Publications

December 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Impossible Foods

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown started the company out of concern over livestock production’s impact on climate change. Impossible’s mission is to end consumption of animals by 2035, and its strategy is to develop and market plant-based foods so similar to... View Details

21 Sep 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Public Procurement and the Private Supply of Green Buildings

Keywords: by Timothy Simcoe & Michael W. Toffel

March 2020
Case

Hotstar

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey

Hotstar was an online video streaming platform owned by Star India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. Since its launch in 2015, the platform had grown to offer over 100,000 hours of TV content, movies in nine Indian languages... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Television Entertainment; Disruption; Business Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; India; Mumbai

2022
White Paper

The Emerging Degree Reset: How the Shift to Skills-Based Hiring Holds the Keys to Growing the U.S. Workforce at a Time of Talent Shortage

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Christina Langer, Julia Nitschke, Layla O'Kane, Matthew Sigelman and Bledi Taska

Employers are resetting degree requirements in a wide range of roles, dropping the requirement for a bachelor’s degree in many middle-skill and even some higher-skill roles. This reverses a trend toward degree inflation in job postings going back to the Great... View Details

Keywords: Skills; Workforce; Talent; Human Resource Management; Selection and Staffing; Competency and Skills; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources

Article

Evolution and the Growth Process: Natural Selection of Entrepreneurial Traits

By: Stelios Michalopoulos and Oded Galor

This research suggests that a Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played a significant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality within and across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Transformation

Read Now

February 2012
Article

Americans Do IT Better: US Multinationals and the Productivity Miracle

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

US productivity growth accelerated after 1995 (unlike Europe's), particularly in sectors that intensively use information technologies (IT). Using two new micro panel datasets we show that US multinationals operating in Europe also experienced a "productivity miracle."... View Details

Keywords: IT Productivity; American IT Productivity; Information Technology; Performance Productivity; Multinational Firms and Management; Management Practices and Processes; United States; Europe

August 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Dicerna Pharmaceuticals: Decision Making in Clinical Trial Design and Operations

By: Satish Tadikonda and Amanda McEwen

The success or failure of Dicerna Pharmaceuticals (Dicerna) as an emerging pharmaceutical company would likely hinge on its lead drug candidate Nedosiran and the company’s ability to see it successfully through clinical development. Ralf Rosskamp, Chief Medical... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Health Testing and Trials; Product Development; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Pharmaceutical Industry

April 2012
Article

The Changing Ecology of Teams: New Directions for Teams Research

By: Ruth Wageman, Heidi K. Gardner and Mark Mortensen

The nature of collaboration has been changing at an accelerating pace, particularly in the last decade. Much of the published work in teams research, however, is still focused on the archetypal team that has well-defined membership, purposes, leadership, and standards... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Research; Change Management; Leadership; Standards; Performance Effectiveness; Theory; Civil Society or Community

February 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Haier: Incubating Entrepreneurs in a Chinese Giant

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Nancy Hua Dai

CEO Zhang Ruimin must plan how to accelerate the growth of self-managed microenterprises. Platforms were Haier’s business platforms operating in five major sectors: white goods transformation, investment and incubation, financial holdings, real estate, and cultural... View Details

Keywords: China; Microenterprise; Appliances; Platform; Change; Innovation; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; China

February 2022
Case

Agora (A)

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual “town halls,” making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and... View Details

Keywords: Civic Technology; Government Administration; Conferences; Business Startups; Business Strategy

March 2011 (Revised May 2011)
Case

China Construction America (A): The Road Ahead

How did a Chinese state-owned construction company strike one deal after another in South Carolina despite political backlash and in New York where well-established competitors dominate? The case examines the U.S. market entry strategy of the CSCEC, China's leading... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Global Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Negotiation Deal; State Ownership; Construction Industry; China; United States

June 2022
Case

Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion

By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli

Born in 2008 as a small startup selling flip flops, by mid-2021 Zalando had turned into an online fashion company with an assortment of more than 4,500 international brands, 45 million active customers, and a presence in 23 European markets. An essential component in... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Platforms; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Infrastructure; Logistics; Service Operations; Strategy; Business Strategy; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Shipping Industry; Technology Industry; Europe

November 1987 (Revised January 1988)
Case

Groen: A Dover Industries Company

By: Francis Aguilar

Describes the challenges facing the president of an old-line foodservice and food processing equipment manufacturing company as it attempted to accelerate sales and profit growth through the introduction of innovative products. The introduction of a "revolutionary"... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Labor and Management Relations; Machinery and Machining; Management Style; Management Teams; Performance Efficiency; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Organizational Culture

July–August 2023
Article

Accounting for Carbon Offsets

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Marc Roston

Markets for carbon trading function poorly, and many traded offsets do not actually perform as promised. Without robust protocols for monitoring offsets and in the absence of proper accounting mechanisms, market-based approaches to reducing atmospheric GHG will be... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Regulation

Register to Read

Article

Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Catherine H. MacLean, Alexander Dresner, Derek A. Haas and Thomas W. Feeley

Many health care organizations are striving to implement a value agenda that delivers better patient outcomes at lower cost, medical condition by medical condition. To accelerate the dissemination and adoption of the value agenda, across many more medical conditions,... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

Register to Read

January 2007 (Revised February 2018)
Case

Brazil Under Lula: Off the Yellow BRIC Road

By: Aldo Musacchio

Covers President Lula's challenges to reduce "Brazil cost" and grow like other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Experts agreed that for Brazil to grow like other BRIC countries, the Brazilian government would have to reduce the cost of doing business... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Cost; Growth and Development Strategy; Business and Government Relations; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; China; India; Russia; Brazil

June 2007
Article

What Is the Impact of Software Patent Shifts? Evidence from Lotus v. Borland

By: Josh Lerner and Feng Zhu

Economists have debated the extent to which strengthening patent protection spurs or detracts from technological innovation. This paper examines the reduction of software copyright protection in the Lotus v. Borland decision. If patent and copyright protections are... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Patents; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

Read Now

January 2022
Case

Dating Ring

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lindsay N. Hyde

In 2015, the co-founders of Dating Ring, an online dating startup that relied on human matchmakers to arrange dates between its members, were deciding whether to either shut down the service or instead manage Dating Ring as a "lifestyle company," ramping down growth... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Failure; Business Exit or Shutdown; Internet and the Web; Venture Capital; Service Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States