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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2017 (Revised June 2019)

  JOE & THE JUICE Crosses the Atlantic (with video link)

  Ethan Rouen and Suraj Srinivasan

  As JOE & THE JUICE began its rapid U.S. expansion in 2017, its founder and CEO, Kaspar Basse, fretted about how he could keep his employees feeling like they were doing meaningful work. Founded in 2001, JOE & THE JUICE had always focused on making healthy juices, banning prepackaged or processed foods, and providing meaningful work for front-line food services employees. To instill employees with a sense of ownership, JOE & THE JUICE had developed a transparent promotion and compensation scheme, a rigid training program, and an explicit promise to promote only from within (the CFO was 31-years-old and had spent a decade working at the company). On the other hand, employees were encouraged to make the juice bars their homes. There were no required uniforms or scripts on how to interact with customers. This strategy had led to great success in Europe. In a decade, JOE & THE JUICE had spread across the continent and was immensely profitable. But as it moved into the United States and prepared for a potential IPO, the company began struggling to retain talent and worried about how it could successfully import its internal culture while maintaining its rapid growth.

  Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employees; Retention; Expansion; Growth Management;

  Citation:

  Rouen, Ethan, and Suraj Srinivasan. "JOE & THE JUICE Crosses the Atlantic (with video link)." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Case 118-039, November 2017. (Revised June 2019.)  View Details

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• Article | Harvard Business Review (website) | June 18, 2019

  Research: Investors Reward Companies That Talk Up Their Digital Initiatives

  Suraj Srinivasan and Wilbur Chen

  Citation:

  Srinivasan, Suraj, and Wilbur Chen. "Research: Investors Reward Companies That Talk Up Their Digital Initiatives." Harvard Business Review (website) (June 18, 2019).  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  Going Digital: Implications for Firm Value and Performance

  Wilbur Chen and Suraj Srinivasan

  We examine the firm value and performance implications of the growing trend of non-technology (non-tech) companies adopting digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and machine learning. For the entire universe of U.S. publicly listed firms, we identify companies that are going digital using textual analysis of corporate financial reports and conference calls. We first show that digital adoption by non-tech firms has dramatically grown in recent years. Non-tech digital adopters exhibit greater stock price co-movement with technology companies than with their industry peers, suggesting that the digital activities are making them similar to tech firms. The digital adopters hold more cash and are larger, younger, and less CapEx-intensive. Digital adoption is associated with higher valuation―market-to-book ratio is higher by 7%–21% compared to industry peers—and is higher for firms that are younger, more CapEx-intensive, exhibit higher sales growth, and are in industries where digital adoption is prevalent. However, markets are slow to respond to the disclosure of digital activity. Portfolios formed on digital disclosure earn a size/book-to-market adjusted return of 25% over a 3-year horizon and generate a monthly alpha of 40 basis points. Finally, while there is no significant improvement in financial performance as measured by return-on-assets conditional on digital activities, there is a significant increase in asset turnover as well as a significant decline in margins and sales growth. Managerial expertise is important for digital technology adoption, as firms with senior technology executives perform better when going digital.

  Keywords: digital technologies; Business Ventures; Technology Adoption; Valuation; Performance; Management; Experience and Expertise;

  Citation:

  Chen, Wilbur, and Suraj Srinivasan. "Going Digital: Implications for Firm Value and Performance." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-117, May 2019.  View Details

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