Publications

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April 2025
Case

Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Allison Ciechanover and George Gonzalez

In early 2025, Salesforce was a global leader in cloud-based enterprise software, best known for pioneering customer relationship management (CRM) delivered as a service. Over the past two decades, the company had expanded into marketing, customer service, analytics,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customer Relationship Management; Price; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Sales; Business Strategy; Ethics; Product Launch; Technology Industry; United States

October 2023
Case

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: A Curriculum Provider Puts Itself on the Hook for Student Outcomes

By: John J-H Kim, Derek C. M. van Bever, Michael Norris and Max Hancock

Jack Lynch, CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) since 2017, was leading the company’s transformation from a legacy textbook publisher to a digital-first student outcomes provider, which earned subscription revenue from digital products and curriculum. In 2023, HMH... View Details

Keywords: Edtech; Textbook; Publishing; Leading Change; Change Management; Transformation; Digital Transformation; Expansion; Business Strategy; Publishing Industry; Education Industry; United States

October 2010 (Revised July 2012)
Supplement

Robin Bienenstock at Sanford C. Bernstein

By: Linda A. Hill and Dana Teppert

Robin Bienenstock, a senior sell-side equity research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, considers how to build her research franchise given the changing nature of the industry and the firm. A collaborative research paper called "Computer in Your Pocket" was recently... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Sharing; Leadership; Groups and Teams; Research; Cooperation; Financial Services Industry

December 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Strategy and CEO Succession at Starbucks

By: Krishna G. Palepu and David Lane

On August 13, 2024, Starbucks announced that Laxman Narasimhan who was appointed as the CEO only in September 2023, was stepping down as CEO and board director “with immediate effect.” Laxman would be replaced on September 9 by Brian Niccol, CEO since 2018 of Chipotle... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Corporate Governance; Leadership; Management Succession; Cost Management; Labor Unions; Working Conditions; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Service Operations; Investment Activism; Governing and Advisory Boards; Resignation and Termination; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

December 2011
Article

Manager-Specific Effects on Earnings Guidance: An Analysis of Top Executive Turnovers

By: Francois Brochet, Lucile Faurel and Sarah McVay

We investigate how managers contribute to the provision of earnings guidance by examining the association between top executive turnovers and guidance. Although firm and industry characteristics are important determinants of guidance, we conclude that CEOs participate... View Details

Keywords: Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Teams; Policy; Decisions; Change; Risk and Uncertainty; Leadership

SSRN

Find at Harvard

01 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 1, 2008

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-024.pdf Cases & Course MaterialsThe Center for Creative Leadership Harvard Business School Case 308-013 The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) was founded in 1970... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Aug 2022
News

Understanding the Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard

Illustrations by Don Foley To expand faculty research on how technological change is affecting business and society and to help reinvent this change, HBS launched in July the Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard (D^3). It... View Details

2024
Case

Christiana Figueres and the Paris Climate Negotiations (A)

By: James K. Sebenius, Laurence A. Green, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Lara SanPietro and Mina Subramanian

This three-part, stop action case study, structured for classroom discussion, centers on Harvard’s Program on Negotiation 2022 Great Negotiator, Christiana Figueres, and her efforts as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Negotiation; Environmental Regulation; International Relations; Leadership

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Blog

Leading in Tough Times: HBS Faculty Member Amy C. Edmondson on Psychological Safety

Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, has long studied the performance of teams in the workplace. Her latest book is The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the... View Details

Web

A Commitment to Sustainability | About

A Commitment to Sustainability We are addressing the challenges and opportunities of sustainability leadership through campus operations and community engagement. Harvard Office of Sustainability 53 % Reduction in waste, CY 2023 54 %... View Details

12 Dec 2006
First Look

First Look: December 12, 2006

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=207041 Clinical Change at Intermountain Healthcare Harvard Business School Case 607-023 Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Web

Aldrich Hall | About

supported by unusually long I beams, intended to facilitate future reconfigurations. However, when the 105,726-square-foot building was updated in the 1980s, its basic design, acoustics, sight lines, and lighting were all deemed to have stood up well to the test of... View Details

06 Oct 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

18 Tips Managers Can Use to Lead Through COVID's Rising Waters

how they have been contributing to team goals. Reestablish norms. Most important, the relaunch is the time for team members to reevaluate how to conduct themselves and interact amid the changing circumstances. To learn more, read It’s... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

September 2019 (Revised September 2020)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)

By: Herman Leonard, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James "Hondo" Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. Overseeing acquisitions in one of the... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Crowdsourcing; Prototyping; Navy; Entrepreneurship; Public Equity; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; United States

April 2008
Case

Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (A)

By: Paul W. Marshall, Michael Shih-ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong

In late November 2000, Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., the once-monopolized telecom operator owned by the Taiwanese government, was on its way to privatization. Mr. C.K. Mao, Chairman of the company, who headed the job only three months earlier, after its prior chairman... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Employee Relationship Management; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Privatization; Competition; Telecommunications Industry; Taiwan