Publications

September 2024
Case

Xendit: Hiring for Growth

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Steve Castano, Quoc Anh Nguyen and Claire Wu

In 2019, Xendit, a growth-stage Southeast Asia (SEA) fintech venture based in Jakarta, was looking to hire a Head of Sales and Head of Product to lead its next phase of growth. Founded by Moses Lo and Tessa Wijaya, Xendit provided payment infrastructure, modeling... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Financing and Loans; Entrepreneurship; Jobs and Positions; Sales; Product; Growth and Development; Selection and Staffing; Organizational Culture; Expansion; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Southeast Asia; Indonesia; Philippines

September 2018
Case

ProdEng: Services for Oil & Gas Extraction

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal

ProdEng is a venture created as part of a PE fund and provides oil field services in Argentina. In 2016, an industry-wide unforeseen oil and gas demand slump drove ProdEng’s average service rates down by more than 37%, with EBITDA margins falling from 50% to 24% in the... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Marketing; Price; Strategy; Latin America; Argentina

March 2008 (Revised April 2008)
Case

Corning: 156 Years of Innovation

By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington

The executive team at Corning has committed to double the rate of new business creation per decade, while at the same time growing the company's current businesses, including glass substrates for LCD displays. Their strategy, built on more than 150 years of successful... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Leadership; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Industrial Products Industry

July 2009 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Dharavi: Developing Asia's Largest Slum (A)

By: Lakshmi Iyer, John D. Macomber and Namrata Arora

Maharashtra state is accepting bids to redevelop Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia. A real estate developer assesses the risks and tenders a bid. The bid conditions include providing new free housing to tens of thousands of slum dwellers, which is anticipated to be... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Development Economics; Housing; Urban Development; Emerging Markets; Social Issues; Business and Government Relations; Real Estate Industry; Mumbai

June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the... View Details

09 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Clayton Christensen’s “How Will You Measure Your Life?”

disruptive attackers posed, I would say, "Okay. Now the problem is that your sales force is not going to be able to sell these disruptive products. They need to be sold to different customers, for different purposes. You need to... View Details

Controlling Versus Enabling

Many firms can choose between an employment mode, in which the firm controls service provision by employing professionals, sales representatives or other types of agents, and an agency (or platform) mode, in which these agents take control... View Details

April 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Mercadona

This case presents the predicament of a company trying to do right by its customers and its employees as the economic crisis of 2008 hits home. Fifteen years earlier, this Spanish supermarket chain had adopted its own version of total quality management, called the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Service Operations; Business Processes; Retail Industry; Spain

14 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing

characteristics of an ideal milkshake (thick, thin, chunky, smooth, fruity, chocolaty, etc.). The would-be customers answered as honestly as they could, and the company responded to the feedback. But alas, milkshake sales did not improve.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Service; Consumer Products; Food & Beverage

21 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Employee Negativity Is Like Wildfire. Manage It Before It Spreads.

down the road. In a workplace setting, a leader might explain a dip in sales as a function of the natural ebb and flow of the market to ease people’s worries. In the example of interpersonal aggression in the workplace, reconstruing might... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

04 Oct 2019
HBS Seminar

Annabelle Fowler (Harvard University), Harvard University

January 2017 (Revised August 2019)
Supplement

X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Is Amazon a Friend or Foe? (B)

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella

Three years after launching his brick-and-mortar store, X Fire Paintball and Airsoft, Steve Herbert Sr. and his sons began selling products on Amazon.com’s third-party Marketplace and online sales expanded rapidly. Over time, X Fire noticed that products of which it... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Competition; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Small Business; Retail Industry; Canada

March 2015
Case

Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp: Redefining Success in the U.S. (A)

By: Gautam Mukunda, Thomas DeLong and Aldo Sesia

Over the course of a tumultuous weekend in April 2010, André Wyss was put in charge of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation (NPC), the U.S. sales and marketing subsidiary of Novartis Pharma AG. He was brought in at a critical point in the organization's evolution with... View Details

Keywords: LEAD; Talent Management; Leadership And Change Management; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Restructuring; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

February 2013 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Investindustrial Exits Ducati

By: Francois Brochet and Karol Misztal

In early 2012, Investindustrial, a European private equity group, publicly announced their intention to sell their 76.7% stake in Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A., an iconic Italian producer of sport performance motorcycles. The decision followed a six-year turnaround... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Private Equity; Valuation; Investment Return; Brands and Branding; Financial Services Industry; Motorcycle Industry; Hong Kong; Italy

November 2010
Case

Morgan Asset Management

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Sarah Abbott

It is 2010 and Guillermo Araoz, the equity research director at Morgan Asset Management (MAM), is considering his research budget for the year. Due to recent declines in the equity markets and MAM's sale of its mutual funds business, MAM has seen a decline in its... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Asset Management; Financial Strategy; Investment; Resource Allocation; Research and Development; Financial Services Industry

2024
Working Paper

Deregulation, Market Power, and Prices: Evidence from the Electricity Sector

By: Alexander MacKay and Ignacia Mercadal

We construct a novel dataset on electricity generation, wholesale transactions, and retail sales to assess the shift from cost-of-service regulation to deregulated, market-based prices in the context of the U.S. electricity sector. Consistent with earlier studies, we... View Details

Keywords: Deregulation; Market Power; Markups; Prices; Electricity; Energy; Markets; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Price; Utilities Industry

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September 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

d.light

By: Michael Chu, Krishna G. Palepu and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha

Kenyan off-grid-solar pioneer d.light can power entire homes in rural Africa but must now decide how to fund the growth of its asset-heavy business model. Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded d.light in 2006 to transform lives through solar solutions enabling access to... View Details

Keywords: Alternative Energy; Business Model; Capital; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Financial Strategy; Renewable Energy; Strategy; Social Entrepreneurship; Energy Industry; Africa; Kenya; India