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• Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2018 (Revised January 2020)

  SoulCycle: The Road Ahead

  Ashish Nanda, Eric Van den Steen and Jeffrey Boyar

  Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler founded SoulCycle, an indoor cycling studio chain, in 2006 as more than a health club; they wanted it to become a lifestyle brand that would “empower riders in an immersive fitness experience.” By early 2015, SoulCycle had grown to 38 studios in seven metropolitan areas. In March 2015, Equinox, a luxury fitness company that had financed SoulCycle’s expansion in 2011, approached the co-founders with an offer to buy them out for $90 million each. It was an attractive offer but one that would also likely circumscribe their responsibilities. Rice and Cutler had to decide whether to accept the Equinox offer as a prelude to smaller roles at the firm (even potential exit) or continue investing time, energy, and financial resources in growing the business.

  Keywords: fitness; fitness industry; exercise; cycling; boutique fitness; exit strategy; Growth; bicycles; retail; pricing; community; SoulCycle; vision; Health; Leadership; Strategy; Marketing; Decision Making; Health Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Nanda, Ashish, Eric Van den Steen, and Jeffrey Boyar. "SoulCycle: The Road Ahead." Harvard Business School Case 718-499, February 2018. (Revised January 2020.)  View Details

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• Chapter | The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management | 2018

  Irreversibility

  Pankaj Ghemawat and Eric J. Van den Steen

  Citation:

  Ghemawat, Pankaj, and Eric J. Van den Steen. "Irreversibility." In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management. Continuously updated edition, edited by Mie Augier and David J. Teece. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Electronic.  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  Birds of a Feather ... Enforce Social Norms? Interactions Among Culture, Norms, and Strategy

  Hongyi Li and Eric J. Van den Steen

  This paper analyzes how shared beliefs and preferences (or values) cause the emergence of social norms; why people may enforce norms that go against their own beliefs and preferences/values; and how this may cause a disconnect to develop between the organization's norms and its underlying beliefs and preferences. We further show, among other things, that such social norms are more likely in attractive organizations, for behaviors that have modest personal consequences, and in organizations where employees depend on others' choices to a moderate degree. We finally discuss how these mechanisms help our understanding of culture change and of the interaction between culture and strategy. We argue that culture is not only an input to strategy, but also a substitute and a potential competitor.

  Keywords: culture; norms; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Culture; Strategy;

  Citation:

  Li, Hongyi, and Eric J. Van den Steen. "Birds of a Feather ... Enforce Social Norms? Interactions Among Culture, Norms, and Strategy." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-045, October 2019.  View Details

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