Publications

January 2009 (Revised May 2009)
Case

College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact

By: Stacey M. Childress and Geoff Eckman Marietta

College Summit, a nonprofit organization "committed to the day when every student who can make it in college makes it to college," was faced with an important strategic decision. After growing rapidly at more than 30% a year for the last several years, founder and CEO,... View Details

Keywords: Secondary Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Nonprofit Organizations; Education Industry

March 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Whole Foods Under Amazon

By: Dennis Campbell, Tatiana Sandino, James Barnett and Christine Snively

In August 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. Whole Foods was struggling with high costs and faced growing competition from traditional supermarkets offering more organic products. Prior to the acquisition, Whole Foods began rolling out a new... View Details

Keywords: Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Employee Relationship Management; Acquisition; Change Management; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry

May 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Harlem Children's Zone, The: Driving Performance with Measurement and Evaluation

By: Allen S. Grossman and Daniel F. Curran

Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, wanted his organization to grow dramatically to reach thousands of poor and underserved children in Harlem. The agency ran a variety of successful social service programs throughout New York City that were separately... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Organizational Structure; Performance Evaluation; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Nonprofit Organizations; Expansion; Valuation

January 2009 (Revised November 2010)
Case

The Dojima Rice Market and the Origins of Futures Trading

By: David A. Moss and Eugene Kintgen

In 1730, Japanese merchants petitioned shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune to officially authorize trade in rice futures at the Dojima Exchange, the world's first organized (but unsanctioned) futures market. For many years, the Japanese government had prohibited the trade of... View Details

Keywords: Futures and Commodity Futures; Price; Food; Business History; Market Transactions; Business and Government Relations; Japan

25 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The Importance of Teaming

team's composition may change at any given moment. Teaming, she says, is essential to organizational learning. She elaborates on this concept in her new book, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge... View Details

Keywords: Re: Amy C. Edmondson

14 Jun 2023
Op-Ed

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

We’ve long known that organizations require so-called flexible leaders to respond to rapid market fluctuations; the last couple of years have only emphasized that necessity. The environment we operate in—shaped by the pandemic, social... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson

28 Mar 2024
Blog Post

Empowering Future Leaders: Meet the HBS Women’s Student Association

What is the WSA? The WSA, or Women’s Student Association, is a student-led organization at Harvard Business School for anyone who identifies as a woman. We’re the largest student organization on campus. What... View Details

21 May 2018
Blog Post

Harnessing The Power of Collaboration to Create Opportunity in Chicago

Operating Officer of Accion Chicago, a nonprofit that helps communities grow by providing capital, coaching and connections to aspiring entrepreneurs who build businesses and generate jobs in their neighborhoods. I spent most of my career... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

February 2018
Case

Qualtrics (A)

By: Doug J. Chung and James M. Lattin

Qualtrics was an online survey research platform and since the beginning, the company had relied entirely on an inside sales model—sales done remotely without face-to-face contact with clients. The low-cost inside sales model, along with an emphasis on a strong sales... View Details

Keywords: Sales Strategy; Inside Sales Model; Sales; Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation

September 2020
Case

Enabling Teamwork at the Cleveland Clinic

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Michaela J. Kerrissey

This case examines efforts to foster teamwork within and across work units in the Cleveland Clinic, a large, distributed healthcare delivery organization. With a long history of valuing teamwork since its founding in 1921, the Clinic had taken dramatic steps to further... View Details

Keywords: Teamwork; Teaming; Health Care; Health Care and Treatment; Groups and Teams; Health Industry; United States

2008
Book

Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage

By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Joe Wheeler

Hundreds of large organizations worldwide have used the groundbreaking Service Profit Chain to improve business performance. Now The Ownership Quotient reveals the next generation of the chain: customer and employee "owners" of your business. Employee-owners exhibit... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Customer Ownership; Employee Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

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12 Jan 2006
News

What Do 'Hot Mamas' Want? Access to Capital, Markets

Summer 2013
Article

Analyzing Performance of Service Organizations: Balanced Benchmarking Can Identify Best Practices That Are Often Hidden

By: H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Just as sports teams have increasingly relied on rigorous quantitative analyses, so have many businesses. In particular, a growing number of service organizations have been investigating the use of a sophisticated linear programming technique called DEA, or data... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Benchmarking; Management

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Research Summary

Overview

By: Shikhar Ghosh

I am focused on exploring the human side of developing early stage entrepreneurial ventures. These enterprises are characterized by the pursuit of opportunity, shortage of resources to pursue their goals and uncertainty at every step of the journey. Some of the... View Details

Keywords: Scale; Exit; Founders' Agreements; Success Measures; Entrepreneurial Risk; Founding Teams; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Europe; Middle East; Asia

November 2010 (Revised August 2012)
Case

The Indego Africa Project

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Rachel Gordon

Two young attorneys found and begin to build the Indego Africa Project, an NGO partnering with women's cooperatives in Rwanda. Indego connects the cooperatives to the international retail market for handmade artisan products, helps the cooperatives build their business... View Details

Keywords: Cooperative Ownership; Nonprofit Organizations; Business Growth and Maturation; Corporate Finance; Non-Governmental Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Rwanda

February 2003 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose, The

By: Allen S. Grossman and Christina Darwall

Patrick J. McGrath, the bishop of the healthy and growing San Jose diocese, is pioneering the use of long-term, business-like strategic planning to better deliver on his churches' core mission. The adopted plan addresses issues at the heart of how the diocese is... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Innovation Strategy; Leadership; Growth Management; Success; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges

March 2021 (Revised March 2024)
Case

M-KOPA: Empowering Lives

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Wale Lawal and Pippa Tubman Armerding

The Pay As You Go solar power company in East Africa had sales of $71 million in 2019. It wished to grow to $300 million by 2025. M-KOPA, founded by three entrepreneurs in 2011, had grown nicely in Kenya and Uganda to reach nearly 750,000 households with an innovative... View Details

Keywords: Mobile Payment; Go-to-market Strategy; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Business Growth; Social Entrepreneurship; Renewable Energy; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Marketing Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Kenya; Uganda; Nigeria

December 2023
Case

Francis Ngannou

By: Anita Elberse

In May 2023, professional fighter Francis Ngannou is facing a choice: re-sign with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s premier mixed-martial-arts (MMA) organization, or opt for a contract with the Professional Fighters League (PFL), a growing but... View Details

Keywords: Contracts; Compensation and Benefits; Sports; Decision Choices and Conditions

June 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Full-funnel Advertising on TikTok

By: Jeremy Yang, Ayelet Israeli and Alexis Lefort

In 2025 TikTok is working to grow its brand and performance advertising business, along with a new integrated full-funnel solution. As an emerging media platform with unique ad formats and user behavior in a privacy-first environment, TikTok faces both significant... View Details