Publications

October 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Case

Lehman Brothers and Peabody Coal

When Texas Utilities Company (TXU) wanted to acquire The Energy Group, the latter needed to spin-off its coal mining assets, Peabody Coal, to avoid running afoul of antitrust authorities. In this case, TXU's investment banker, Lehman Brothers, considers whether to... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Investment Banking; Monopoly; Conflict of Interests; Mining Industry; Utilities Industry

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September 2005
Case

IBM Network Technology (A) (Abridged)

By: Michael L. Tushman

An unconventional manager within IBM leads the creation of a business unit with multibillion-dollar potential, winning over customers and nudging the organization to make the changes needed to achieve dramatic growth. Exemplifies how organizational design and... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Management Teams; Leadership Style; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Employees; Information Technology Industry

08 Jul 2012
News

Don't Indulge. Be Happy.

05 Jul 2011
News

Three Reasons Everything Goes Better with Partners

07 Jan 2016
News

What the Fed’s Rate Hike Means for America’s Small Businesses

TeachingInterests

Technology and Operations Management

This course enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm's operations to its competitive position. It helps them to understand the complex processes underlying the development and manufacture of products as... View Details

TeachingInterests

Technology and Operations Management - MBA Required Curriculum

By: Edward McFowland III

This course enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm's... View Details

17 Jun 2015
Research & Ideas

Michael Porter on America’s Historic Energy Opportunity

A new report from experts Michael E. Porter, David S. Gee, and Gregory J. Pope at Harvard Business School and The Boston Consulting Group outlines a strategic approach for improving United States competitiveness while reducing environmental impact and making progress... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael E. Porter; Energy; Utilities

March 2020
Case

Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander... View Details

September 2023
Case

Breaking Barriers: How Brex is Shaping the Future of Financial Services for Startups

By: Marco Di Maggio, James Barnett and Susie L. Ma

In 2020, Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, co-founders and co-CEO’s of the fintech company Brex, needed to determine how to balance their vision with the desires of their investors. They intended to expand Brex’s offerings to include other products that served... View Details

Keywords: Business and Stakeholder Relations; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurial Finance; Financial Services Industry

April 2019
Technical Note

A Note on Boards in VC-Backed Ventures

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Ramana Nanda, Suraj Srinivasan and Terrence Shu

What is the value of a Board, and why does a company need one? The note documents the formal role of a Board of Directors as going beyond simply acting as legal representation of corporate ownership. Moreover, this role changes as the company moves through different... View Details

Keywords: Founders; Business Startup; Board; Board Of Directors; Business Startups; Governing and Advisory Boards; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship

September 2016
Supplement

Health Leads: Reaching for Impact (B)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Sarah Appleby

The (B) case documents the development of a strategy to achieve system-level impact in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape for a nonprofit focused on addressing patients' basic social needs through healthcare institutions. Founded in 1996 with a volunteer-staffed... View Details

Keywords: Scaling Social Impact; Scaling Social Enterprise; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Outcomes; Nonprofit Scaling; Nonprofit; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; United States

Spring 2014
Article

Ex-Ante Agreements in Standard Setting and Patent Pool Formation

By: Gaston Llanes and Joaquin Poblete

We present a model of standard setting and patent-pool formation. We study the effects of alternative standard-setting and pool-formation rules on technology choice, prices, and welfare. We find three main results. First, we show that allowing patent pools may reduce... View Details

Keywords: Standard Setting; Patent Pools; Royalty Stacking; Ex-ante Agreements; Coalition Formation; Motivation and Incentives; Patents; Agreements and Arrangements; Standards

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Read Now

October 2005 (Revised February 2008)
Case

Sales Force Integration at FedEx (A)

By: David B. Godes

Federal Express' (FedEx) recent acquisition of RPS--a ground delivery firm--gave the firm the potential to offer a single source for a client's delivery needs. However, to deliver on this potential, the firm needed to deliver the integrated solution through a single... View Details

Keywords: Horizontal Integration; Salesforce Management; Transportation; Compensation and Benefits; Transportation Industry

January 2002 (Revised October 2005)
Case

General Electric Medical Systems 2002

By: Tarun Khanna and James Weber

Discusses one of General Electric's flagship divisions--the world's leading provider of medical diagnostic imaging equipment. Provides an opportunity to examine a multinational confronting massive technological and demographic changes around the world. Genomics has... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Business Model; Change Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Genetics; Customer Value and Value Chain; Age; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; China; United States

Article

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management

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15 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

Why Giving to Others Makes Us Happy

from an academic perspective and an applied perspective,” Whillans says. “From an academic perspective, we show that large sample sizes are needed to detect the emotional rewards of spending on others. From an applied perspective, as... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

June 1998 (Revised August 2001)
Case

Wells Fargo Online Financial Services (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Nicole Tempest

Wells Fargo, the industry leader in electronic banking, has implemented a Balanced Scorecard in its online financial services group (OFS) to track and measure performance. The OFS group develops and supports services that allow existing and future banking customers to... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Internet and the Web; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Corporate Strategy; Performance Evaluation; Finance; Change; Situation or Environment; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

April 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

AI Wars

By: Andy Wu, Matt Higgins, Miaomiao Zhang and Hang Jiang

In February 2024, the world was looking to Google to see what the search giant and long-time putative technical leader in artificial intelligence (AI) would do to compete in the massively hyped technology of generative AI. Over a year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a... View Details

Keywords: AI; Artificial Intelligence; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Competitive Strategy; Technological Innovation