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- September 2024
- Case
Eat App: Building and Monetizing an End-to-End Dining Experience Solution
By: Elie Ofek and Ahmed Dahawy
Founded in 2015 in Bahrain, Eat App was an up-and-coming player in the global restaurant management software business. In early 2024, having shifted to a product-led growth strategy, the company’s co-founders faced a host of decisions that could greatly impact their... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Navigating Software Vulnerabilities: Eighteen Years of Evidence from Medium and Large U.S. Organizations
By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein
How prevalent are severe software vulnerabilities, how fast do software users respond to the availability of secure versions, and what determines the variance in the installation distribution? Using the largest dataset ever assembled on user updates, tracking server... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Corporate Culture Homogeneity and Top Executive Incentive Design: Evidence from CEO Compensation Contracts
By: Dennis Campbell, Ruidi Shang and Zhifang Zhang
We examine how corporate cultures characterized by high degrees of homogeneity in the underlying values and beliefs of organizational members are related to the design of CEO incentive compensation contracts. We argue that culture homogeneity within firms lowers... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
When and How Should Firms Differentiate? Quality and Advertising Decisions in a Duopoly
By: Dominique Olié Lauga, Elie Ofek and Zsolt Katona
A prominent hallmark of competitive interaction is the desire to differentiate from rivals. In this article, the authors examine under what conditions firms will differentiate through product quality versus advertising intensity. Firms select quality in a first stage,... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place
By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein
In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
How to Fix ESG Reporting
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
Investors, advocacy groups, academics, and the 200 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable have asked corporations to take on an added purpose beyond a narrow pursuit of shareholder value. In response, many companies now issue ESG (Environmental, Societal, and Governance)... View Details
Keywords: ESG Reporting; Sustainability; Corporate Purpose; Greenhouse Gas; Activity-Based Costing; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Goals and Objectives; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Accountability
- January 2021
- Article
The Effects of Menu Costs on Retail Performance: Evidence from Adoption of the Electronic Shelf Label Technology
By: Ioannis Stamatopoulos, Achal Bassamboo and Antonio Moreno
We use the adoption of electronic shelf labels (ESLs) by an international grocery retailer in 2015 to identify the effects of physical menu costs (i.e., labor and material costs of price adjustment) on retail performance. We find that the installation of ESLs increased... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
- Teaching Note
Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods
By: Jill Avery
Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods (CPG), offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3.00 price point that promised... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Collusion in Brokered Markets
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Richard Lowery
The U.S. residential real estate agency market presents a puzzle for economic theory: commissions on real estate transactions have remained high for decades even though entry is frequent and costs are low. We model the real estate agency market, and other brokered... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Systems Design West
By: Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
Jenn Braus (HBS 2013) was halfway through the 90-day exclusivity period for her proposed acquisition of Systems Design West (SDW). She had completed her business and accounting due diligence. Just as she was about to ask her lawyer to begin drafting the purchase... View Details
- March 2018
- Article
Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior
By: Jackson G. Lu, Julia J. Lee, F. Gino and Adam D. Galinsky
Air pollution is a serious problem that influences billions of people globally. Although the health and environmental costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and... View Details
- November 2017 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods
By: Jill Avery
Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods, offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3 price point that promised an... View Details
Keywords: Brand; Brand Management; Retailing; Retailing Industry; Private Label; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Ecommerce; Digital Marketing; Consumer Packaged Goods; Startup; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Disruption; Food; Product Marketing; Marketing Channels; Consumer Behavior; Brands and Branding; Venture Capital; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry; United States; North America
- September 2017 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
Asset Allocation at the Cook County Pension Fund
By: Emil Siriwardane, Juliane Begenau and Yuval Gonczarowski
Nickol Hackett, chief investment officer of the Cook County Pension Fund, is responsible for investing the fund’s $9 billion worth of assets on behalf of the employees of Cook County, Illinois. Like many other defined-benefit pensions at the time, the Cook County... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Operations in the On-Demand Economy: Staffing Services with Self-Scheduling Capacity
By: Itai Gurvich, Martin Lariviere and Antonio Moreno
Motivated by recent innovations in service delivery such as ride-sharing services and work-from-home call centers, we study capacity management when workers self-schedule. Our service provider chooses capacity to maximize its profit (revenue from served customers minus... View Details
- May 2016 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
RegionFly: Cutting Costs in the Airline Industry
By: Susanna Gallani and Eva Labro
RegionFly is a small, private airline specializing in ultra-premium services. Founded shortly after the "Golden Age of airline travel," RegionFly's financial performance had been strong for several decades. More recently, however, the results have taken a downward... View Details
- 2015
- Article
International Trade, Multinational Activity, and Corporate Finance
By: C. Fritz Foley and Kalina Manova
An emerging new literature brings unique ideas from corporate finance to the study of international trade and investment. Insights about differences in the development of financial institutions across countries, the role of financial constraints, and the use of... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Crowdsourced Digital Goods and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Open Source Software
By: Frank Nagle
As firms increasingly rely on crowdsourced digital goods, understanding their impact on productivity becomes critical. This study measures the firm-level productivity impact of one such good, non-pecuniary (free) open source software (OSS). The results show a... View Details
- August 2014 (Revised March 2016)
- Case
Thomas Cook Group on the Brink (A)
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Stuart C. Gilson and Aldo Sesia
Harriett Green, the newly appointed CEO of Thomas Cook Group, faces a daunting set of business and financial challenges at the 171-year old UK travel services company. The company has lost almost £600 million in the last three quarters; has seen its stock price fall... View Details
Keywords: Turnaround; Corporate Restructuring; Change Leadership; Female Ceo; Change Management; Communication Strategy; Borrowing and Debt; Cash Flow; Cost Management; Financial Liquidity; Financial Management; Executive Compensation; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Value Creation; Travel Industry; United Kingdom
- 24 Jan 2014
- Other Presentation
Value Based Health Care Delivery
According to Harvard professor Michael Porter, health care reform is proving to be one of the defining issues of the 21st century, both in the United States and throughout the world. Costs are exploding even in single-payer systems driven by aging populations and... View Details
- October 2013
- Article
The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care
By: Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee
In health care, the days of business as usual are over. Around the world, every health care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality, despite the hard work of well-intentioned, well-trained clinicians. Health care leaders and policy makers have tried... View Details