The Economic Modeling of Strategy Process: 'Clean Models' and 'Dirty Hands'

Tarun   Khanna; Ranjay  Gulati; Nitin   Nohria

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Article | Strategic Management Journal

The Economic Modeling of Strategy Process: 'Clean Models' and 'Dirty Hands'

by Tarun Khanna, Ranjay Gulati and Nitin Nohria

Keywords: Economics; Strategy; Finance; Policy;

Format: Print

10 pages

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Citation:

Khanna, Tarun, Ranjay Gulati, and Nitin Nohria. "The Economic Modeling of Strategy Process: 'Clean Models' and 'Dirty Hands'." Strategic Management Journal 21, no. 7 (July 2000): 781–790.

About the Authors

Tarun Khanna

Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor

Strategy

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Ranjay Gulati

Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration

Organizational Behavior

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Nitin Nohria

George F. Baker Professor of Administration
Dean of the Faculty

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View Publications »

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Rembrand Koning, Andy Wu, Nataliya Langburd Wright and Tarun Khanna

The case explores the strategic decision of global non-profit startup accelerator MassChallenge on whether to pursue a for-profit spinoff, discussing: (1) the costs and benefits of this decision, (2) how best to manage the risks of the decision, and (3) alternative pathways to ensure business sustainability and success.

Keywords: accelerators; Nonprofit Organizations; Business Startups; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Cost vs Benefits; Risk Management; Decision Making; Strategy;

Citation:
Koning, Rembrand, Andy Wu, Nataliya Langburd Wright, and Tarun Khanna. "MassChallenge." Harvard Business School Case 720-469, May 2020. (Revised July 2020.) View Details

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Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Shreya Ramachandran

In the summer of 2019 in New Delhi, S K Shahi and his daughter, Meenakshi, faced a difficult problem. India had 19 centers of their non-profit, the Center for Social Responsibility and Leadership. Also called the 'Super 30' program, this offered free training for India's rigorous engineering entrance exam, the Joint Entrance Examination, to 30 - or sometimes 50 or 100 - high school graduates, selected by merit. Shahi and Meenakshi ran these centers using the corporate social responsibility funds donated by large state-owned companies in India, and some private companies. They had been operational for over a decade, with alumni working in academia, top tech companies, and education, having graduated from India's best colleges. They now had a difficult decision to make: should they expand in large metropolis cities - New Delhi; Kanpur; Mumbai - that would attract talented youth from all over India? Or else, given India's remote geographies and uneven distribution of income and educational benefits, was it best to expand to these tough regions to help those who most needed it? An additional source of concern was the operational and logistical cost of running centers in different parts of the country. What was the best way forward: city or town, urban or remote? New Delhi or Kashmir?

Keywords: Education; Higher Education; Diversity; Nonprofit Organizations; Operations; Expansion; Geographic Location; Strategy; Decision Making; India;

Citation:
Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Tarun Khanna, and Shreya Ramachandran. "Super 30: Educating the Elite Poor." Harvard Business School Case 621-004, July 2020. View Details

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In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the genomic codes of all known species that could be tapped for discovery and innovation, from new medical interventions to more efficient manufacturing processes. He proposed to use blockchain technology to make the data both accessible and trackable so that its use could be monitored. Castilla-Rubio envisioned a time when a company in the U.S. could access a biological asset from the Peruvian Amazon, develop and commercialize a product based on the asset, and have a fraction of the resulting sales land directly in the bank account of various beneficiaries, including the Peruvian government and indigenous communities. Now he was facing major decisions about how to structure EBC to achieve his goals. Should he start at the top and build partnerships with national governments and inter-governmental organizations as the cornerstone of EBC? Or would it be better to forge ahead with a few stakeholders in an entrepreneurial project?

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Citation:
Khanna, Tarun, Raffaella Sadun, and Susie L. Ma. "Engineering An Inclusive Bioeconomy." Harvard Business School Case 720-356, September 2019. (Revised June 2020.) View Details

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The Economic Modeling of Strategy Process: 'Clean Models' and 'Dirty Hands'

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