Publications

March 2017 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Interline Brands: Don't Stop Believing

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Ricardo Andrade

Interline Brands, a leading distributor of residential housing maintenance and repair parts and equipment in the U.S., had just held its November 2014 board meeting. The meeting had been productive but not without some soul searching for both the company’s management... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Exit; Consumer Goods; IPO; Private Equity; Initial Public Offering; Decision Choices and Conditions

26 May 2003
Research & Ideas

What Your Competition is Telling You

competitors can help grow the market for your products and services, thereby boosting your sales at a time when, with the U.S. slowdown entering its third year, new revenue is exceedingly hard to find. Moreover, the presence of a... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

24 Jan 2024
Op-Ed

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

in design and production with its newest jumbo jet, the 787 Dreamliner. Such frequent, repeated crises point to a deeper issue than isolated engineering mishaps. The underlying cause of these issues is a leadership failure that has... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Air Transportation; Transportation; Aerospace

Forthcoming
Article

Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency

By: Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi

Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Customer Selection; Customer Compatibility; Retention; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Australia

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13 Sep 2010
Research & Ideas

The Consumer Appeal of Underdog Branding

attractive. Why? The reason might be an increasing willingness on the part of consumers to identify with the underdog. In today's economically difficult times, it appears, underdog brands are gaining psychological, and real, power in the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2023
Working Paper

Dynamic Pricing, Intertemporal Spillovers, and Efficiency

By: Alexander J. MacKay, Dennis Svartbäck and Anders G. Ekholm

Pricing technology that allows firms to rapidly adjust prices has two potential benefits. Time-varying prices can respond to high-frequency demand shocks to generate greater revenues, and they can also be used to smooth out demand to reduce costs. Using data... View Details

Keywords: Price; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Volatility

SSRN

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April 1985 (Revised October 1988)
Case

Everest Computer (A): The Development of the SuperMOS Process

By: Kim B. Clark

The research and development lab at the semiconductor development and manufacturing facility of a computer systems manufacturer has embarked on a radically improved semiconductor manufacturing process for application in a new computer system. The case offers a detailed... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Governance Controls; Production; Research and Development; Hardware; Semiconductor Industry

February 2019 (Revised January 2021)
Case

Quiksilver Inc. and Oaktree Capital Management

By: Kristin Mugford and Mike Harmon

Sports lifestyle company Quiksilver filed for bankruptcy in September 2015. Oaktree is considering an additional investment in the company to facilitate the restructuring. Students must consider whether Oaktree should invest given the risks of the turnaround... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Bankruptcy Reorganization; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Acquisition; Restructuring; Debt Securities; Transformation; Decision Making; Borrowing and Debt; Investment Return; Crisis Management; Negotiation; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; France; United States

March 2007 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Aurolab: Bringing First-World Technology to the Third-World Blind

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

Aurolab is the in-house producer of IOLs (required in cataract surgery) for the Aravind Eye Care System, a group of charity hospitals with the largest volume of eye surgery in the world. Aurolab's manufacturing capability and capacity had long exceeded the requirements... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Production; Mission and Purpose; Performance Capacity; Nonprofit Organizations; Corporate Strategy; India

July 2019
Case

Instabeat—One More Lap?

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar

This case follows Lebanese entrepreneur, Hind Hobeika, an engineer and competitive swimmer who spends seven years trying to launch a wearable heartrate monitor and motion sensor to help swimmers track their performance while swimming. While the Beirut-based... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Manufacturing; Prototyping; Female Protagonist; Business Startups; Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Design; Organizational Culture; United States; Lebanon

September 2019 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Blenheim Chalcot

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In April 2019, Manoj Badale and Charles Mindenhall, co-founders of Blenheim Chalcot, were contemplating how they might go about developing their portfolio. Since founding the company as an internet consultancy called netdecisions in 1998, Badale and Mindenhall had... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; United Kingdom; United States; India

16 Dec 2014
First Look

First Look: December 16

technologies compete in production and innovation, in the sense that research can be directed to either clean or dirty technologies. If dirty technologies are more advanced to start with, the potential transition to clean technology can... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2008
Book

Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy?

By: Andrew J. Hoffman and John G. Woody

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. And increasingly, it's become a crucial business issue. How will you and your company respond?

In Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy? Andrew Hoffman and John... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Footprint; Climate Change; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Policy

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July–August 2013
Article

A Joint Model of Usage and Churn in Contractual Settings

By: Eva Ascarza and Bruce G.S. Hardie

As firms become more customer-centric, concepts such as customer equity come to the fore. Any serious attempt to quantify customer equity requires modeling techniques that can provide accurate multiperiod forecasts of customer behavior. Although a number of researchers... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Retention; Contractual Settings; Access Services; Hidden Markov Models; RFM; Latent Variable Models; Customer Value and Value Chain; Consumer Behavior

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28 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: Feb. 28

characteristics, relationships, and behavioral norms. We suggest that an equally important trust mechanism is "reflected knowledge," knowledge focal actors' gain about the personal characteristics, relationships, and behavioral... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2011 (Revised June 2012)
Case

The Big 3 Roar Back

By: William W. George

The "Big 3"—Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Chrysler—were all headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. Born between 1903 and 1928, they dominated the automobile industry in the U.S. for decades until they became complacent. In the 1970s they started losing share to... View Details

Keywords: Production; Labor Unions; Labor and Management Relations; Industry Clusters; Competitive Strategy; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Michigan

November 2014
Case

Oasys Water: Balancing Strategic Partnerships & Financing Decisions

By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra

Oasys Water had developed a proprietary water treatment technology based on an innovative forward osmosis process that could remove dissolved solids from water more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. As Oasys looked to scale, it was exploring... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Finance; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; China