Publications

Leonard A. Schlesinger is Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School where he serves as Chair of the School’s Practice based faculty and faculty Chair of the MBA Field Global Immersion program. He has served as a member of the HBS faculty from 1978 to... View Details

January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Supplement

MoviePass: The 'Get Big Fast' Strategy

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams form related businesses... View Details

Web

Exploring Trade Links in the Interior - A Chronicle of the China Trade

earned, the firm improved its operations and branched out into ancillary services such as insurance and banking and even an ice company and rice-cleaning mill. In 1857 Augustine II returned home, leaving... View Details

17 Dec 2018
Blog Post

Thinking of Joining a Board? Christiana Smith Shi (MBA 1986) Shares Her Experience

San Francisco after graduation, and stayed there for 24 years, retiring as a senior partner in 2010. Along the way I had my son, Tim, who is about to graduate from HBS himself. After McKinsey, I joined Nike... View Details

November 2020
Case

Axis My India

By: Ananth Raman, Ann Winslow and Kairavi Dey

Pradeep Gupta founded Axis My India (AMI) as a printing and publishing company in 1998. In 2013, AMI expanded into consumer research and election forecasting. Although a relatively unknown entity, AMI predicted several election results accurately. Gupta describes AMI’s... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Operations; Management; Infrastructure; Logistics; Service Operations; Political Elections; Forecasting and Prediction; Asia; India

15 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How Does a Social Startup Decide to Commercialize? It May Depend on the Founder's Gender

the role of founders’ gender on the use of commercial activity.” Past research has looked at the decision of whether to go hybrid with a social venture. In one study, for example, Battilana and Lee discovered that having View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

08 May 2015
News

A new view of the cost of equity and capital requirements for banks

positive relationship between risk and return is strong between asset classes (say, stocks and bonds), it is weak within classes, such as the stock market. By analyzing a large sample of historical View Details

13 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Don't Turn Your Marketing Function Over to AI Just Yet

Imagine a future in which a smart marketing machine can predict the needs and habits of individual consumers and the dynamics of competitors across industries and markets. This device would collect data to answer strategic questions, guide managerial decisions, and... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

25 Apr 2018
Blog Post

Policy, Practice, Leadership & Impact: Making a Difference with the HBS/HKS Joint Degree

internal sources of revenue that can then finance their public goods and services – which means a strong local private sector that creates jobs and generates tax revenue. This interest in private sector... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

01 Dec 2017
News

2017 in Finance: Helping Consumers Improve Their Financial Life

their financial lives, high tech is not enough. In our business, we also have to be high touch. Consumers love the convenience of a digital platform, but there will always be circumstances in the financial View Details

Keywords: Omer Ismail (MBA 2007), chief commercial officer, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, the firm’s digital consumer financial services business; Finance

10 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Why a Federal Rule on CEO Pay Disclosure May Get You In Trouble With Customers

Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which conducts an annual analysis of available labor data. Presumably, the Dodd-Frank rule, once it's mandated, will make more data available for such analyses. The Security and Exchange... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

26 Mar 2025
News

Alumni Explore a Changing Hong Kong; Meet the Leader: HBS Club of Singapore

Conference Looks at Future of Hong Kong as a Global Leader The HBS Association of Hong Kong (HBSAHK) celebrated the club’s 45thanniversary in February, with its 2025 Signature Conference at Cloud 39, a rooftop ballroom at The Henderson skyscraper in central Hong Kong.... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

11 Mar 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Return Migration and Geography of Innovation in MNEs: A Natural Experiment of On-the-Job Learning of Knowledge Production by Local Workers Reporting to Return Migrants

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury; Technology

2008
Working Paper

The Internalization of Advertising Services: An Inter-Industry Analysis

By: Sharon Horsky, Steven C. Michael and Alvin J. Silk

The common perception appears to be that vertical integration of advertising services is more the exception than the rule in the U.S. advertising industry. This study investigates the extent of such outsourcing and examines inter-industry variation in the use of... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Cost; Analytics and Data Science; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Service Operations; Creativity; Perception; Vertical Integration; Information Technology; Advertising Industry; United States

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December 2020
Case

Urban Company

By: Krishna G. Palepu

Urban Company is an India-based market platform that helps customers book home services and at home beauty services. The company differentiated itself by investing heavily in building customer trust. Rather than merely positioning itself as a lead generating... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Emerging Markets; Strategy; Service Delivery; Trust; Service Industry; Service Industry; India

August 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Euro Disney: The First 100 Days

By: Gary W. Loveman and Leonard A. Schlesinger

The Walt Disney Co. theme parks historically have thrived on the basis of a formula stressing excellent customer service and a magnificent physical environment. The formula has proven successful in Japan, as well as the United States. With the controversial opening of... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Corporate Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Service Industry; Service Industry; Japan; France; United States