Publications

January 2014 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Henry Schein: Doing Well by Doing Good?

By: Rebecca Henderson, Raffaella Sadun, Aldo Sesia and Russell Eisenstat

Henry Schein Inc., a distributor of supplies to dentist, physician, and veterinary practices, had sales approaching $9 billion and employed nearly 16,000 people. The company had experienced impressive growth under the leadership of Stanley Bergman and his executive... View Details

July 2013
Case

Jackson Automotive Systems

By: William E. Fruhan and Wei Wang

Jackson Automotive Systems produces automotive parts for advanced heating and air conditioning systems, engine cooling systems, fuel injection and transfer systems, and various other engine parts and it supplies them to the automotive industry primarily in Michigan.... View Details

Keywords: Production; Financial Crisis; Corporate Finance; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Michigan

October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

To SFO or Not To SFO: The Tolman Family Selects a Family Office Strategy

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Victoria Alvarez-Arango, Grace Headinger, Mili Sanwalka and Anna Yuan

Peter Tolman, a first-generation investment professional, debated which family office strategy to adopt for managing his family’s assets. As the sole steward of his family’s wealth, he sought to conserve and grow his family’s wealth for him, his wife, and his two very... View Details

Keywords: Family Office; Investment Strategy; U.S.; Canada; Family Business; Financial Strategy; Investment; Strategy; Diversification; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States; Canada

March 2007 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Rovna Dan: The Flat Tax in Slovakia

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella, Ane Damgaard Jensen and Vincent Marie Dessain

Explores the tax policy choices made by Slovakia and the impact of reforms. Set in 2006, looks at the decision facing new Prime Minister Robert Fico as he faces the public's "reform fatigue." Traces the development of tax and fiscal policies since Slovakia's... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Taxation; Labor; Welfare; Slovakia

September 1996 (Revised December 1997)
Case

Cytec Industries' Spin-Off (A): Sink or Swim?

In the wake of market pressure to restructure, American Cyanamid spun off its poorly performing Chemicals Unit into a new publicly traded corporation, Cytec Industries. In addition to weak operations, Cytec inherited the bulk of Cyanamid's environmental and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Practices and Processes; Restructuring; Performance Improvement; Chemical Industry; United States

15 Dec 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation

Keywords: by Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning, and Ramana Nanda

2019
Working Paper

Golden Opportunity? Voluntary Sustainability Standards for Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

By: Kristin Sippl

While much is known about voluntary sustainability standards' contributions to certain issues in certain sectors, less is known about their contributions to the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper helps balance the... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability Standards; Gold; Certification; Eco-labeling; International Law; Extractive Industries; Fair Trade; United Nations; Sustainable Development; Environmental Sustainability; Standards; Adoption; Governance; Global Range; Luxury; Mining Industry

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Stefan Thomke (sthomke@hbs.edu), an authority on the management of innovation, is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has worked with firms on product, process, and... View Details

July 2021
Article

Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market

By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu

Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own... View Details

Keywords: Platform Competition; Multi-homing; Information Transparency; Daily Deals; Groupon; LivingSocial; Digital Platforms; Information; Competition

Find at Harvard

28 Mar 2016
Research & Ideas

What's a Boss Worth?

quite a lot. “If you have a better boss on a team, you get more out of each individual worker” Academics and practitioners alike are interested in how to construct the best teams to get the most productivity out of people working... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Service

August 1994 (Revised May 2001)
Case

ITT Automotive: Global Manufacturing Strategy (1994)

By: Gary P. Pisano and Sharon L. Rossi

ITT Automotive is in the process of developing a new-generation antilock brake system (ABS), designated the MK-20. The case focuses on the level of automation to be used in the production of this new system, and whether all plants should use the same process... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Innovation Strategy; Production; Product Development; Globalized Firms and Management; Performance Productivity; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Belgium; Germany; United States

2009
Chapter

Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues

By: Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda

Mexico is often cited as one of the world's most entrepreneurial countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has started or is in the process of starting a business venture. Yet Mexico does not seem to be very friendly to entrepreneurs, as confirmed by... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Policy; Competition; Mexico

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22 Feb 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Consumer Demand for Prize-Linked Savings: A Preliminary Analysis

Keywords: by Peter Tufano, Nick Maynard & Jan-Emmanuel De Neve; Financial Services

April 1993 (Revised July 1994)
Case

MathSoft, Inc. (A)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

MathSoft's VP of sales has doubled the size of the company's direct field sales force to support the launch of a new, high-end workstation software product priced at almost $9,000. However, sales of the new product are far below plan. At the same time, the VP of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Communication Strategy; Salesforce Management; Marketing Channels; Advertising; Product Launch; Industrial Products Industry; Industrial Products Industry; United States

2023
Working Paper

LALIGA—From a Soccer Competition Organizer to a Global Player in the Sports and Entertainment Industry

By: Stephen A. Greyser, Kenneth Cortsen and Juan Fuentes Fernández

LALIGA, the first- and second-tier professional soccer league (known as “football” outside of the U.S. and Canada) in Spain, enters its 100th soccer season later this decade. The most popular game in the world (Giulianotti, 2012) has gone through many changes since... View Details

Keywords: Soccer; ＂Sports Organizations,; Business History; Strategy; Brands and Branding; Technology Adoption; Sports Industry

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September 2016 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Pebble: Wearables Pioneer

By: David Yoffie and Allison Ciechanover

In the summer of 2016, wearables “wunderkind” and Pebble founder and CEO, Eric Migicovsky, was pleased with the young startup’s success in the five years since its founding. The Silicon Valley–based company had recently shipped its two millionth smartwatch; held the... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Product; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Business Startups; Technology Industry; United States; California