Publications

September 2016 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Zalora Philippines: From Growth to Profitability

By: Donald Ngwe and Thales Teixeira

In May 2015 Paulo Campos, co-founder and CEO of Zalora Philippines, found himself at a crucial turning point in his young company’s development. In just three years, Zalora had come from entering the Philippine fashion retail industry as an unknown quantity to becoming... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Business Subsidiaries; Business Growth and Maturation; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; Sweden; Southeast Asia; Philippines

08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

A Balanced Scorecard Approach To Measure Customer Profitability

no longer suffers losses from offering customized services. The menu prices also motivate customers to shift their purchasing and delivery patterns in ways that lower total costs to the benefit of both the company and its customers.... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

07 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The Debate over Taxing Foreign Profits

exempting foreign income from U.S. taxation. This could be accompanied by some bells and whistles to ensure that American firms didn't react to exemption by trying to shift profits offshore more so than they... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

12 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

How Can Financial Advisors Thrive in Shifting Markets? Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

How can financial planners expand their businesses as their core population ages and young investors flirt with novel financial products like cryptocurrency? The most profitable path forward is to follow the very advice they often give... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Financial Services

2021
Working Paper

Elusive Safety: The New Geography of Capital Flows and Risk

By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Ruth Judson and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr

A confidential dataset with industry-level disaggregation of U.S. cross-border claims and liabilities, shows U.S. securities to be increasingly intermediated by tax-haven-financial-centers (THFC) and less regulated funds. These securities are risky, in... View Details

Keywords: Tax Havens; Financial Centers; Geography Of Flows; Profit Shifting; Tax Avoidance; Risk; Safe Assets; Hetergeneous Firms; Endogenous Entry; Endogenous Monitoring; Regulatory Arbitrage; Assets; Safety; Risk and Uncertainty; Capital; Global Range

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18 Jul 2023
Interview

Jeffrey Rayport on Product Market Fit, Profit Market Fit and Whiplash, and More

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Doug Levin

This episode of "Lessons from Startup Life" podcast features Jeffrey Rayport, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Jeffrey specializes in teaching and researching growth-stage technology ventures and their scalability. Prior to... View Details

Keywords: Scaling And Growth; Start-up; Diversity; Equity; Inclusion; Technology; Business Startups; Product Marketing; Business Growth and Maturation

October, 2022
Article

The Economic Dynamics of Competing Power Generation Sources

By: Gunther Glenk and Stefan Reichelstein

Competing power generation sources have experienced considerable shifts in both their revenue potential and their costs in recent years. Here we introduce the concept of Levelized Profit Margins (LPM) to capture the changing unit economics of both intermittent and... View Details

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16 May 2018
HBS Seminar

Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Duke University, Economics

August 1994
Case

Kirin Brewery Company, Ltd.

Describes the introduction of two profit planning and control systems at Kirin as part of its shift from a production-oriented to a consumer-oriented strategy. Specifically, documents Kirin's use of profit centers to increase efficiency and its use of pseudo profit... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Organizational Structure; Management Systems; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Japan

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10 Oct 2019
News

Slowing Tech Represents A 'Real Reckoning'

March 2019 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Philips Lighting: Light-as-a-Service

By: Mark R. Kramer, Thijs Geradts and Bhanuteja Nadella

As LEDs with a 25-year lifespan replace incandescent lightbulbs, Philips Lighting faced major disruption and began to explore a new shared value business model of selling light as a service. Although it offers better profit margins and a reduced environmental... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Business Model; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy

February 2023 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Kvadrat: Focus, Execute, and Grow

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

Kvadrat was a family-owned global textiles company. The company had enjoyed impressive top-line growth and was shifting gears to emphasize profitability via a shorter strategic agenda. Agenda items included: U.S. expansion, generating improved margins in its consumer... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Culture; International Expansion; Organization; Family Business; Leadership; Growth and Development; Strategy; Organizations; Supply Chain; Family Ownership; Profit; Organizational Culture; Denmark

September 3, 2020
Article

How to Measure a Company’s Real Impact

By: Ronald Cohen and George Serafeim

Impact transparency will reshape capitalism. By shifting the pursuit of profit away from negligently creating problems to purposefully creating valuable solutions for the world, it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we... View Details

Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Impact Investment; Impact Investment Funds; Accountability; Accounting Information; Corporate Performance; Sustainability; Social Impact; Capitalism; Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Social Enterprise; Society

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August 2024
Case

Novo Nordisk Foundation

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia Comeau

In 2024, Novo Nordisk A/S was one of the most profitable firms in the world, thanks largely to just two GLP-1-based drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Unusually, this incredibly profitable firm was controlled not by individual private shareholders, but by a non-profit... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceutical Companies; Diabetes; Obesity; Foundation; Non-profit Management; Pharmaceutical Industry; Denmark; Europe

2017
Working Paper

Firm Selection and Corporate Cash Holdings

By: Juliane Begenau and Berardino Palazzo

Among stock market entrants, more firms over time are R&D intensive with initially lower profitability but higher growth potential. This sample-selection effect determines the secular trend in U.S. public firms’ cash holdings. A stylized firm industry model allows us... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Market Entry and Exit; Supply and Industry; Research and Development

SSRN

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October 2000 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Software Associates

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The president of a small consulting firm has just seen his second-quarter profit and loss statement, showing an increase in revenues but a substantial decline in profits. He asks his chief financial officer to explain the results. The CFO works hard to accumulate... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cost; Financial Statements; Production; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Information Technology Industry; Consulting Industry