Strategy
-
- September 2025
- Case
BairesDev: Culture and Growth
By: Raffaella Sadun, Jorge Tamayo and Karina SouzaIn February 2025, Nacho de Marco, CEO of BairesDev, the nearshoring tech company founded in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was planning the company’s next growth phase. After ten years of organic expansion, the COVID-19 pandemic had validated BairesDev’s fully remote model and fueled its rapid scale-up, growing from a 500-person team to a talent pool of 4,000 people across 50 countries. By 2025, the company aimed to double its workforce within five years, but this leap would put its culture to the test. While BairesDev remained committed to attracting the “top 1% talent,” employee engagement metrics were steadily declining. Did the company’s purpose-driven culture need to evolve to support further growth? Moreover, would its remote-only model remain sustainable under a shifting business strategy?
- September 2025
- Case
BairesDev: Culture and Growth
By: Raffaella Sadun, Jorge Tamayo and Karina SouzaIn February 2025, Nacho de Marco, CEO of BairesDev, the nearshoring tech company founded in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was planning the company’s next growth phase. After ten years of organic expansion, the COVID-19 pandemic had validated BairesDev’s fully remote model and fueled its rapid scale-up, growing from a 500-person team to a talent pool of...
-
- September–October 2025
- Article
The Founder's Final Act: How to Hand Over Ownership—and Burnish Your Legacy
By: Josh Baron, Ben Francois, Tony Guidotti and Nien-hê HsiehAs they approach retirement, company founders face a critical choice: Who will own their business next? That decision will reverberate for years, affecting not only them and their family but all the people whose lives are touched by the company. Though it can cement or undo an entrepreneur’s legacy, many founders postpone or avoid making it. And down the road that can lead to enormous tax consequences, family or employee infighting, and instability that disrupts or destroys the business. This article describes a structured process entrepreneurs can follow to choose the owner who will come after them, drawing on the experiences of the founders of Patagonia, John Lewis, Vanguard, Rolex, and more. The first step is to think about the outcomes they want for themselves, their family, their employees, their business partners, and their community and prioritize them.
- September–October 2025
- Article
The Founder's Final Act: How to Hand Over Ownership—and Burnish Your Legacy
By: Josh Baron, Ben Francois, Tony Guidotti and Nien-hê HsiehAs they approach retirement, company founders face a critical choice: Who will own their business next? That decision will reverberate for years, affecting not only them and their family but all the people whose lives are touched by the company. Though it can cement or undo an entrepreneur’s legacy, many founders postpone or avoid making it. And...
-
- August 2025
- Case
The Rise of Advanced Packaging: Kulicke & Soffa's Strategic Crossroads
By: Maria P. Roche, Ram Mudambi and Solon MoreiraIn early 2025, semiconductor equipment maker Kulicke & Soffa (K&S) confronts a pivotal strategic decision. As Moore’s Law slows and chiplet-based architectures take center stage, advanced packaging has become the industry's new frontier. K&S, long dominant in wire bonding, must choose between investing in cutting-edge technologies like hybrid bonding to serve top-tier customers, or reinforcing its leadership in the mid-market with proven, high-volume solutions. The case explores the transformation of the semiconductor value chain, the strategic implications of architectural innovation, and how a legacy firm should navigate a technology-driven shift that could either elevate or marginalize its future role.
- August 2025
- Case
The Rise of Advanced Packaging: Kulicke & Soffa's Strategic Crossroads
By: Maria P. Roche, Ram Mudambi and Solon MoreiraIn early 2025, semiconductor equipment maker Kulicke & Soffa (K&S) confronts a pivotal strategic decision. As Moore’s Law slows and chiplet-based architectures take center stage, advanced packaging has become the industry's new frontier. K&S, long dominant in wire bonding, must choose between investing in cutting-edge technologies like hybrid...
About the Unit
The Strategy unit studies firms as competitors in an economic landscape. Key issues include: the development and effectiveness of firm strategy at both a business and corporate level; the analysis of the competitive environment; and the sustainability of strategy over time.
Our research, course development, and teaching draws on multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science, and focuses on both domestic and global competition. The objective of the work is to generate findings and develop concepts that will help managers improve their strategic decisions while advancing the state of knowledge in the academic study of strategy and related disciplines.
Recent Publications
BairesDev: Culture and Growth
- September 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
The Founder's Final Act: How to Hand Over Ownership—and Burnish Your Legacy
- September–October 2025 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review
The Rise of Advanced Packaging: Kulicke & Soffa's Strategic Crossroads
- August 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Accelerating AI Adoption in the U.S. Air Force
- August 2025 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
ZEISS: Commercializing Science
- August 2025 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
Golden Goose: Reshaping Luxury
- August 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Strategy as Core Guidance
- August 2025 |
- Technical Note |
- Faculty Research