Publications

07 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Rocket Science Retailing

surveyed had no systems in place to exploit early sales data. One retailer, for example, ordered garments and committed specific quantities of each stock-keeping unit (SKU) to each of its stores 11 months before the product was even... View Details

Keywords: by Marshall L. Fisher, Ananth Raman & Anna Sheen McClelland; Retail

Using the Crowd as an Innovation Partner

From Apple to Merck to Wikipedia, more and more organizations are turning to crowds for help in solving their most vexing innovation and research questions, but managers remain understandably cautious. It seems risky and even unnatural to push problems out to vast... View Details

29 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 29

yields. However, the fraction of seniors is uncorrelated with share repurchases, investment, or profitability, suggesting that geographic variation in dividend payout is not driven by some unmeasured firm characteristic affecting the ability or willingness to View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2023
Case

Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth about $4.4 million at the time) in... View Details

Henry McGee joined the HBS faculty in 2013 after retiring as President of HBO Home Entertainment, the digital and DVD program distribution division of Home Box Office, the pioneering premium television company. A member of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit,... View Details

Keywords: distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution; distribution

January 2010 (Revised August 2010)
Background Note

Advanced Leadership Note: An Institutional Perspective and Framework for Managing and Leading

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Rakesh Khurana

Large-scale societal issues increasingly appear on the agenda of business leaders, including poverty, health, education, business-government relations, and the degradation of the environment. These problems are not entirely new, but the forces of globalization and the... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Framework; Global Range; Leadership; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Enterprise; Social Issues; Complexity

February 2011
Case

Jamie Turner at MLI, Inc.

By: John J. Gabarro and Colleen Kaftan

The case describes the evolution of an interpersonal mismatch between a previously successful manager, Jamie Turner, and his new boss, Pat Cardullo. Turner, a 32-year-old MBA graduate, has been recruited by Cardullo to be vice president of marketing and sales at Modern... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Interpersonal Relations; Superior ＆ Subordinate; Micro Organizational Behavior; Performance Management; Personal Strategy ＆ Style; Management Style; Conflict Management; Interpersonal Communication; Employee Relationship Management; Rank and Position; Performance; Communication Strategy; Personal Development and Career; Acquisition; Distribution Industry; Distribution Industry; San Diego; Chicago

Article

On the Political Economy of Temporary Stabilization Programs

By: Laura Alfaro

This paper provides a political economy explanation for temporary exchange-rate-based stabilization programs by focusing on the distributional effects of real exchange-rate appreciation. I propose an economy in which agents are endowed with either tradable or... View Details

Keywords: Government and Politics; Economy; Balance and Stability; Programs; Currency Exchange Rate; Cash; Value; Distribution

June 2005 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Distrobot Systems, Inc.

By: William A. Sahlman

Distrobot is a start-up that has developed a new system for warehouse automation. The company is trying to raise money to finance the launch of the product. The founder must decide how much capital to raise, from whom, and on what terms. View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Product Launch; Business Startups; Business Strategy; Distribution Industry; Distribution Industry

July 2009
Case

Arcor: Global Strategy and Local Turbulence (Abridged)

Argentine confectionery manufacturer, Arcor Group, seeks to implement an international strategy but in 2003, while recovering from the Argentine financial crisis, globalization plans are thwarted. Already Latin America's leading candy producer and an exporter to over... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Currency; Global Strategy; Expansion; Balance and Stability; Food and Beverage Industry; Latin America; Argentina

September 1991 (Revised September 2010)
Case

Dore-Dore

By: Janice H. Hammond and Audris Wong

Dore-Dore, a French manufacturer of socks and children's knitwear, has just converted a portion of its knitwear operations to a flexible modular system to allow faster response and greater flexibility. The case provides an opportunity to assess the changes in knitwear... View Details

Keywords: Order Taking and Fulfillment; Logistics; Production; Performance Productivity; Apparel and Accessories Industry; France

20 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 20

PublicationsCapitalism: Its Origins and Evolution as a System of Governance Author:Bruce R. Scott Publication:Springer-Verlag, 2011 Abstract Two systems of governance, capitalism and democracy, prevail in... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 May 2005
What Do You Think?

Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?

increasingly rely on users for new product development, design, and distribution. His particular interest is in how products can be designed and distributed to elicit user-driven development through such methods as "open... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

04 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Determinants of Individual Performance and Collective Value in Private-Collective Software Innovation

Keywords: by Ned Gulley & Karim R. Lakhani; Video Game; Web Services

28 Nov 2011
Research & Ideas

Rethinking the Fairness of Organ Transplants

A proposal out of Harvard and MIT to rethink how kidney transplants are allocated could result in a fairer system giving patients longer lives. The new empirical model, which is intensely data driven, would provide a flexible framework to... View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Health

February 2007 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Li & Fung 2006

By: F. Warren McFarlan, William C. Kirby and Tracy Manty

Describes the opportunities and strategy facing one of the most innovative global supply-chain companies, and the strategy it has chosen to deal with the expanding demand for its services. Li & Fung links thousands of factories in India, China, and elsewhere to nearly... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Supply Chain Management; Distribution Channels; Global Range; Strategy; Information Technology; Distribution Industry; Distribution Industry; China; India; United States; Europe

2023
Working Paper

Interest-Rate Risk and Household Portfolios

By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller, James Paron and Natasha Sarin

How are households exposed to interest-rate risk? When rates fall, households face lower future expected returns but those holding long-term assets—disproportionately the wealthy and middle-aged—experience capital gains. We study the hedging demand for long-term assets... View Details

Keywords: Portfolio Choice; Social Security; Interest Rates; Investment Portfolio; Equality and Inequality; Welfare

Read Now

2011
Article

Scalable Detection of Anomalous Patterns With Connectivity Constraints

By: Skyler Speakman, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

We present GraphScan, a novel method for detecting arbitrarily shaped connected clusters in graph or network data. Given a graph structure, data observed at each node, and a score function defining the anomalousness of a set of nodes, GraphScan can efficiently and... View Details

Keywords: Biosurveillance; Event Detection; Graph Mining; Scan Statistics; Spatial Scan Statistic

2021
Working Paper

How to Fix ESG Reporting

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

Investors, advocacy groups, academics, and the 200 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable have asked corporations to take on an added purpose beyond a narrow pursuit of shareholder value. In response, many companies now issue ESG (Environmental, Societal, and Governance)... View Details

Keywords: ESG Reporting; Sustainability; Corporate Purpose; Greenhouse Gas; Activity-Based Costing; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Goals and Objectives; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Accountability