Publications

January 2008 (Revised November 2009)
Case

Linear Air: Creating the Air Taxi Industry

Linear Air is an air taxi start-up established to take advantage of the emergence of Very Light Jets, which incorporate new technology that cuts jet operating costs by about 40%. Air taxis could make use of the 5400 smaller regional airports throughout the US,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Product Launch; Industry Structures; Competition; Air Transportation Industry

Article

New Sales Realities

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Business leaders need to understand that it’s the fit of People, Process, Pricing, and Partners that drives sales effectiveness. As firms confront new buying processes, required sales competencies affect hiring, training, and development (People). Without a coherent... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Performance Effectiveness

Read Now

January 2023
Article

Social Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship

By: William R. Kerr and Martin Mandorff

We study the relationship between ethnicity, occupational choice, and entrepreneurship. Immigrant groups in the United States cluster in specific business sectors. For example, Koreans are 34 times more concentrated in self-employment for dry cleaning than other... View Details

Keywords: Self-employed; Occupation; Entrepreneurship; Ethnicity; Immigration; Networks

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The prevalence of online platforms opens new doors to traditional businesses for customer reach and revenue growth. This research investigates platform competition in a setting where prices are determined by negotiations between platforms and businesses. We compile a... View Details

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

firms in the supply chain to their mutual advantage. Finally, while it might be more difficult to achieve, a very similar relationship can evolve between direct competitors and between firms and their government regulators. It may come as... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

Research Summary

Growing as a Purposeful Leader

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger

Leaders today have to lead in the context of extraordinary changes and challenges. The demands of today's stakeholders have risen significantly, and what is expected of senior leaders is quickly evolving in terms of their mission (more than profit),... View Details

March 2016 (Revised May 2021)
Supplement

IBM and the Reinvention of High School (C): Toward P-TECH's Rapid National Expansion

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Kelsi Stine-Rowe

In early 2016, Stanley Litow, IBM's Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of the IBM International Foundation, made his travel arrangements for still another flight from New York to discuss possibilities for application of a new... View Details

Keywords: IBM; P-TECH; Stanley Litow: Robin Willner; Cuomo; Scaling; Innovation; New York State; New York City; Business Model; Innovation Strategy; Innovation Leadership; Education; Business and Community Relations; Change; Growth and Development; Technology Industry; New York (state, US); New York (city, NY)

October 2022
Supplement

Single Earth: Science White Paper Supplement

By: Rembrand Koning and Emer Moloney

Science White Paper prepared by Single.Earth to give an overview of the models and solutions it has developed. View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Natural Resources; Pollution; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Markets; Market Timing; Strategy; Green Technology Industry; Estonia

11 Dec 2007
First Look

First Look: December 11, 2007

stock prices had been reached. Despite Fisher's poor prediction on that occasion, he played a neglected, but significant role in the growth of the forecasting industry and in the rise of a class of early business analysts. An... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Beauty Entrepreneur Madam Walker

Koehn discovered, Walker had lived an entrepreneurial life that was dramatic and deeply complex on many levels. "I think much of Walker's business model and her animating vision is a product of the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Beauty & Cosmetics

August 2017
Case

CareMore Health System

By: Robert S. Huckman and Brian W. Powers

CareMore Health System—a physician-founded care delivery system and health plan—had developed and refined an innovative care model for at-risk seniors enrolled in Medicare managed care (i.e., Medicare Advantage) plans. CareMore's President, Sachin Jain, and his... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Delivery; Health Insurance; Medicare; Medicaid; Managed Care; Extensivist; Social Determinants Of Health; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Industry; United States

2009
Case

What People Want (and How to Predict It)

By: Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris

Historically, neither the creators nor the distributors of cultural products such as books or movies have used analytics -- data, statistics, predictive modeling -- to determine the likely success of their offerings. Instead, companies relied on the brilliance of... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Creativity; Customer Satisfaction; Forecasting and Prediction; Markets; Business Model; Publishing Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

24 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Activity-Based Costing

from making unnecessary new investments in capacity. For example, the vice president of operations at Lewis-Goetz, a hose and belt fabricator based in Pittsburgh, saw from his time-driven ABC model that one of his plants was operating at... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & Steven R. Anderson

16 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

Are You a Strategist?

the beginning of a strategy. "It gives you the right to play, and puts you in the game," the book states. But at the root it's only an idea. Strategists also must lead the charge in creating organizations that can deliver on their intentions. That means building View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

December 2000
Background Note

Online Market Makers

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Chris Hackett

Describes the business model for online market makers, firms that use the Internet to organize a marketplace, providing participants with a virtual "place" to trade, rules to govern their exchanges, and infrastructure to support trading. First it proposes a definition... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Web Services Industry

Profile

Henry McCance

Greylock recommended Timothy Armour (MBA 1975) to McCance as a potential consultant. Armour, who had some 20 years’ experience in development and operations at nonprofits, including Harvard Business School, met with McCance over dinner.... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital / Private Equity; Financial Services; Health Care

April 2000 (Revised April 2004)
Case

TixToGo: Financing a Silicon Valley Start-up

Describes TixToGo, a Silicon Valley start-up company that offers online solutions to individuals and organizations that want to offer activities and/or collect registration fees for events over the Internet. A serial entrepreneur and his partner started the company in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; San Francisco

Article

Thinking About Technology: Applying a Cognitive Lens to Technical Change

We apply a cognitive lens to understanding technology trajectories across the life cycle by developing a co-evolutionary model of technological frames and technology. Applying that model to each stage of the technology life cycle, we identify conditions under which a... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Transformation; Outcome or Result; Economics; Cognition and Thinking; Business Model; Forecasting and Prediction