Publications
Publications
Show Results For
-
All HBS Web
(1,438)
- Faculty Publications (166)
Page 1 of
166
Results
→
- 2020
- Article
Worry at Work: How Organizational Culture Promotes Anxiety
By: Jeremy A. Yip, Emma E. Levine, Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice E. Schweitzer
Organizational culture profoundly influences how employees think and behave. Established research suggests that the content, intensity, consensus, and fit of cultural norms act as a social control system for attitudes and behavior. We adopt the norms model of...
View Details
Keywords:
Anxiety;
Norms;
Stress;
Culture;
Tightness-looseness;
Curvilinear;
Organizational Culture;
Emotions;
Performance
- October 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Customer-Centric Design with Artificial Intelligence: Commonwealth Bank
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo
As Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn delivered the full financial year results in August 2021 over video conference, it took less than two minutes for him to make his first mention of the organization’s Customer Engagement Engine (CEE), the AI-driven customer experience...
View Details
- September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
STARZPLAY: Shooting for the Stars
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini and Alpana Thapar
In mid-2021, Maaz Sheikh, cofounder and CEO of STARZPLAY, a Dubai-based subscription video on demand (SVOD) provider that catered to the Middle East and North Africa region, was wrestling with how to find the right balance between continued subscriber growth and...
View Details
Keywords:
Pricing;
Growth;
Profitability;
Subscription Business;
Business Model Innovation;
Fintech;
Subscription;
Performance Measurement;
Promotions;
International Marketing;
Streaming;
Competition;
Marketing;
Price;
Strategy;
Entrepreneurship;
Performance;
Measurement and Metrics;
Business Model;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
Middle East;
North Africa
- September 2021
- Case
Worldreader: Helping Readers Build a Better World
By: Marco Bertini, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2010, Worldreader was an international nonprofit organization that promoted reading to children around the world. For many years, Worldreader distributed e-readers to under-resourced communities and funded its operations primarily through philanthropic...
View Details
Keywords:
Subscription Model;
Price;
Financial Strategy;
Education;
Early Childhood Education;
Learning;
Geography;
Geographic Scope;
Global Range;
Goals and Objectives;
Marketing;
Marketing Strategy;
Markets;
Organizations;
Mission and Purpose;
Social Enterprise;
Non-Governmental Organizations;
Nonprofit Organizations;
Society;
Social Issues;
Strategy;
Commercialization;
Expansion;
Segmentation;
Education Industry;
Africa;
Asia;
Latin America;
Europe;
North and Central America;
South America
- April 2021
- Case
Glass-Shattering Leaders: Michele Hooper
By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman
Michele Hooper joined the board of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation when she was in her late thirties, becoming the company’s youngest director as well as the only woman and the only person of color in the boardroom. Such “firsts” were not unusual for Hooper, who had been...
View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
MLS as a Sports Product—The Prominence of the World's Game in the U.S.
By: Stephen A. Greyser and Kenneth Cortsen
The purpose of this Working Paper is to analyze how soccer at the professional level in the U.S., with Major League Soccer as a focal point, has developed over the span of a quarter of a century. It is worthwhile to examine the growth of Major League Soccer (MLS) from...
View Details
- 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...
View Details
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)
- February 2021
- Case
Muhammad Ali: Changing The World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the rise of Cassius Clay, who later called himself Muhammad Ali, from the poor streets of Louisville, Kentucky to international fame. The case describes how Ali won a gold medal in the Olympics, three heavyweight boxing titles, and became a role...
View Details
- January 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
iOpenEye: Theater and #MeToo in Nigeria
By: Caroline Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim
In 2014, Ifeoma Fafunwa, an award-winning playwright and director, founded iOpenEye, a commercial production company dedicated to driving social change through performance art. iOpenEye’s flagship theatrical production was called “Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True,”...
View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Jumia's Path to Profitability
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company...
View Details
Keywords:
Retail;
Business Models;
Business Model;
Business Startups;
Emerging Markets;
For-Profit Firms;
Strategy;
Technology Platform;
Information Technology;
Technology Adoption;
Value Creation;
Globalization;
Entrepreneurship;
Competition;
Expansion;
Logistics;
Profit;
Resource Allocation;
Diversification;
Corporate Strategy;
Retail Industry;
Technology Industry;
Africa
- January 2021
- Article
Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times
By: Philippe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
What is the optimal form of firm organization during “bad times”? We present a model of delegation within the firm to show that the effect is ambiguous. The greater turbulence following macro shocks may benefit decentralized firms because the value of local information...
View Details
- December 2020 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Komatsu and Smart Construction
By: Rajiv Lal, David J. Collis and Akiko Saito
Komatsu, Japan's leading construction equipment manufacturer, is considering investing in a digital platform "Smart Construction" that will digitise the entire work process on a construction site, allowing for substantial reductions in cost and time while improving...
View Details
- November 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Supplement
Bridge International Academies in 2020: Battling Headwinds to Solve Africa's Education Problems
By: Caroline M. Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim
By 2020, Bridge International Academies and its "school in a box" model had achieved great scale. By leveraging digital technology and public-private partnerships, they had reached one million children across Africa and India through hundreds of schools. However, the...
View Details
- September 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Algramo
By: Michael Chu, Monica Silva and Mariana Cal
Founded in 2013 by José Manuel Moller in Chile, Algramo first became known for addressing the “poverty tax” (the surcharge paid by lower income families for staples sold in smaller sizes) through specially-designed dispensers in low-income neighborhood grocery stores...
View Details
Keywords:
Packaging-as-a-wallet;
Plastic Waste;
Business At The Base Of The Pyramid;
Reusable Packaging;
Alliances With FMCGs To Meet ESG Goals;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Strategy;
Value Creation;
Goals and Objectives;
Business Model;
Consumer Products Industry;
Latin America;
South America;
Chile
- September 2020
- Case
True North: Pioneering Analytics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Kairavi Dey and Hannah Mayer
True North was a private equity fund that specialized in the growth and buyout of mid-market, India-centric companies. The leadership team initially believed that technology was not core to traditional businesses and steered clear of new age technology-oriented...
View Details
- September 2020 (Revised October 2020)
- Case
Briscola—Pizza Society: Scaling Affordable Luxury
By: 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...
View Details
- June 2020
- Teaching Note
Catalant's Operating System for the Future of Work
By: Christopher Stanton, William R. Kerr, James Palano and Kendall Smith
This case touches on the topics of project-based work, agile methodology, and skill and talent management through Catalant's evolution as a company. Catalant’s journey to becoming a software platform and talent marketplace provides context for students to explore new...
View Details
- June 2020
- Case
RBC: Transforming Transformation (A)
By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Aldo Sesia
In 2017, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), a Canadian financial icon, mandated a swat team of “enablers of collaboration” (their job description) to support the personal and commercial bank in the enterprise-wide RBC Cultural Transformation initiative. Historically,...
View Details
Keywords:
Service Delivery;
Technology;
Transformation;
Change Management;
Collaborative Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Decision Making;
Human Resources;
Management Systems;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Groups and Teams;
Management Teams;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Canada
- June 2020
- Supplement
RBC: Transforming Transformation (B)
By: Ethan Bernstein, Francesca Gino and Aldo Sesia
In 2017, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), a Canadian financial icon, mandated a swat team of “enablers of collaboration” (their job description) to support the personal and commercial bank in the enterprise-wide RBC Cultural Transformation initiative. Historically,...
View Details
Keywords:
Service Delivery;
Technology;
Transformation;
Change Management;
Collaborative Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Decision Making;
Human Resources;
Management Systems;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Groups and Teams;
Management Teams;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Canada
- 2020
- Working Paper
Social Interactions in Pandemics: Fear, Altruism, and Reciprocity
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
In SIR models, homogeneous or with a network structure, infection rates are assumed to be exogenous. However, individuals adjust their behavior. Using daily data for 89 cities worldwide, we document that mobility falls in response to fear, as approximated by Google...
View Details