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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020 (Revised October 2020)

  Briscola—Pizza Society: Scaling Affordable Luxury

  Gary P. Pisano and Federica Gabrieli

  Riccardo Cortese and Federico Pinna were the CEOs of Briscola—Pizza Society, a restaurant chain they had founded in 2014 with a clear ambition: create a distinctive international pizza chain that would combine a fast-casual format with the devotion to quality that characterized family-run Italian restaurants. In 2017, Francesco Trapani, the former CEO of luxury jewelry company Bulgari, had taken a majority stake in the chain, which had switched to a format of "affordable luxury." At the end of 2019, Briscola counted six restaurants in the northern regions of Italy and its founders were grappling with a series of questions: Should they consolidate their position in other Italian regions or expand directly abroad? In which countries would their concept work best? Should they change their direct ownership model? If so, what kinds of partnerships, licensing agreements, and franchise models should they use? Finally, what was the right degree of standardization across their restaurants? Allowing some variations in the menu at the restaurant level would be attractive to target specific segments of their clientele, but would this complicate their operations and potentially hinder their growth?

  Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Geographic Location; Business Model; Ownership Type; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; Italy;

  Citation:

  Pisano, Gary P., and Federica Gabrieli. "Briscola—Pizza Society: Scaling Affordable Luxury." Harvard Business School Case 621-031, September 2020. (Revised October 2020.)  View Details

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• Article | American Economic Review: Insights

  Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patents

  David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu

  Manufacturing accounts for more than three-quarters of U.S. corporate patents. The competitive shock to this sector emanating from China's economic ascent could in theory either augment or stifle U.S. innovation. Using three decades of U.S. patents matched to corporate owners, we quantify how foreign competition affects domestic innovation. Rising import exposure intensifies competitive pressure, reducing sales, profitability, and R&D expenditure at U.S. firms. Accounting for confounding sectoral patenting trends, we find that U.S. patent production declines in sectors facing greater import competition. This adverse effect is larger among initially less profitable and less capital-intensive firms.

  Keywords: Patents; Production; Trade; Competition; Innovation and Invention; United States;

  Citation:

  Autor, David, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Gary P. Pisano, and Pian Shu. "Foreign Competition and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patents." American Economic Review: Insights 2, no. 3 (September 2020): 357–374.  View Details

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• Supplement | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

  The Tham Luang Cave Rescue (B): The Rescue

  Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano

  Citation:

  Grushka-Cockayne, Yael, Francesca Gino, and Gary P. Pisano. "The Tham Luang Cave Rescue (B): The Rescue." Harvard Business School Supplement 321-035, August 2020.  View Details

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