Publications

August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Revenue Recognition at HBP

By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi

In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details

Keywords: Accrual Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Education Industry; Education Industry; United States

2018
Working Paper

Executive Education in the Digital Matrix: The Disruption of the Supply Landscape

By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Even as the demand for managerial skills continues to grow, executive education worldwide has entered a period of disruption caused by the digitalization of content, connectivity, and communication. The current offerings of many executive education program providers... View Details

Keywords: Executive Education; Internet and the Web; Disruption; Competency and Skills; Leadership Development

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March 2018
Case

Summit Public Schools (A)

By: John J-H Kim and Aldo Sesia

Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students... View Details

Keywords: K-12; Online Learning; Virtual Learning; Blended Learning; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Business Model; Performance Improvement; Technology

March 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Supplement

STRIVR (B): Moving into the Enterprise

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

STRIVR, a company focused on virtual reality training, has decided to shift focus from sports to enterprise customers. The change in strategy requires the CEO to solve a number of issues. The company initally offered training for hard skills, but clients have been... View Details

Keywords: Strivr; Virtual Reality; Soft Skills; Hard Skills; VR; Applications and Software; Market Entry and Exit; Business Strategy; Training; Sports; Education Industry; Education Industry; United States

2018
Other Unpublished Work

Trump's Populism: What Business Leaders Need To Understand

By: Rafael Di Tella

In the 2016 United States presidential election, candidates from both major political parties used anti-establishment messaging to appeal to Americans, a theme that had been on the sidelines of US political discourse for decades. Donald Trump, in particular, played... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Globalization; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Government and Politics; Demographics; United States

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January 2018 (Revised March 2020)
Case

SAP: Branding in the Digital Age

By: Das Narayandas and Amram Migdal

By 2017, digital, social, and mobile technologies were rapidly changing the way many of SAP’s traditional customers did business over the last decade. In response to this trend, SAP had acquired companies with capabilities in e-commerce, human capital, workforce... View Details

Keywords: Brand Positioning; Marketing; Sales; Brands and Branding; Strategy; Technology Industry

January 2018
Case

Kids & Company: Entering the U.S.

By: Boris Groysberg, Matthew G. Preble and Katherine Connolly Baden

In April 2017, Victoria Sopik and Jennifer Nashmi, CEO and CFO (respectively) of Kids & Company, a Canadian childcare provider that they had co-founded in the early 2000s and developed into a nearly 100-unit enterprise, are discussing how the company should proceed... View Details

December 2017 (Revised November 2023)
Technical Note

The BGIE Twenty (2024 version)

By: Alberto Cavallo, Kristin Fabbe, Mattias Fibiger, Jeremy Friedman, Reshmaan Hussam, Vincent Pons and Matthew Weinzierl

The purpose of this technical note is to explain the BGIE Twenty, an “idea-kit” that serves as the intellectual backbone of the BGIE course. Each year, the BGIE professors decide on the twenty ideas that we believe are the most important for students to study in... View Details

Keywords: Ideas; Business Education; Curriculum and Courses; Analysis

December 2017 (Revised December 2018)
Course Overview Note

The Entrepreneurial Manager: Course Overview, 2019 Spring Term

By: Paul Gompers

This note serves as an overview of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit’s required curriculum course, "The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM)." General management has been a core educational organizing framework at the Harvard Business School (HBS) since its inception. Today... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Management; Business Education

November 2017 (Revised September 2020)
Supplement

Miami's Tech Future (C): Reaching Another Miami

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The effects of Miami’s startup scene have not reached many “left-behind” lower-income Black communities, which are disproportionately affected by problems such as segregation and racial discrimination, lack of transportation access, crime, education quality, government... View Details

November 2017
Case

Outrageous Ambition: Duke University

By: William C. Kirby and Yuanzhuo Wang

Duke University had grown from a one room schoolhouse in rural North Carolina in 1859 to one of the leading research universities in the U.S. and the world. Since the late 1950s, Duke’s leaders had consciously used the process of strategic planning to guide the... View Details

November 2017 (Revised September 2020)
Case

Miami's Tech Future (A): Twenty-first Century Changes and Challenges

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

In the decade starting in 2000, a new mayor focused on infrastructure and leadership from a foundation investing in arts and culture helped the Miami region transform and attract younger people to a newly vibrant central city and arts district. In 2011, the Knight... View Details

Keywords: Change; Leadership; Business and Community Relations; Strategic Planning; Technology Industry; Miami; Florida

September–October 2017
Article

Why Do We Undervalue Competent Management?: Neither Great Leadership Nor Brilliant Strategy Matters Without Operational Excellence

By: Raffaella Sadun, Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen

A recurring message in business education is that you can’t compete on the basis of management processes because they’re easily copied. Operational effectiveness is table stakes in the competitive universe, it is often assumed, and thus cannot serve as a sustainable... View Details

Keywords: Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Effectiveness