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Ray Kluender is an associate professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit and the Berol Corporation Fellow at Harvard Business School, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel... View Details

November 2006 (Revised March 2012)
Case

Clocky: The Runaway Alarm Clock

By: Elie Ofek and Eliot Sherman

Gauri Nanda is the creator of an innovative new product: an alarm clock named Clocky that, in addition to ringing, rolls around the room in order to force its owner to get out of bed. Beset by media attention and consumer interest but still at least a year away from... View Details

Keywords: Management; Product Positioning; Partners and Partnerships; Production; Marketing Strategy; Media; Entrepreneurship; Independent Innovation and Invention; Product Launch

01 Mar 2019
News

Required Reading: The Keys for Unlocking the Customer Value Chain

May 2023
Supplement

Sian Flowers: Fresher by Sea - Video Supplement

By: Willy C. Shih

The setting for this case is the Sian Flowers, a company headquartered in Kitengela, Kenya that exports roses to predominantly Europe. Because cut flowers have a limited shelf life and consumers want them to retain their appearance for as long as possible, Sian or its... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Supply Chains; Sustainability; Sustainable Agriculture; Sustainability Reporting; Carbon Emissions; Supply Chain Management; Quality; Ship Transportation; Cost Management; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa; Kenya; Netherlands; Europe

Das Narayandas is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His academic credentials include a Bachelor of Technology degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), a Post-Graduate... View Details

Keywords: marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry; marketing industry

May 1975 (Revised May 1982)
Case

Southwest Airlines (C)

Southwest Airlines, a small intrastate carrier, has just completed its first year of operations in June 1972 and management is debating what advertising and promotional strategy to adopt for the future. Southwest has successfully broken into a market dominated by two... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; United States

March 2024 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Doing Business in São Paulo, Brazil

By: Laura Alfaro, Hise O. Gibson, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Pedro Levindo

The case gives readers an overview of key factors of doing business in Brazil, including Brazil’s economic transformation since its colonial years until 2023, when leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in for his third term, after the most polarized... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Economy; Macroeconomics; Business History; International Relations; Political Elections; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; Brazil; Latin America; Sao Paulo

February 2023
Supplement

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (A) Courseware

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield

In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America

17 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

Can Autonomous Vehicles Drive with Common Sense?

machines have to make in the spur of the moment are at the heart of the discomfort consumers feel about autonomous cars, says De Freitas. It’s akin to the famous philosophical... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

11 May 2018
News

Online Ad Targeting Does Work—As Long As It's Not Creepy

09 Jan 2007
First Look

First Look: January 9, 2007

find that venture capitalists with the most industry experience increase their investments the most when public market signals become more favorable. Their reaction to an increase is greater than the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

October 2021 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Ant Group (A)

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Feng Zhu, Susie L. Ma and Kerry Herman

In 2004, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba created Alipay, an app to facilitate payments on its e-commerce sites. As Alibaba grew, so did Alipay, until Alipay spawned its own ecosystem of financial technology products and services under the name of Ant Group. By 2020,... View Details

Keywords: Payment Systems; Information Technology; Value Creation; Network Effects; Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Initial Public Offering; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; China

08 Oct 2020
HBS Seminar

Ginger Jin, University of Maryland

July 2015 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Horst Dassler, Adidas, and the Commercialization of Sport

By: Geoffrey Jones, Michael Norris and Sophi Kim

The case focuses on the career of Horst Dassler, the son of the founder of the German-based sports shoe manufacturer Adidas. The origins of the firm were in the interwar years, and it rose to public prominence after it provided spikes for Jesse Owens, the famous... View Details

March 2016 (Revised November 2021)
Teaching Note

T-Mobile in 2013: The Un-Carrier

By: John Beshears and Francesca Gino

By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data... View Details

Keywords: Wireless Industry; Telecommunications; Mobile; Service Contracts; Behavioral Economics; Add-on Fees; Shrouded Attributes; Contracts; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Infrastructure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; United States

May 2022
Supplement

Thinking Outside the Wine Box (C): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign

By: Tomomichi Amano, Elie Ofek, Mengjie Cheng and Amy Klopfenstein

This case reveals the events that took place after the conclusion of the cases “Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A-B): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign.” After selecting a creative direction for the Franz for Life 2.0 campaign, independent advertising agency... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Social Marketing; Marketing Communications; Product Positioning; Advertising; Communication Strategy; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Food and Beverage Industry; Advertising Industry; United States

December 2012 (Revised April 2025)
Case

AmTran Technology Ltd.

By: Willy Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Karen E. Robinson

As an original design manufacturer (ODM) of television sets and leading supplier to Vizio, a market leader in the U.S. for LCD flat panel TVs, AmTran Technology Ltd. uses what founder Alpha Wu describes as a "WE" model in which western companies perform sales,... View Details

2012
Article

Wider dem sauren Mund. Beiersdorfs U.S.-Geschaeft mit der Zahnpastamarke Pebeco

By: G. Jones and Christina Lubinski

This article examines the growth and ultimate demise of the toothpaste brand Pebeco, which was created by the German personal care company Beiersdorf in 1903. The brand was an enormous international success, becoming for a time the largest toothpaste brand in the... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development; Market Entry and Exit; Problems and Challenges; Marketing Strategy; Markets; Change; Customers; Social Psychology; Science; Brands and Branding; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Germany