Publications

September–October 2022
Article

Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price

By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant

Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers. In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details

Register to Read

Spring 2013
Article

The Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds

By: Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner and Antoinette Schoar

This paper examines the direct private equity investment strategies across sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and their relationship to the funds' organizational structures. SWFs seem to engage in a form of trend chasing, since they are more likely to invest at home when... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Strategy; Investment Funds

June 2022
Teaching Note

Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

By: Elie Ofek

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-043. View Details

Web

Adding a Social Dimension to Strategy - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

HBS ISC Creating Shared Value CSV Creating Shared Value CSV Explained Emerging Topics CSV in Practice Published CSV Cases CSV Explained CSV Explained The Three Levels of CSV Adding a Social Dimension to Strategy Redefining Capitalism The... View Details

Web

Strategy - Faculty & Research

Strategy Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students June 2025 Article Outcome and Process Frames: Strategic Renewal and Capability Reprioritization at the Federal Bureau of Investigation By: Ryan... View Details

March 1976 (Revised November 1993)
Background Note

Diversification, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, and the Cost of Equity Capital

Describes in nonmathematical terms the nature of capital asset pricing model and possible use in estimating a company's cost of equity capital. View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Cost of Capital; Asset Pricing

October 2013
Article

The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care

By: Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee

In health care, the days of business as usual are over. Around the world, every health care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality, despite the hard work of well-intentioned, well-trained clinicians. Health care leaders and policy makers have tried... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Value; Customer Focus and Relationships; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

spring 1987
Article

Second-Sourcing and the Experience Curve: Price Competition in Defense Procurement

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

We examine a dynamic model of price competition in defense procurement that incorporates the experience curve, asymmetric cost information, and the availability of a higher cost alternative system. We model acquisition as a two-stage process in which initial production... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Government and Politics; Price; Competition; Mathematical Methods

Research Summary

Recent Strategies in the U.S. Grocery Industry

By: Rajiv Lal

Rajiv Lal's work comparing the benefits of EDLP and Hi-Lo strategies in the grocery industry indicates that while EDLP grocery retailers may not be able to benefit from traditional costs savings associated with this strategy, these retailers still benefit from the use... View Details

20 Jul 2023
News

How to Fight Back Against Dynamic Pricing

June 2022
Supplement

Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

By: Elie Ofek

October 2005 (Revised June 2007)
Case

Apollo Hospitals--First-World Health Care at Emerging-Market Prices

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Tarun Khanna and Carin-Isabel Knoop

The Apollo Hospitals Group, one of Asia's premier health care organizations, had come to rival the best health care organizations on the globe. Apollo offered advanced medical procedures, such as cardiac surgery using the beating heart technique, at very high levels of... View Details

Keywords: Vertical Integration; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Care and Treatment; Global Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Health Industry; Thailand; United States; India

11 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

Mixing Open Source and Proprietary Software Strategies

different scenarios between two competitive, for-profit firms. Can you talk about those findings? A: The method we use is a two-period game where in the first period (the strategy period) business models are chosen, and in the second... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Web Services

01 Jun 2012
News

How a Short-Term Strategy Can Backfire

2025
Working Paper

How Do Households Suppress the Price of Tail Risk?

By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Gordon Liao and Boris Vallée

This paper investigates the effects of the issuance of retail products with non-linear payoffs on option prices. For a given underlying asset, when the outstanding volume of products embedding a short-put position increases, implied volatility at the corresponding... View Details

Keywords: Security Design; Dividend; Options; Structured Products; Market Segmentation; Financial Instruments; Design; Volatility; Markets; Segmentation

Read Now

August 2018 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Shindigz

By: Frank Cespedes

Shindigz provides party and celebratory items for various occasions and events through its branded online channel, through third-party retail and wholesale channels, and external online marketplaces. The case focuses on pricing challenges facing a venture with an... View Details

Keywords: Ecommerce; Pricing; Price; Strategy; Decision Making; Brands and Branding; Distribution Channels; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry

November 2002 (Revised November 2005)
Case

MontGras: Export Strategy for a Chilean Winery

By: David J. Arnold, Howard H. Stevenson and Alexandra de Royere

MontGras, a medium-sized Chilean winery, has to formulate an export strategy. It has to decide whether to emphasize the U.S. or U.K. markets, which also offer different positioning and pricing proposals. It has twice failed to penetrate the U.S. market because... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Cost Management; Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business Strategy; Valuation

2011
Working Paper

The Impact of Horizontal Mergers and Acquisitions in Price Competition Models

The question of what impact mergers and acquisitions have on key equilibrium performance measures is fundamental to our understanding of competitive dynamics in an oligopolistic industry. We address these questions in the context of price competition models with... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost; Price; Profit; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Performance Efficiency; Mathematical Methods; Competition