Publications

April 2010 (Revised November 2011)
Case

Soren Chemical: Why Is the New Swimming Pool Product Sinking?

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Sunru Yong

Topics include distribution channels, pricing, and new product marketing. Jen Moritz, the marketing manager for Soren Chemical Co. is struggling with the poor sales performance of Coracle, a new clarifier for residential swimming pools. The performance is puzzling... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Mix; New Product Marketing; Pricing; Branding; Price; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Product Launch; Brands and Branding; Communication Strategy; Chemical Industry

31 Oct 2023
News

Securing a Resilient Future for Senegal

Sijh Diagne (photo by Michael Bucher) In March 2020, Sijh Diagne (MBA 2017) was asked to serve as an advisor to Senegal’s minister of economy, planning, and cooperation. He was charged with leading the country’s private-sector development; but just as became the case... View Details

02 Nov 2022
News

Strong Finish

Heela Yang and Alicia Sontag Four years after its launch in 2015, the Brazilian-inspired beauty brand Sol de Janeiro was already profitable; its skin-tightening Bum Bum Cream had been Sephora’s top-selling skin care product for three... View Details

Web

Building Entrepreneurial Organizations - Health Care

in R&D labs to their development for commercial use. This is for students who want to pursue entrepreneurship in science and technology, anticipate leading market launch teams in incumbent organizations, or are interested in becoming... View Details

01 Jun 2023
News

Buy Big, Sell Small

If you live in a rural village or small city in India and run low on toothpaste, rice, or cooking oil, you’ll likely visit your local kirana, the equivalent of a US neighborhood variety store and a mainstay of the country’s $932 billion retail economy. The shops are... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; retail; supply chain management; entrepreneurship; leadership; innovation; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

01 Mar 2024
News

Action Plan: Wild at Heart

C-suite roles, including as the global head of client analytics for Merrill Lynch and CMO for JPMorgan, ITG, and the state of Rhode Island. But she also always had an eye for design. Her early career included launching a dress line for... View Details

Keywords: Christine Speer Lejeune; gardening; entrepreneurship; sustainability

November 2019 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Grupo Éxito: Facing Colombia's Competitive Grocery Retail Industry

By: José B. Alvarez, Carla Larangeira, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Miguel Diaz Moreno

Grupo Éxito, a leading South American retailer, faced declining market shares in Colombia in 2019 with the arrival of low-cost competitors and emerging digital trends. Originally founded in Medellín, Éxito had over the course of its seventy-year history evolved from a... View Details

Keywords: Grocery; Market Share; Information Technology; Trends; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; Colombia; Latin America

January 2008
Article

Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus

By: Zoltan J. Acs, Edward L. Glaeser, Robert E. Litan, Lee Fleming, Stephan J. Goetz, William R. Kerr, Steven Klepper, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Olav Sorenson and William C. Strange

Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise,... View Details

Keywords: Business Headquarters; Business Startups; Development Economics; Economy; Entrepreneurship; Policy; Taxation; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Business Processes; Expansion; Internet

Read Now

February 2019 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Electric Car Wars, 2018

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

Electric cars had long been championed by environmentalists as a superior solution to the internal combustion engine (ICE), but, despite large government incentives and strong pioneering efforts by a few automakers over the years, electric and hybrid cars and light... View Details

19 Apr 2023
News

A Kick Start for Latin American Startups

When Monica Saggioro Leal (MBA 2018) and her business partner, Lara Lemann, started MAYA Capital, a tech-focused, Brazilian VC firm launched in 2018, they wanted to take a hands-on approach with their startup investments in their first 12 months. Even so, they were... View Details

Keywords: Maureen Harmon

20 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Panama Canal: Troubled History, Astounding Turnaround

canal as astoundingly well as it has. Omar Torrijos started the destruction of the patronage networks through which the old oligarchy controlled Panamanian politics, and Manuel Noriega completed it. Torrijos launched the attack as part of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Transportation

Web

Buy Now, Pay Later: Cars on Time

outstanding in the United States—about $850 billion—is about equal to the nation’s credit card debt. 23 In the 1920s, auto financing took a giant leap forward when the car manufacturers entered the game. In 1924, GM launched the General... View Details

23 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

The Power of Conversational Leadership

your vision but also at the same time listening to what employees have to say," Groysberg says. Talk, Inc. highlights the case of the Indian company Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., which at the turn of the twenty-first century View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

September 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Careem: Base Camp or Mountain Peak? Designing an OS for Scaling

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Gamze Yucaoglu and Alpana Thapar

This case focuses on designing a fast growing organization. It is part of a two-case set that is taught together to cover the scaling journey.
Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service aimed to ‘simplify and improve the lives of people, and build an awesome... View Details

Keywords: Scale; Values; Rights; Operating Systems; Business Startup; Transportation; Organizational Design; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Decision Making; Managerial Roles; Dubai; United Arab Emirates; Middle East

2017
Working Paper

Cluster Mapping as a Tool for Development

By: Christian H.M. Ketels

This report builds on the foundational work on cluster mapping that Prof. Michael E. Porter has led at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC), Harvard Business School over the last two decades. He launched the U.S. Cluster Mapping Initiative in the late... View Details

Keywords: Industry Clusters; Development Economics