Publications

September 2019
Supplement

Keroche (B): Considering Entry into the Kenyan Beer Market

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding

This case discusses the situation of the Kenyan alcoholic drinks producer Keroche in July 2004, when co-founder Tabitha Karanja was debating whether to enter the Kenyan beer market. Doing so would mean direct competition with the multinational EABL in an industry and... View Details

Keywords: Keroche; Alcohol; Alcoholic Drinks; Alcoholic Beverages; Beverages; Drinks; Wine Industry; Wine; Fortified Wine; Viena; Beer; Beer Market; Manufacturing; Production Capacity; Capacity; Growth; Regulated; Unregulated; Informal; Informal Market; Regulation; Illicit; Illegal; Substandard; Dangerous; Shutdown; Factory; Safe; Affordable; Low-income Consumers; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Production; Investment; Safety; Quality; Small Business; Family Business; Crime and Corruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Income; Demographics; Geographic Scope; Geographic Location; Goods and Commodities; Government Legislation; Growth and Development; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Lawfulness; Goals and Objectives; Consumer Behavior; Market Entry and Exit; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Competition; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Kenya; Nairobi; Africa

February 2025
Case

Hyperscaling Dreams: Ualá’s Path from Startup to Fintech Champion

By: Juan Alcacer and Manuel Franck

Ualá, founded by Pierpaolo Barbieri in 2017, is a fast-growing fintech company on a mission to revolutionize financial services in Latin America. Starting with a 14-person team and a prepaid card linked to a digital app, Ualá rapidly expanded into a comprehensive... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Leadership; Venture Capital; Talent and Talent Management; Strategy; Credit; Banking Industry; Argentina; Mexico; Colombia; Latin America

August 2018 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Tailor Brands: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Branding

By: Jill Avery

Using proprietary artificial intelligence technology, startup Tailor Brands set out to democratize branding by allowing small businesses to create their brand identities by automatically generating logos in just minutes at minimal cost with no branding or design skills... View Details

05 Dec 2023
Cold Call Podcast

What Founders Get Wrong about Sales and Marketing

Keywords: Re: Mark N. Roberge

July 2023
Case

DayTwo: Going to Market with Gut Microbiome (Abridged)

By: Ayelet Israeli

DayTwo is a young Israeli startup that applies research on the gut microbiome and machine learning algorithms to deliver personalized nutritional recommendations to its users in order to minimize blood sugar spikes after meals. After a first year of trial rollout in... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Nutrition; Market Entry and Exit; Product Marketing; Distribution Channels

September 1997 (Revised October 2001)
Case

efficient market services: August 1993 (A)

By: Paul A. Gompers and Jeffrey A. Farrell

Penny Baron, vice president of efficient market services, must decide how to finance rapid expansion for a young market research company. Venture leasing is a possibility and terms are explored. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Growth Management; Research; Marketing; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Management Teams; Leasing; Service Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

16 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Researchers Contribute Globalization of Markets Papers

Twenty years has provided time to judge the success or failure of Theodore Levitt's predictions of a global economy populated by standardized products and marketing approaches. For the colloquium, a number of Harvard Business School and... View Details

Keywords: by Working Knowledge editors

03 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

Why a Failed Startup Might Be Good for Your Career After All

charismatic but controversial cofounder of WeWork, who quit as CEO in 2019 after a bungled initial public offering amid questions about his business practices. “The market values the experience they have and rewards them in terms of high... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
Teaching Note

Spotify's Audio-First Strategy: Leading the Podcasting Market

By: Hong Luo and Carol Lin

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-439. Within 15 years, CEO Daniel Ek had led Spotify from an ambitious startup to a multi-billion dollar company that had transformed the music industry. As part of Spotify’s next phase of growth, the platform would invest heavily in... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Divisions; Customer Relationship Management; Revenue; Music Industry

30 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Repugnant Markets and How They Get That Way

should be heavily regulated, is the market for indentured servants. A market like that with asymmetric information—in which one person knows a whole lot more about potential View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

18 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

Identify Emerging Market Opportunities

the market contexts. For instance, in Chile, a military coup in the early 1970s led to the establishment of a right-wing government, and that government's liberal economic policies led to a vibrant capital View Details

Keywords: by Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu & Jayant Sinha

2024
Working Paper

Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups

By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein

How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth? To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Human Capital; Valuation; Corporate Strategy

SSRN

Read Now

Forthcoming
Book

The Experimentation Machine: Finding Product–Market Fit in the Age of AI

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang

Leverage AI to be a 10x Founder

Today’s most successful founders know that the startups that learn the fastest will win. In The Experimentation Machine, I reveal how AI is transforming the way startups find product-market fit and scale.... View Details

Keywords: AI; Founder; Startup; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Market Entry and Exit

2023
Working Paper

The Market for CEOs: Evidence from Private Equity

By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

Most research on the CEO labor market studies public company CEOs while largely ignoring CEOs in private equity (PE) funded companies. We fill this gap by studying the market for CEOs among U.S. companies purchased by PE firms in large leveraged buyout transactions.... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Jobs and Positions; Ownership; Recruitment

March 2022
Case

DealShare: Social E-Commerce for the Indian Mass Market

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Malini Sen

Launched in September 2018, e-retail startup DealShare has created a tech-enabled model for the Indian mass market that allows customers to buy together, save money on good quality goods, and at the same time have fun. It targets customers who are still getting used to... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Disruption; Trends; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Value; Cost vs Benefits; Value Creation; Internet and the Web; India

2021
Working Paper

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Negotiation; Corporate Disclosure; Compensation and Benefits; Gender

June 2021
Article

Making Marketplaces Safe: Dominant Individual Rationality and Applications to Market Design

By: Benjamin N. Roth and Ran I. Shorrer

Often market designers cannot force agents to join a marketplace rather than using pre-existing institutions. We propose a new desideratum for marketplace design that guarantees the safety of participation: Dominant Individual Rationality (DIR). A marketplace is DIR if... View Details

Keywords: Dominant Individual Rationality; Market Design; Safety