Publications

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November 1999 (Revised June 2006)
Case

DLJdirect: "Putting Our Reputation Online"

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Gillian Morris

Online broker DLJdirect faced two decisions during the fall of 1999: what customer segments should it target and how much should it spend on marketing? Unlike its competitors, who focused either on day traders or more mainstream investors, DLJdirect differentiated its... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Competitive Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Cost Management; Business Plan; Research and Development; Customers; Budgets and Budgeting; Online Advertising; Internet; Financial Services Industry

October 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

JCPenney: Back in Business

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Christine Snively

In 2016, JCPenney was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround after coming dangerously close to bankruptcy. Under CEO Marvin Ellison, the company had identified three strategic objectives—a focus on omnichannel, private label goods, and increasing revenue per... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Customer Management; Omnichannel; Turnarounds; Private Label; Promotions; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Competition; Retail Industry; United States

August 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

IBM Software Solutions (A)

By: Michael L. Tushman, Charles A. O'Reilly III and Robert Chapman Wood

Executives and managers of key IBM software units struggle to make IBM a top player in the post-mainframe era. When one software unit introduces a visionary product with potential to create a new leadership position for the firm, the result is an epic conflict in the... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Managerial Roles; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Conflict Management; Information Technology Industry

Find at Harvard

George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He co-leads a Lab, within Harvard's Digital, Data, Design Institute, and serves on the faculty steering commitee of Harvard University's Salata Institute. He... View Details

Keywords: asset management; insurance industry; automobiles; industrial goods; fashion; food; green technology

2014
Working Paper

The State of Small Business Lending: Credit Access During the Recovery and How Technology May Change the Game

By: Karen G. Mills and Brayden McCarthy

Small businesses are core to America's economic competitiveness. Not only do they employ half of the nation's private sector workforce—about 120 million people—but since 1995 they have created approximately two-thirds of the net new jobs in our country. Yet in recent... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Financing and Loans; United States

SSRN

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January 2010 (Revised March 2013)
Case

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: F. Asis Martinez Jerez, Thomas Steenburgh, Jill Avery and Lisa Brem

HubSpot, a web marketing startup is under pressure from VCs to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. In the case, students explore the drivers of customer churn and uncover opportunities to increase customer retention across the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Consumer Behavior; Happiness; Consulting Industry

January 2008 (Revised September 2009)
Case

Financing American Housing Construction in the Aftermath of War

By: David Moss and Cole Bolton

At the start of WWI, the United States faced a significant housing shortage. Public officials feared the spread of disease—and even communism—in the nation's cramped urban centers where vacancy rates held near zero and families often "doubled up" in single-housing... View Details

Keywords: Central Banking; Bonds; Mortgages; Government Legislation; Business History; Housing; Banking Industry; United States

August 2018
Case

Enfoca: Private Equity in Peru

By: Victoria Ivashina and Jeffrey Boyar

This case follows Enfoca, Peru’s largest local private equity firm and its portfolio company Maestro, a leading player in Peru’s hardware retail market. Peru’s GDP growth between 2008 and 2014 was the highest of any Latin American country. Growth of the Peruvian middle... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Emerging Markets; Capital Markets; Transition; Strategy; Peru

December 2020
Article

Different Founders, Different Firms: A Comparative Analysis of Academic and Non-academic Startups

By: Maria P. Roche, Annamaria Conti and Frank T. Rothaermel

What role do differences in founders' occupational backgrounds play in new venture performance? Analyzing a novel dataset of 2,998 founders creating 1,723 innovative startups in biomedicine, we find that the likelihood and hazard of achieving a liquidity event are... View Details

Keywords: Founders; Innovation; Occupational Imprinting; Academic Startups; Non-academic Startups; Founder Heterogeneity; Business Startups; Innovation and Invention; Performance; Demographics; Analysis

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March 1996 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Vistakon: 1 Day Acuvue Disposable Contact Lenses

By: Alvin J. Silk, Bruce Issacson and Marie Bell

Vistakon, an independent and entrepreneurial subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, pioneered the production and marketing of disposable contact lenses with the 1987 launch of Acuvue, the first disposable extended-wear lens--a soft contact lens that patients wear for a... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Business Subsidiaries; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Price; Risk Management; Marketing; Product Positioning; Production; Performance Effectiveness; Consumer Products Industry; United States

2014
Teaching Note

Yonyou 2013 (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Zheng Xiaoming and Ziqian Zhao

The case describes how a leading Chinese management software provider Yonyou (formerly known as "UFIDA") disrupted its value chain-based business model to transform itself into a platform provider. The case describes Yonyou's past success, the market forces and... View Details

Keywords: Business Models; ERP; Platforms; Strategy; Transformations; China; Information Technology; China

06 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

The Problem with Hedge Funds

noon; moments later hedge funds are buying or selling. They've added a new dynamic to the market that is reflected in the enormously increased volume of stock transactions and in the very greatly shortened... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

10 Jul 2007
News

How to Reduce Risk in the Financial System

February 2018 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Huawei: How Can We Lead the Way?

By: Elie Ofek, Tian Tao, Eden Yin and Nancy Hua Dai

On September 12, 2017, just as Apple’s Tim Cook was unveiling the iPhone X, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group (CBG), and Glory Cheung, his Chief Marketing Officer, were discussing some key strategic issues regarding Huawei’s smartphone business.... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Product Positioning; Marketing Communications; Price; Competitive Strategy; Global Strategy

16 Feb 2016
First Look

February 16, 2016

new collaborative efforts with government agencies, including the Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commission. Both the private and public initiatives at industry rationalization challenged existing ideas of antitrust law,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

04 Sep 2017
Blog Post

HBS Startup Bootcamp and Founders Unfiltered

I’ve kept a list of new product and business ideas on my phone for over 10 years now. While they range from dog toys to B2B SaaS businesses, they all have one thing in common: they only exist on my phone. I’ve never seriously pursued any... View Details

June 2001
Case

Bedrock Productions

By: Michael J. Roberts and Michael L. Tushman

Describes a young Web consulting firm going through a very rapid period of growth in late 1999 and 2000. The founder/CEO sees himself as a strategist and marketer who is less well-suited to the operational details, that are expanding as the firm grows. A president is... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Management Teams; Change Management; Managerial Roles; Consulting Industry