Publications

April 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A) (Abridged)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Owens & Minor (O&M) performed lean inventory services for Virginia Mason (VM) as its Alpha Vendor, but the outdated industry pricing model created perverse incentives and could not capture O&M's costs. Together, O&M and VM created an activity-based pricing model: Total... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Partners and Partnerships; Activity Based Costing and Management; Business Model; Non-Governmental Organizations; Nonprofit Organizations; Motivation and Incentives; Asset Pricing; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

November 2022
Case

Arcos Dorados’ Quest for the Digitalization of Last-Mile Delivery in Colombia

By: Jorge Tamayo, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal

In 2018, Francisco Staton, Managing Director of Arcos Dorados in Colombia had to decide on the company’s strategy to expand its food ordering and delivery business in the country. Arcos Dorados stood as McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, and Colombia was one of... View Details

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

the road.” “That’s what I remember from growing up, this constant conflict and fight over hours,” recounts Stavros, a partner at private equity firm KKR, in a new series of Harvard Business School case studies that detail his radical... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

12 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 12

more likely to use equity in the transaction, and buy companies in a related industry. The market tends to react more negatively to the announcement of the acquisition of a venture capital-backed company, but the long-run stock market and operating View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2025
Case

Taylor Guitars: Making Employee Ownership Work the Taylor Way

By: Dennis Campbell, Petros Kusmu and Stacy Straaberg

In 2013, guitar manufacturer Taylor Guitars’ co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug were considering several exit options including selling to a competitor or to a private equity firm. The co-founders decided, instead, to embark on a seven-year process to transfer 100%... View Details

27 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 27

U.S., and an experimental exercise) that are consistent with the model. Working PapersWhen Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint versus Separate Evaluation Authors:Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen, and Max H. Bazerman Abstract We examine... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

13 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Science Business: What Happened to Biotech?

describe it, has worked well for certain things in the industry, but not so well for others. What are some of the attributes of the anatomy and how has it contributed to performance shortfall? A: Let's take one: the market for know-how. I... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Biotechnology

05 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

Why People Crave Feedback—and Why We’re Afraid to Give It

feedback and appreciated it when they got it." In another experiment, the team ratcheted up the stakes by inviting two people who knew each other well—such as romantic partners and close friends—into the laboratory, and then randomly... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

22 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 22, 2018

content, mobile is less important than advertised, one day of the week isn’t better than others, and case studies are most preferred. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54512 forthcoming Organization Science Corporate Purpose and... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

21 Feb 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: February 21

study of a sponsorship collaboration between a global financial institution (UBS) and a multi-site museum (Guggenheim) evaluates critical aspects of resource integration between the partners with implications for the theory and practice... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

04 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Need to Solve a Problem? Take a Break From Collaborating

Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces, with Jesse Shore, an assistant professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, and David Lazer, a political science professor at Northeastern University. The... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Video Game; Web Services

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

for people who apply their creative sparks to the insights they gain from data, artificial intelligence, and feedback from colleagues. Learning and performance are twinned, not split as is often the case at companies that have yet to... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

Partners in Short & Long Term Relationships. “The conviction to have a cofounder is often based solely on complementary skills and experience versus the softer, and often more important, relationship criteria.” In the podcast, Dr.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Value Maximization and Stakeholder Theory

choose among alternative policy options), what would it be? Or, even more simply, How do we want the firms in our economy to measure better versus worse?" It's tempting to consider value simply as a matter of maximizing the short-term financial View Details

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen

07 Jul 2019
HBS Case

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

investment that immediately improved its ecommerce infrastructure. Walmart has also piloted and invested in robots to perform a variety of functions, from unloading trucks to scrubbing floors to scanning shelves and bringing items out of... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

08 Aug 2017
First Look

First Look at Research and Ideas, August 8, 2017

be best performing in terms of annual profitability; membership was considered highly prestigious. We document that index-inclusion incentives led firms to increase return on equity (ROE) proportionally by 35% on average through higher... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2009 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Exeter Group, Inc. (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles, Das Narayandas and Kerry Herman

Jonathan Kutchins and Mark Cullen, managing partners of IT consulting firm Exeter Group, Inc., are considering four potential client engagements. Three of them involve prominent universities, an area of market strength for the firm, and one involves a top-tier strategy... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Resource Allocation; Market Entry and Exit; Service Operations; Performance Capacity; Business Strategy; Information Technology; Consulting Industry