Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,767)
- Faculty Publications (364)
- February 2017
- Case
Dick's Sporting Goods
By: Rajiv Lal, Jose B. Alvarez and Matthew G. Preble
Edward Stack, chairman and CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS), faced a rapidly changing sporting goods landscape in October 2016. Two large competitors—The Sports Authority and Sport Chalet—had folded earlier that year, and DKS had to contend with increasingly robust... View Details
Keywords: Sporting Goods; Retail; Employees; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Product Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Product; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Internet and the Web; E-commerce; Retail Industry; United States; Pennsylvania
- November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
IguanaFix
By: Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Laura Urdapilleta
IguanaFix is a rapidly scaling Latin American startup that provides an online platform connecting consumers with home improvement contractors. The founders have acquired customers through both B2C and B2B methods. But in seeking to grow and scale the business, they now... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Essent: From a State-Owned Utility to a Commercial Company
By: Ananth Raman and Elena Corsi
Patrick Lammers, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) for the Dutch energy company Essent NV, once a state-owned company, was pleased with the progress Essent’s consumer (“B2C”) business had made: Earnings Before Income Tax (EBIT) for B2C had gone from a loss of €18 million... View Details
- October 2016 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
PTC: A Transformation to IoT
By: Rajiv Lal and Sarah McAra
In the 2010s, PTC, a leading provider of software for discrete manufacturers, faced maturing markets and changing customer needs as smart, connected products took hold—the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT). PTC saw a first mover advantage in entering the IoT space... View Details
- October 2016
- Case
Triangulate: Stay, Pivot or Exit?
By: Thomas Eisenmann, Shikhar Ghosh and Christopher Payton
Sunil Nagaraj, Triangulate's founder had spent a few years trying to launch a dating application that matched users based on their behavior on social media. Based on input from advisors, the company changed its focus from a B2B site to a B2C dating site with a unique... View Details
- September 2016 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Collage.com: Scaling a Distributed Organization
By: Christopher Stanton and Shikhar Ghosh
Kevin Borders and Joe Golden, co-founders and co-CEOs of Collage.com, must decide how to grow their custom photo-products startup in the face of fierce competition. From 2011 through 2016, the business evolved from a hobby to a startup with $22 million in revenue and... View Details
- September 2016 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
Angie's List: Ratings Pioneer Turns 20
By: Robert J. Dolan and Ayelet Israeli
In 1995, before people “googled” or “yelped,” Angela Hicks (HBS, 2000) was establishing her Angie’s List as a pioneer in the accumulation and dissemination of consumer rating information. Hicks focused on the home repair and maintenance market and, as she put it,... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Pricing Strategy; Services; Product Line Management; Growth; Conjoint Analysis; Market Research; Freemium; Growth Strategy; Two Sided Markets; Ecommerce; Platform; Platform Business; Platform Businesses; Platform Strategy; Platforms; Platforms And Ecosystems; Business Model; Internet and the Web; Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Price; Strategy; Digital Platforms; E-commerce; Service Industry; United States
- August 2016 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
AnswerDash (Abridged)
By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman
It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry
- July 2016
- Case
Cataumet Boats, Inc.
By: W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis
Jaime Giancola, an MBA student, has recently completed an operations management course in which aggregate production planning (APP) was one of the topics. She believes that her family's business, Cataumet Boats, which her grandparents started and which her mother and... View Details
- June 2016
- Case
Duff & Phelps: Scaling an Entrepreneurial Venture (A)
By: Lynda M. Applegate and David Lane
Having teamed up to launch their own financial services business, Noah Gottdiener and Jacob Silverman soon discover a venerable brand and viable business in an established bank subsidiary. They then work for many months to acquire the business as a platform for... View Details
- June 2016 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
AnswerDash
By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman
It is 2014, and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry
- June 2016
- Teaching Note
HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI
By: Jill Avery, Asis Martinez Jerez and Thomas Steenburgh
HubSpot, a web marketing startup selling inbound marketing software to small- and medium-sized businesses, is under pressure from its venture capital partners to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. The B2B SaaS company is in the... View Details
- May 16, 2016
- Article
Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer
By: Dina Gerdeman and John A. Quelch
Chipotle Mexican Grill’s ongoing struggle to win customers back months after a contaminated food crisis highlights the challenges companies face with keeping food safe.
Chipotle has seen its shares tumble and recently reported its first-ever quarterly loss... View Details
Chipotle has seen its shares tumble and recently reported its first-ever quarterly loss... View Details
Keywords: Food Safety; Organic Food; Supply Chain Management; Globalization Of Food Business; Mérieux NutriSciences: Marketing Food Safety Testing; Food Safety Modernization Act 2011; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Transition; Economic Systems; Food; Health; Supply and Industry; Logistics; Practice; Problems and Challenges; Quality; Safety; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Mexico; North America; United States; Canada
- May 2016 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
RegionFly: Cutting Costs in the Airline Industry
By: Susanna Gallani and Eva Labro
RegionFly is a small, private airline specializing in ultra-premium services. Founded shortly after the "Golden Age of airline travel," RegionFly's financial performance had been strong for several decades. More recently, however, the results have taken a downward... View Details
- Article
Products to Platforms: Making the Leap
By: Feng Zhu and Nathan Furr
Following the path of companies such as Apple and Amazon, more and more firms are trying to become not just product purveyors but also platform providers, facilitating direct connections between customers and other groups. Although launching a platform can generate new... View Details
- March 2016
- Case
M-Pesa: Financial Inclusion in Kenya
By: Rajiv Lal, Lisa Cox and Sarah McAra
M-Pesa, a mobile money transfer service launched in 2007 in Kenya by telecommunications company Safaricom, allowed people to send money via mobile messaging to contacts, such as friends and family, or even to pay for goods and services, such as groceries or a taxi... View Details
- February 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Case
IMAX: Scaling Personalized Learning in India
By: John Jong-Hyun Kim, Michael Chu and Rachna Tahilyani
IMAX is a provider of comprehensive testing and personalized content across mid-range and low-cost private K-10 schools in India. It aims to improve learning outcomes by providing schools with an integrated product suite including textbooks, workbooks, assessments,... View Details
- January 2016 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Blackstone at Age 30
By: Josh Lerner, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal
Since its IPO in 2007 and following the global financial crisis, Blackstone largely outpaced its alternative investment firm peers in assets under management, new business launches, profitability, and market capitalization. Under the leadership of Stephen A.... View Details
- Article
Business Groups, Entrepreneurship and the Growth of the Koç Group in Turkey
By: Geoffrey Jones and Asli M. Colpan
This article examines the emergence and development of what became the largest business group in Turkey, the Koç Group. This venture was an important factor in the emergence of modern business enterprise in the new state of the Republic of Turkey from the 1920s. After... View Details
- November 2015 (Revised May 2016)
- Case
Aspiring Minds
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively
By 2015, India-based employment assessment and certification provider Aspiring Minds had helped facilitate over 300,000 job matches through its assessment tools. Aspiring Minds' flagship product, the Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT), used machine learning... View Details