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- December 2021
- Case
Katerra (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate...
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- October 2021
- Case
SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Pippa Armerding, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais
The case opens in August 2021, as Habib and Shahysta Hassim, husband and wife co-founders of the data labeling company SmartOne, contemplate the strategy of the high growth company. Between 2016 and 2021, SmartOne had kept doubling its size every two years and now,...
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- August 2021
- Case
Northvolt: Making the World's Greenest Battery
By: Jurgen Weiss and Emilie Billaud
In 2021, the demand for lithium-ion batteries increased rapidly, particularly for electric vehicles. Anxious not to be reliant on Asian players, Europe was keen on developing its own home-grown capacity to control the value chain, maintain employment in Europe, and get...
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Keywords:
Electric Vehicles;
Lithium-ion Batteries;
Business Ventures;
Energy;
Green Technology;
Technological Innovation;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Transportation;
Supply Chain;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Goals and Objectives;
Factories, Labs, and Plants;
Battery Industry;
Energy Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
Transportation Industry;
Europe;
Sweden;
Germany;
Poland
- June 2021
- Case
One Family Textiles: Stepping Back to Move Forward?
By: V.G. Narayanan, Alpana Thapar and Fares Khrais
This case explores how a family business builds a board that includes independent directors that helps to professionalize and strengthen governance in the company. The case relates to One Family Textiles, an Abu Dhabi-headquartered manufacturer of garments. The company...
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- May–June 2021
- Article
Why Start-ups Fail
If you’re launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School set out to discover why. Based on interviews and surveys with hundreds...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Companies' Responses to Social Activism: A Resource Reconfiguration Perspective
By: Yanhua Bird, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Private politics scholarship portrays companies’ organizational vulnerabilities as opportunities for social activists because they signal openness to change. But meaningful organizational change requires not only openness to change, but capacity to mobilize resources...
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- April 2021 (Revised April 2021)
- Teaching Plan
Nehemiah Mfg. Co.: Providing a Second Chance
By: Brian Trelstad and John Masko
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 320-008. In 2009, Dan Meyer and Richard Palmer, two veterans of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, founded Nehemiah Manufacturing to build FMCG brands while providing jobs to Cincinnati, Ohio’s beleaguered urban core. Two...
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- March 2021
- Case
VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory
By: Karim R. Lakhani and Amy Klopfenstein
Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup that used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. A process for quickly building and iterating on new...
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Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence;
Innovation and Invention;
Disruptive Innovation;
Technological Innovation;
Technology;
Software;
Technology Adoption;
Technology Platform;
Entrepreneurship;
Technology Industry;
Medical Devices and Supplies Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Cambridge
- March 2021
- Case
Founders Factory
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and James Barnett
In January 2020, Founders Factory (FF) Executive Chairman Brent Hoberman and CEO Henry Lane Fox were considering FF’s expansion strategy. FF operated as a venture capital (VC) fund built around an accelerator and incubator, and organized around sectors within...
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Keywords:
Entrepreneurship;
Markets;
Planning;
Expansion;
Global Range;
Business Model;
Talent and Talent Management;
Experience and Expertise;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Global Strategy;
Innovation Strategy;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Management Teams;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Partners and Partnerships;
Online Technology;
Mobile Technology;
Technology Industry;
Africa;
South Africa;
Johannesburg;
Europe;
France;
Paris;
United Kingdom;
England;
London;
United States;
New York (city, NY)
- Article
Manage the Suppliers That Could Harm Your Brand: Know When to Avoid, Engage, or Drop Them
By: Jodi L Short and Michael W. Toffel
The pandemic has placed a new spotlight on working conditions in factories that supply global companies. To avert problems, firms often impose codes of conduct on their suppliers and perform audits to assess compliance. Do these measures help identify unethical...
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Keywords:
Auditing;
Agency Cost;
Quality And Safety;
Quality Management System;
Quality Management;
Unions;
Environmental Management;
Globalization;
Goods and Commodities;
Governance;
Labor;
Labor Unions;
Wages;
Working Conditions;
Operations;
Supply Chain;
Safety;
Quality;
China;
Bangladesh;
Asia;
Pakistan
- Article
Healthy Buildings in 2070
By: John D. Macomber and Joseph G. Allen
Fifty years seems a very long time in the future for most industries. Not so in buildings and real estate; built structures routinely last decades if not hundreds of years, as long as they are economically competitive. Any discussion of the 50-year future has to...
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- November 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Sercomm: Operating in China Amid COVID-19 and Beyond
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Gary P. Pisano and Bonnie Yining Cao
The COVID-19 pandemic had forced a production cut in the factory of Sercomm, one of the world’s major telecom equipment producers, in China. The case explores and highlights the challenges that Chief Executive Officer James Wang faced: How could Sercomm recover and...
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- 2020
- Book
American Business History: A Very Short Introduction
By: Walter Friedman
By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's...
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- July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Rosalind Fox at John Deere
By: Anthony Mayo and Olivia Hull
Rosalind Fox, the factory manager at John Deere’s Des Moines, Iowa plant, has improved the financial standing of the factory in the three years she’s been at its helm. But employee engagement scores—which measured employees’ satisfaction with working conditions and...
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Keywords:
Agribusiness;
Change Management;
Experience and Expertise;
Talent and Talent Management;
Diversity;
Gender;
Race;
Engineering;
Geographic Location;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Leadership Development;
Leadership Style;
Leading Change;
Management Style;
Management Teams;
Organizational Culture;
Personal Development and Career;
Prejudice and Bias;
Power and Influence;
Status and Position;
Trust;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
United States
- April 2020
- Case
Ginkgo Bioworks: The Cell as a Factory
By: Paul A. Gompers, Amitabh Chandra and Matthew Wozny
- 2020
- Working Paper
No Line Left Behind: Assortative Matching Inside the Firm
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
How do firms pair workers with managers, and which constraints affect the allocation of labor within the firm? We characterize the sorting pattern of managers to workers in a large readymade garment manufacturer in India and then explore potential drivers of the...
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- February 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Anomalie
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
In early 2019, the founders of Anomalie, an online direct-to-consumer provider of bridal gowns, have just agreed to an $13.6 million Series A investment from a Silicon Valley VC. They are considering three major initiatives as they move forward. (1) To scale their...
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- November 2019
- Case
Celebrity Fashions Limited (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan, Tanvi Deshpande and Shreya Ramachandran
In May 2017 in Chennai, India, the chairman of Celebrity Fashions doubted whether the company could last until the end of the year. Venkatesh Rajagopal had found that the company, a readymade garment manufacturing and exporter he founded in 1989, was having a hard time...
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- November 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Supplement
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited: A Global Company's China Strategy (B)
By: William C. Kirby, Billy Chan and Dawn H. Lau
After the legendary founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) retired, the new chairman had to grapple with fresh challenges related to its China market: a recently opened factory in China had to find ways to reverse its financial loss and meet its...
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- October 2019 (Revised June 2020)
- Supplement
Airbus vs. Boeing (M): MAX 8 Disasters (July 2019)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the October 2018 and March 2019 crashes of Boeing MAX 8 jets, which together killed over 300 passengers. The planes involved in both crashes shared a problem with a software system called MCAS, which Boeing had revamped at the last minute prior to...
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