Publications

September 2014 (Revised March 2016)
Case

Mayo Clinic: The 2020 Initiative

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Robert S. Huckman and Jenny Lesser

Describes the challenges facing Dr. John Noseworthy, President and CEO, in implementing a long-term strategy for the growth of the Mayo Clinic—a leading academic medical center with a reputation for excellence in tertiary and quaternary health care. The case highlights... View Details

Keywords: Health; Health Care Industry; Health Care Policy; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

19 Feb 2014
News

Choosing the Right Customer

December 1997
Case

Baylor Books, Inc.

By: William J. Bruns Jr. and Jeremy Cott

The owner of a trade book publishing company must consider proper accounting for books returned and potentially returnable by book stores. Company and industry data are supplied. Costs of failure to publish books under contract and a cost accounting system for books... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Publishing Industry

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25 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University

Editor's note: It has been more than a decade since the publication of The Innovator's Dilemma, in which Clayton M. Christensen introduced the idea of disruptive technologies—those unexpected products and View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen & Henry J. Eyring; Education

February 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Doing Business in Athens, Greece

By: Alan D. MacCormack, Carlota Moniz and Emilie Billaud

This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Greece. It highlights Greece's economic transformation in the decades leading up to 2023 in the context of its history, culture, and politics. The case gives an overview of some of the main... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Technological Innovation; Foreign Direct Investment; Economic Growth; Financial Crisis; Technology Industry; Tourism Industry; Shipping Industry; Greece; Athens

September 2010 (Revised March 2012)
Case

AQR's Momentum Funds (A)

By: Daniel Baird Bergstresser, Lauren H. Cohen, Randolph B. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy

AQR is a hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut, that is considering offering a wholly new line of product to retail investors, namely the ability to invest in the price phenomenon known as momentum. There is a large body of empirical evidence supporting momentum... View Details

Keywords: Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Product Development; Financial Services Industry; Greenwich

September–October 2020
Article

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details

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2018
Working Paper

Corporate Tax Cuts Increase Income Inequality

By: Suresh Nallareddy, Ethan Rouen and Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato

This paper studies the effects of corporate tax changes on income inequality. Using state corporate tax rate changes as a setting, we show that cutting state corporate tax rates leads to increases in income inequality. This result is robust to using regression and... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Taxation; Income; Equality and Inequality; United States

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June 1997 (Revised May 1998)
Case

Exploring Brand-Person Relationships: Three Life Histories (Condensed)

The idea that "relationships" exist between consumers and products has implicitly occupied a central place in brand marketing thought and practice. Now as relational (one-on-one) marketing is said to be replacing transactional (mass) marketing as the dominant paradigm... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Relationships; Brands and Branding

09 Nov 2017
News

America is seduced by 'leadership bling' and lacks true leaders

February 2000 (Revised December 2000)
Case

Staples.com

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Joanna M. Jacobson and Gillian Morris

Staples.com, the online unit of the U.S. office supplies retailing chain Staples, faces a range of strategic and organizational issues as it accelerates its growth. Should it pursue only existing Staples customers or consumers who do not shop in Staples stores? How... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Business Units; Business Model; Growth and Development; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Business Strategy; Service Industry; United States

02 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

What If Closing the Wage Gap Means Everyone Earns Less?

touting their pay transparency policies as a means of ensuring fairness. But, as it turns out, pay transparency doesn’t necessarily increase workers’ wages, writes Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

September 1999
Background Note

Revolution in the Communications Switching Industry

By: Jay O. Light, Lynda M. Applegate and Daniel J. Green

As data packet switches threatened the voice circuit switch industry in 1999, major switch and router vendors began paying high premiums to acquire venture-backed switch companies. This note explains what a switch is and suggests why large vendors might be so anxious... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Restructuring; Capital; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Communications Industry; Electronics Industry

December 2016
Article

Selective Regulator Decoupling and Organizations' Strategic Responses

By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Frank Moers

Organizations often respond to institutional pressures by symbolically adopting policies and procedures but decoupling them from actual practice. Literature has examined why organizations decouple from regulatory pressures. In this study, we argue that decoupling... View Details

Keywords: Regulator Leniency; Beneficence; Mispricing; Upcoding; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Revenue; Health Industry

SSRN

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23 Jan 2024
Video

Harvard Dialogues: Leading When It’s Difficult

October 2011
Supplement

Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar: In-Class Comments, 4/7/11

By: David A. Garvin

Zensar is a rapidly growing, mid-sized Indian IT services company with a collaborative management philosophy and innovative HR policies. One of its practices, Vision Communities, is an inclusive forum for innovation and strategy formulation. As the company grows,... View Details

Keywords: Management; Service Operations; Family and Family Relationships; Behavior; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry; India

2021
Working Paper

Soliciting Advice Rather Than Feedback Yields More Developmental, Critical, and Actionable Input

By: Hayley Blunden, Jaewon Yoon, Ariella S. Kristal and Ashley V. Whillans

Asking for feedback is a popular way to solicit third-party input at work. However, feedback seeking is only weakly related to performance, and employees often report that the feedback that they receive is unhelpful. Addressing this discrepancy, across six studies... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Advice; Personal Development; Future Focus; Evaluative Mindset; Performance; Personal Development and Career