Publications

August 2008
Supplement

Philipp Justus at eBay Germany (C)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker

This case traces the development of eBay Germany, eBay Inc., and the career of eBay Germany's first country manager, Philipp Justus. The case covers from 2000 through the fall of 2007. This case details how eBay Germany, once a small start-up, became one of eBay's most... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Leadership; Auctions; Organizational Structure; Personal Development and Career; Internet; Germany

Trevor Fetter is a Senior Lecturer on the faculty of Harvard Business School. He teaches two MBA required courses: Leadership and Corporate Accountability, and Financial Reporting and Control and a Short Intensive Program for MBA students called The Life and Role of... View Details

October 1996 (Revised January 1997)
Case

Mt. Auburn Hospital

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Jaan Elias

In December of 1993, two of Boston's largest and best known hospitals, Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's, announced that they were setting aside their historic rivalry to form an alliance and build a regional health network. The announcement set off a wave... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Negotiation Offer; Alliances; Networks; Social Enterprise; Horizontal Integration; Health Industry; Boston

January 2016
Case

Sentient Jet: The Uber of Private Jets

By: Anat Keinan and Sandrine Crener

Founded in 1999 in the Boston area, Sentient Jet had become a leading private aviation company in the United States. Its success was built on the introduction of a groundbreaking membership program that offered business travelers the flexibility and convenience of... View Details

October 2016 (Revised February 2019)
Case

PTC: A Transformation to IoT

By: Rajiv Lal and Sarah McAra

In the 2010s, PTC, a leading provider of software for discrete manufacturers, faced maturing markets and changing customer needs as smart, connected products took hold—the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT). PTC saw a first mover advantage in entering the IoT space... View Details

Keywords: Internet Of Things; IoT; Smart; Connected Products; Business Organization; Transformation; Customer Relationship Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Marketing; Product Development; Service Operations; Strategy; Competition; Technology Industry

Henry McGee joined the HBS faculty in 2013 after retiring as President of HBO Home Entertainment, the digital and DVD program distribution division of Home Box Office, the pioneering premium television company. A member of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit,... View Details

Keywords: television; motion pictures; media; e-commerce industry; entertainment; broadcasting; distribution; health care; journalism; wholesale; arts; nonprofit industry

October 2021
Case

Yildiz Holding's Corporate Strategy: Managing Diversification for Growth

By: Juan Alcácer and Esel Çekin

The case opens in May 2018 with Nurtaç Ziyal Afridi, chief strategy and growth officer of Yıldız Holding, a Turkish conglomerate, reflecting on the group’s diversification journey. In ten years, the group had achieved a remarkable growth through diversification: seven... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Diversification; Growth Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Restructuring; Food and Beverage Industry; North America; United Kingdom; Turkey; Asia

August 2020 (Revised November 2024)
Case

NextView Ventures

By: Jo Tango and Nori Gerardo Lietz

David Beisel, Rob Go, and Lee Hower are non-partners at different-and-established venture capital (VC) firms. They decide to leave their positions to start a new seed-stage VC firm. The case covers the genesis of the firm, the formulation of its strategy and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Strategy

April 2019
Case

Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma

By: Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and George Gonzalez

In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online purchases through four interest-free... View Details

May 2010 (Revised June 2012)
Case

From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group

By: Willy Shih and Nancy Hua Dai

As Zuo Zongshen drove the transformation of the Zongshen Industrial Group from an early imitator in the motorcycle business to a company that increasingly focused on innovation as a way to get out of the hyper-competitive commodity business, he continually faced new... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Learning; Investment; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; China

Malcolm Salter has been a member of the Harvard Business School faculty since 1967. His teaching and research focus on issues of corporate strategy, organization, and governance.

In addition to teaching at HBS, he has held faculty positions at the Harvard... View Details

Keywords: arts; automobiles; energy; investment banking industry; retailing; venture capital industry

November 2021
Case

LKQ-Stahlgruber

By: Guhan Subramanian and Caeden Brynie

Through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, LKQ Corp. became the leading aftermarket auto parts distributor in the U.S. by the early 2000s. Beginning in 2012, the company began similarly consolidating the European marketplace. However, by 2017, the... View Details

Keywords: Consolidation; Acquisition; Decision Making; Strategy; Opportunities; Europe; Germany

Research Summary

Managing the Manufacturer-Retailer Interface

By: Janice H. Hammond

Janice H. Hammond is studying the impact of coordination on the performance of manufacturing and retail channels. The focus of her research is on the supply "channel", the set of firms that undertakes the chain of activities that begins with acquisition of raw... View Details

Web

Faculty & Research

Growth through acquisition is always an option, but companies often quickly find that the costs outweigh the benefits. According to the authors, the only reliable path to maintaining market leadership is transformational innovation: major... View Details

Web

Strategy - Doctoral

International business Juan Alcacer David J. Collis William R. Kerr Machine learning Himabindu Lakkaraju Michael Lingzhi Li Edward McFowland III Seth Neel Elisabeth C. Paulson Isamar Troncoso Jeremy Yang Shunyuan Zhang Mergers & View Details

August 2017 (Revised August 2018)
Case

Busbud: Building a Data Company

By: Srikant M. Datar, Alistair Croll and Caitlin N. Bowler

The case features the work of LP Maurice (HBS '08) as he decides to take on the fragmented bus travel industry and launch an online business that aggregates and shares bus schedules for routes around the world. His first challenge: finding that the data he needs is... View Details

Keywords: Data Science; Analytics and Data Science; Business Startups; Knowledge Acquisition; Customers; Measurement and Metrics; Transportation Industry

November 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Background Note

A Brief Note on Deferred Taxes: An Analysis Perspective

Provides an overview of accounting for deferred taxes. The primary objective is to provide external users with a basic understanding of deferred taxes. A simple illustrative example is provided, which is followed by a discussion of several important issues likely to be... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Statements; Taxation; Legal Liability; Valuation

September 2017
Supplement

Actera Group: Investing in Mars Cinema Group (B)

By: Victoria Ivashina and Eren Kuzucu

In summer of 2010, Murat Çavuşoğlu (HBS MBA 1994) led private equity firm Actera Group’s investment in Mars Cinema Group (Mars), the leading movie exhibitor in Turkey. Immediately after acquiring Mars and merging it with the second larger player in the market, AFM,... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Value Creation; Transformation; Valuation; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Turkey

May 2007
Article

Corporate Financing Decisions When Investors Take the Path of Least Resistance

By: Malcolm Baker, Joshua Coval and Jeremy Stein

We explore the consequences for corporate financial policy that arise when investors exhibit inertial behavior. One implication of investor inertia is that, all else equal, a firm pursuing a strategy of equity-financed growth will prefer a stock-for-stock merger to... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Investment; Policy; Corporate Finance