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- October 2024
- Case
Sacoor Brothers: From Co-Family CEOs to No Family CEOs?
By: Lauren Cohen, David Ager and Alpana Thapar
Sacoor Brothers, a luxury clothing retail company, was founded in 1989 in Lisbon, Portugal, by four brothers—Malik, Salim, Rahimo, and Moez. After establishing a strong presence in Portugal, the brothers were drawn to the rapidly growing retail markets in the Middle... View Details
Keywords: Family Business; Growth; Geographic Mobility; Private Equity; Investment; Family Office; Governance; Professionalization; Institutional Development; Second-generation; Third-generation; Transition; Jordan; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Middle East; United Arab Emirates; Saudi Arabia; Portugal
- July 2024
- Case
Freelancer, Ltd.
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes
Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details
- April 2024
- Teaching Note
eBee: Affordable Mobility for Africa
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Gamze Yucaoglu and Jordan Mitchell
The case opens in March 2023, as Sten van der Ham and Jaap Maljers, CEO and co-founder of eBee, an electric bike (e-bike) company in Africa, are contemplating the different avenues for growth and path to profitability for the young and ambitious company. In 2023, the... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
eBee: Affordable Mobility for Africa
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in March 2023, as Sten van der Ham and Jaap Maljers, CEO and co-founder of eBee, an electric bike (e-bike) company in Africa, are contemplating the different avenues for growth and path to profitability for the young and ambitious company. In 2023, the... View Details
- January 2023
- Article
Firm-Induced Migration Paths and Strategic Human-Capital Outcomes
By: Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Victoria Sevcenko
Firm-induced migration typically entails firms relocating workers to fill value-creating positions at destination locations. But such relocated workers are often exposed to external employment opportunities at their destinations, possibly triggering turnover. We... View Details
- December 2022
- Supplement
Freelancer, Ltd. Case Supplement
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes
Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500 companies,... View Details
Keywords: Labor Markets; Freelancers; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Globalized Firms and Management; Human Capital; Employment; Digital Platforms; Global Range; Adoption; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry; Employment Industry; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Rural; Urban; Emerging Market; Mobile Technology; Finance; Money; Inflation and Deflation; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Demographics; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Behavioral Finance; Currency; Banks and Banking; Commercial Banking; Financial Strategy; Rural Scope; Urban Scope; Innovation Strategy; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Consumer Behavior; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Adoption; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- April 2022
- Article
Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment
By: Meg Rithmire
How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into a major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses
By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan
The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,... View Details
- Article
Geographic Mobility, Immobility, and Geographic Flexibility—A Review and Agenda for Research on the Changing Geography of Work
I review and integrate a wide range of literature that has examined how geographic mobility of high-skilled workers creates value for organizations and individuals. Drawing on this interdisciplinary literature, I document that geographic mobility creates value by... View Details
- September 2021
- Case
Worldreader: Helping Readers Build a Better World
By: Marco Bertini, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2010, Worldreader was an international nonprofit organization that promoted reading to children around the world. For many years, Worldreader distributed e-readers to under-resourced communities and funded its operations primarily through philanthropic... View Details
Keywords: Subscription Model; Price; Financial Strategy; Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Range; Goals and Objectives; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Markets; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Nonprofit Organizations; Society; Social Issues; Strategy; Commercialization; Expansion; Segmentation; Education Industry; Africa; Asia; Latin America; Europe; North and Central America; South America
- April 2021
- Article
Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographical Flexibility
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson
An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work-from-anywhere, so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work-from-home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work-from-anywhere (WFA) programs... View Details
- March 2021
- Case
Founders Factory
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and James Barnett
In January 2020, Founders Factory (FF) Executive Chairman Brent Hoberman and CEO Henry Lane Fox were considering FF’s expansion strategy. FF operated as a venture capital (VC) fund built around an accelerator and incubator, and organized around sectors within... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Markets; Planning; Expansion; Global Range; Business Model; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Industry; Africa; South Africa; Johannesburg; Europe; France; Paris; United Kingdom; England; London; United States; New York (city, NY)
- March 2021 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
M-KOPA: Empowering Lives
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Wale Lawal and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The Pay As You Go solar power company in East Africa had sales of $71 million in 2019. It wished to grow to $300 million by 2025. M-KOPA, founded by three entrepreneurs in 2011, had grown nicely in Kenya and Uganda to reach nearly 750,000 households with an innovative... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Housing Consumption and the Cost of Remote Work
By: Christopher Stanton and Pratyush Tiwari
This paper estimates housing choice differences between households with and without remote workers. Prior to the pandemic, the expenditure share on housing was more than seven percent higher for remote households compared to similar non-remote households in the same... View Details
- 2020
- Chapter
Introduction: China's Rise and the New Silk Road in Global Context
By: William C. Kirby, Marijk C. van der Wende, Nian Cai Liu and Simon Marginson
The introduction prefaces how an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars from Europe, China, the USA, Russia, and Australia investigate how academic mobility and cooperation is taking shape along the New Silk Road and what difference it will make, if any,... View Details
- July 2020
- Article
Intra-firm Geographic Mobility: Value Creation Mechanisms and Future Research Directions
This paper argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The paper presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value... View Details
- July–August 2020
- Article
Make the Most of Your Relocation
Although the COVID-19 crisis has halted travel in recent months, geographic mobility has become critical for managers and knowledge workers hoping to advance in today’s globalized economy, and that trend is unlikely to reverse. Geographic mobility can pay off... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Food Security and Human Mobility During the COVID-19 Lockdown
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari and Tarun Khanna
During the COVID-19 crisis, millions of migrants around the world face food insecurity. This could force migrants to travel during the pandemic, exposing them to health risks and accelerating the spread of the virus. Anecdotal evidence demonstrates the importance of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19; Migrants; Food Security; Mobility; Health Pandemics; Food; Distribution; Policy; Global Range
- 2021
- Working Paper
Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment
By: Meg Rithmire
How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’ economic... View Details