Publications

Find at Harvard

June 2016
Teaching Note

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: Jill Avery, Asis Martinez Jerez and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, a web marketing startup selling inbound marketing software to small- and medium-sized businesses, is under pressure from its venture capital partners to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. The B2B SaaS company is in the... View Details

Keywords: CRM; Customer Acquisition; Customer Retention; Churn Management; SaaS Business Models; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Startup; Software; Monitoring And Control; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Accounting; Technology Industry; United States

2024
Working Paper

The Operational Impact of Customer Location in On-Demand Services

By: Natalie Epstein, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

The rapid growth of on-demand delivery services, particularly in the food and grocery sectors, has driven the expansion of hyperlocal fulfillment centers (FCs). This paper uses data from an on-demand grocery delivery platform in Latin America to assess how customer... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Logistics; Geographic Location; Service Delivery; Quality; Retail Industry; Latin America

SSRN

April 2016 (Revised June 2017)
Teaching Note

Dollar General Bids for Family Dollar

By: Jonas Heese, Paula A. Price and Suraj Srinivasan

In spring 2015, Dollar General CEO Rick Dreiling was looking ahead to retiring at year's end but worried about ensuring continued growth for the company he had built since 2008 into a market leader in the U.S. discount retail world. Dollar General operated over 11,500... View Details

Keywords: Dollar General; Family Dollar; Dollar Tree; Antitrust; Board Of Directors; Activist Investors; Federal Trade Commission; Acquisition; Valuation; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry

08 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Are Paywalls Saving Newspapers?

Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “To our knowledge, ours is the first study to do that.” Total upheaval Over the past 25 years, the once-profitable newspaper industry has endured upheaval due to... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Journalism & News; Media & Broadcasting

Web

From C-Suite to CEO - Alumni

to build your skills. It’s also critical to assess the market. Get to know your industry or sector of interest broadly and deeply, familiarize yourself with the competitive landscape, and develop a point of view outside of your company.... View Details

18 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas, April 18

March 27, 2017 Harvard Business Review How the Water Industry Learned to Embrace Data By: Cespedes, Frank V., and Amir Peleg Abstract—Most current talk about “big data” seems to assume the disintermediation or replacement of physical... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

November – December 2011
Article

Competitive Strategy for Open Source Software

By: Vineet Kumar, Brett Gordon and Kannan Srinivasan

Commercial open source software (COSS) products-privately developed software based on publicly available source code-represent a rapidly growing, multibillion-dollar market. A unique aspect of competition in the COSS market is that many open source licenses require... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Product Development; Growth and Development; Markets; Motivation and Incentives; Quality; Policy; Perspective; Profit; Open Source Distribution; Emerging Markets

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22 Sep 2023
News

Capital Connection

Vernon Beckford (MBA 2013) saw the gap almost immediately. From the beginning of his career in commercial real estate finance—first at Credit Suisse and then later at CW Capital and Global Atlantic Financial Group—Beckford observed Wall Street’s obsession with... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; Real Estate

01 Jul 2020
Blog Post

How SVMP Helped Me Take My Next Steps (2+2) and Find Myself

Through what at the time felt like sheer luck, I landed an internship at Procter & Gamble on the Dish Engineering team between my sophomore and junior year. That internship taught me a lot about what a “corporate job” in the Consumer and Product Goods View Details

September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Supplement

Glenn Defense Marine Asia (B)

By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal

This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case... View Details

September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Glenn Defense Marine Asia (A)

By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal

This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case... View Details

17 Mar 2015
First Look

First Look: March 17

of NiSource's recent proposal to pursue a tax-advantaged spin-off its pipeline business. Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/215026-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 815-001 Growth Hacking at Bazaart (A) The... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

Judging Criteria - Alumni

addressable market for your product and service. Highlight growth and trends. Attractive business model: How do you plan to make money? Who pays you? What are your distribution channels? What is your gross margin? Is your business model... View Details

September 2008 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Odyssey Healthcare

By: Robert F. Higgins, Virginia Fuller and Umer Raffat

In January 2001, Dick Burnham, CEO of Odyssey Healthcare, and Odyssey's Board of Directors were considering selling the hospice care company to a larger provider or making an initial public offering (IPO). With 38 hospice locations in 21 states, Odyssey had been... View Details

Keywords: Liquidity; Venture Creation/development; Hospice; Venture Capital; Financial Liquidity; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Plan; Entrepreneurship; Health Industry; United States

January 2018
Case

Ak Gıda: IPO or Strategic Sale

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Eren Kuzucu

In 2015, Yıldiz Holding, one of the world’s largest producer of confections, biscuits and crackers, was at the end of its divestiture process from Ak Gida, one of the leading dairy companies in Turkey. The company had adopted a dual track process, pursuing an initial... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Private Sector; For-Profit Firms; Business Model; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Growth and Development Strategy; Value Creation; Decision Making; Growth Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Initial Public Offering; Business Conglomerates; Business Exit or Shutdown; Family Business; Joint Ventures; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey

Web

Climate Impact - Business & Environment

solutions with an initial focus on industrial heat for hard-to-abate sectors.” Charley Cummings MBA 2011 | President & CEO, Walden Mutual Bank “Walden Mutual is an online bank that is helping to build a more vibrant and sustainable local... View Details

28 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 28, 2009

Industry Location and International Regulatory Variation Author:Arthur A. Daemmrich Publication:Chap. 16 in Ways of Regulating: Therapeutic Agents between Plants, Shops, and Consulting Rooms. Vol. 363, 271-290. Berlin, Germany: Max Planck... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2017 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Ant Financial (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Ying Zhang, Krishna G. Palepu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai

Headquartered in Hangzhou (China), Ant Financial has grown into a fintech “Unicorn.” The fintech empire that the company established spanned verticals such as mobile and online payment (Alipay), money market fund (Yu’e Bao), wealth management (Ant Fortune),... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Global Strategy; Finance; Opportunities; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry