Publications

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15 Dec 2015
News

The Year in Ideas 2015

this to VCs, they thought we were crazy,” Sapone says. There was the increase in cost structure and concerns about scalability. “But these are people we’re sending to your home to take care of you: They are our product.” Providing steady... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna, Christine Lejeune, Dan Morrell, and April White

23 Dec 2019
Blog Post

Taking the Risk to Start a Company at Business School

“For me, attending HBS was about choosing a time to take a risk on myself. It sets you up to take a chance and start a company,” says Julie Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO Armored Things, HBS 2017. When Julie... View Details

22 Feb 2022
News

New Urban Order

Highway As cities reshape themselves and populations increase, demand for goods will rise. And if the pandemic taught us anything about supply View Details

October 1983 (Revised April 2006)
Background Note

A Perspective on Entrepreneurship

By: Howard H. Stevenson

Designed to highlight alternative concepts of good management and the need for entrepreneurship as a response to societal changes. It argues that entrepreneurship can be fostered or destroyed as a function of the administrative setting. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Management Style

January 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Mauboussin

By: Anat Keinan, Sandrine Crener and Audrey Azoulay

Mauboussin is a French jewelry brand founded in 1827 in Paris. In the 1920s, the company earned a huge notoriety for capturing the aesthetic and emotional dimension of the Art Deco movement in its design and gained a worldwide reputation for innovation and expertise in... View Details

Keywords: Hospitality, tourism

06 Dec 2019
Blog Post

Moving to the States with My Daughter to Pursue an MBA and Switch Careers

It was the summer of 2017, and after working at Mars in R&D for eight years, I started to think about the next step for my career. I enjoyed my role as a product innovation manager in the Consumer Packaged View Details

01 Sep 2006
What Do You Think?

Are We Ready for Self-Management?

authors maintain that the Costco model not only is more attractive for workers but also creates fewer social costs for such things as medical expenses. What would seem to be a "win-win" answer to the scarcity of good managers... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

16 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Transitions of Power Are Difficult. What Joe Biden and Other Incoming Leaders Need to Know.

“comvoc”), and leave their differentiated personal selves and external group memberships behind. All it took to motivate people, it was thought, was to offer financial incentives, View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

October 2009
Case

Noble Group

By: C. Fritz Foley, Michael Shih-ta Chen, Matthew Johnson and Linnea Meyer

What role does trade finance play in facilitating global supply chain management? Richard S. Elman, founder and CEO of Noble Group Ltd., a global commodities trading company based in Hong Kong, must raise capital to support the firm's working capital and investment... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Capital; Financing and Loans; International Finance; Globalized Firms and Management; Risk Management; Supply Chain Management; Hong Kong

December 2000
Case

Friona Industries, L.P.

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

As the food industry becomes more sophisticated, and as genomics and other factors provide for quality control from the producers to the consumers in the food chain, the beef industry has been one of the last commodity systems to organize the vertical systems to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Food; Management Systems; Supply and Industry; Performance Consistency; Quality; Partners and Partnerships; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

08 Jun 2018
News

My First Job: Selling Shoes, Surviving Black Monday, and Shaped by Chicken Lenses

mission. And as I was walking out of the door my dad looked up and said, son, when you finish firing my manager I expect you to replace him with your manager. And yours better... View Details

September 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Angie's List: Ratings Pioneer Turns 20

By: Robert J. Dolan and Ayelet Israeli

In 1995, before people “googled” or “yelped,” Angela Hicks (HBS, 2000) was establishing her Angie’s List as a pioneer in the accumulation and dissemination of consumer rating information. Hicks focused on the home repair and maintenance market and, as she put it,... View Details

May 2024
Teaching Note

The Meteoric Rise of Skims

By: Ayelet Israeli, Jill Avery and Leonard A. Schlesinger

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 524-023, "The Meteoric Rise of Skims." View Details

July 2008
Case

Aurora Capital Group - Douglas Dynamics

Aurora Capital, a U.S. Private Equity firm, contemplates whether to acquire Douglas Dynamics, the leading U.S. maker of snow plows. Does a business that is highly dependent on the weather, and is seasonal, make a good LBO candidate? This case provides a good... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Private Equity; Investment; Goods and Commodities; Value Creation

06 Jan 2016
What Do You Think?

Why Do Leaders Get Their Timing Wrong?

include openness and honesty. "Live them rigorously, and fire people who won’t, regardless of level, role or title.” Clearly, both dysfunctional strategies and cultures... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Auto; Fashion

November 2002 (Revised March 2010)
Case

The Newsprint Industry

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Nabil I. Al-Najjar and James Pyke

Describes the 1990s consolidation on the newsprint industry. Questions whether consolidation will ever deliver on its promise. Whereas some industry observers maintain that the effects of consolidation are already visible, others argue that further consolidation is... View Details

Keywords: Five Forces Framework; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Monopoly; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Consolidation; Pulp and Paper Industry