Strategy
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- February, 2025
- Article
How a Company’s Ownership Model Shapes the Mistakes It Makes
By: Josh BaronWhy do some companies continue to thrive for decades and others die after an initial run of success? Like many kinds of accidents, company failure is generally the consequence of cascading effects that combine to overwhelm a previously effective strategy. But the errors that lead to corporate death spirals often can be traced back to a common factor that receives insufficient attention: their ownership model. This article explores how ownership influences company success or failure across five main dimensins.
- February, 2025
- Article
How a Company’s Ownership Model Shapes the Mistakes It Makes
By: Josh BaronWhy do some companies continue to thrive for decades and others die after an initial run of success? Like many kinds of accidents, company failure is generally the consequence of cascading effects that combine to overwhelm a previously effective strategy. But the errors that lead to corporate death spirals often can be traced back to a common...
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- February 2025
- Case
Hyperscaling Dreams: Ualá’s Path from Startup to Fintech Champion
By: Juan Alcacer and Manuel FranckUalá, founded by Pierpaolo Barbieri in 2017, is a fast-growing fintech company on a mission to revolutionize financial services in Latin America. Starting with a 14-person team and a prepaid card linked to a digital app, Ualá rapidly expanded into a comprehensive financial services platform. By early 2022, it served over 4 million users across Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, offering solutions in payments, credit, wealth management, and business payment processing. Ualá’s hypergrowth was driven by a record-breaking $350 million funding round in 2021, enabling it to enter new markets, secure banking licenses, and acquire financial institutions. However, this rapid expansion surfaced key challenges, including regulatory pressures, leadership development, and the need to balance centralization with local market adaptation. Facing shifting investor demands for profitability over growth, Ualá confronted critical decisions about user acquisition strategies, leadership restructuring, and talent scaling to secure its position in the competitive fintech landscape.
- February 2025
- Case
Hyperscaling Dreams: Ualá’s Path from Startup to Fintech Champion
By: Juan Alcacer and Manuel FranckUalá, founded by Pierpaolo Barbieri in 2017, is a fast-growing fintech company on a mission to revolutionize financial services in Latin America. Starting with a 14-person team and a prepaid card linked to a digital app, Ualá rapidly expanded into a comprehensive financial services platform. By early 2022, it served over 4 million users across...
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- January 2025
- Case
Sportradar (B): Innovative Resilience and Beyond
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, David M Wagner, Naomi Haefner and Oliver Gassmann- January 2025
- Case
Sportradar (B): Innovative Resilience and Beyond
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, David M Wagner, Naomi Haefner and Oliver Gassmann
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
How a Company’s Ownership Model Shapes the Mistakes It Makes
- February, 2025 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review Digital Articles
Hyperscaling Dreams: Ualá’s Path from Startup to Fintech Champion
- February 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Why Companies Thrive Or Die: Ownership and the Path to Perpetuation
- 2025 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
eBee: Affordable Mobility for Africa
- February 2025 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
eBee: Affordable Mobility for Africa
- February 2025 |
- Supplement |
- Faculty Research
Arcos Dorados’ Quest for the Digitalization of Last-Mile Delivery in Colombia
- January 2025 |
- Teaching Note |
- Faculty Research
Nvidia, Inc. in 2024 and the Future of AI
- January 2025 |
- Teaching Note |
- Faculty Research