Customer Satisfaction