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- June 2021
- Teaching Note
Amazon: Cult or Culture?
By: Boris Groysberg, Kerry Herman and Amy Klopfenstein
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 421-008. Amazon was one of the first entrants in e-commerce. Under the leadership of founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon had expanded beyond books to manufacturing and selling a wide range of products and services globally. Bezos had built a...
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- 2021
- Chapter
Digital Transformation and the Salesforce: Observations, Warnings, and Recommendations
Sales is a crucial test for organizational change, including productive use (or not) of new technologies. Changes in selling always have wider organizational implications, because so many other decisions and resource commitments in firms depend upon demand forecasts...
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- April 2021
- Case
Etsy: Crafting a Turnaround to Save the Business and Its Soul
By: Ranjay Gulati, Luciana Silvestri and Monte Burke
Etsy, the online seller of handmade goods, was founded in 2005 on an almost utopian ideal—a responsible, caring company that offered individual crafters a place to sell their wares, a wholesome alternative to companies that sold mass-manufactured products. The company...
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- April 2021
- Case
Coca-Cola: Preparing for the Next 100 Years
By: Cynthia A. Montgomery and James Weber
In early 2020, James Quincey, the 14th chair of the 133-year old The Coca-Cola Company, was in the midst of a years-long transformation of Coca-Cola from being the leading carbonated soft drink (CSD) beverage company into a total beverage company. The company’s...
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- March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and...
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Keywords:
SaaS;
Customer Journey;
Business Model;
Business Organization;
Change Management;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Digital Platforms;
Internet and the Web;
Technology Industry;
United States
- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Shopify: The Conquest for Chinese E-Commerce
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Avani Patel, Ariel Yang and Samantha Lin
In mid-2020, Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, faced a critical decision on how to time potential expansion into the China market. Over the prior 15 years, his Canadian software-as-a-service company had grown from a small e-commerce solutions provider to a full service...
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Keywords:
Timing;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Service Operations;
Business Model;
Organizational Design;
Change Management;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Global Strategy;
Health Pandemics;
Growth Management;
Marketing Strategy;
Digital Platforms;
Alliances;
Partners and Partnerships;
Opportunities;
Internet and the Web;
E-commerce;
United States;
Canada;
China
- February 2021
- Supplement
HNA Group: Global Excellence with Chinese Characteristics (C)
By: William C. Kirby, Billy Chan and John P. McHugh
July 2017 was supposed to be a triumphant month for HNA Group. The latest Fortune Global 500 list showed the company had again skyrocketed in its ranking to no. 170, an improvement of over 200 positions from the year prior. Yet earlier that same July, the mysterious...
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Keywords:
Conglomerate;
Airline Industry;
Coronavirus;
Financial Risk;
Debt;
Bankruptcy;
Global Strategy;
Restructuring;
Health Pandemics;
Financial Markets;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Financial Condition;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Business and Government Relations;
Air Transportation Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
China
- November 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Amazon: Cult or Culture?
By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott and Tricia Gregg
Amazon was one of the first entrants in e-commerce. Under the leadership of founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon had expanded beyond books to manufacturing and selling a wide range of products and services globally. Bezos had built a customer-centric culture that permeated all...
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- September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Hot Wheels at Mattel: Reinventing the Wheel
By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2017, Chris Down, Global Brand General Manager for Hot Wheels, and his team from the Advanced Play Group within Mattel, Inc., were considering which innovation path to pursue in order to "future proof" the Hot Wheels franchise going forward. Hot Wheels was the...
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- September–October 2020
- Article
When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy
By: Rory McDonald and Robert Bremner
To succeed, a new company must rally investors, staff, customers, and the media around a good story. But often that narrative turns out to be wrong, and entrepreneurs realize they need to change direction. How that shift is communicated can have a huge impact on a...
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- June 2020
- Case
Agile Consumer Product Innovation with Alibaba's Tmall Innovation Center
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano
Consumer products companies were beset by changes on all sides during the 2010s. Customers were increasingly turning to ecommerce platforms rather than shopping in-store. Meanwhile, nimble, digitally-savvy competitors were gaining market share by capitalizing on the...
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- March 2019 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Philips Lighting: Light-as-a-Service
By: Mark R. Kramer, Thijs Geradts and Bhanuteja Nadella
As LEDs with a 25-year lifespan replace incandescent lightbulbs, Philips Lighting faced major disruption and began to explore a new shared value business model of selling light as a service. Although it offers better profit margins and a reduced environmental...
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- November 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
The Reinvention of Kodak
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Christine Snively
The Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) was a name familiar to most Americans. The company had dominated the film and photography industry through most of the 20th Century and was known for making affordable cameras (and the “Kodak Moment”) and supplying the movie industry...
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- June 2018
- Teaching Note
Meridian Systems (Brief Case)
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Michael J. Roberts
Teaching Note for HBS No. 918-533. The key issues discussed in the Meridian teaching note concern sales force deployment: decisions about how to focus sales efforts with respect to territories, customers, and products. The teaching note explains the strengths and...
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- April 2018
- Teaching Note
InsideSales.com (A) and (B)
By: Frank Cespedes
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 817-018 and 817-042. InsideSales.com (ISC) has been successful selling its software to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB). But for various reasons, the founders see “the next stage of growth” as building a scalable sales and service...
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- February 2018
- Case
Rosslyn Resource: Monetization and Sales Strategy
By: Robert J. Dolan and Sunru Yong
Rosslyn Resource identifies exploration targets (potential mineral deposits) in the mining industry and advances them until the project can be monetized, usually through sale to a larger mining company, in return for an upfront fee and a royalty on future revenues....
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- September 2017 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
FJ Management Inc.
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Matthew G. Preble
In late 2015, Crystal Call Maggelet, president and CEO of FJ Management, is working with her investment committee to help set the company’s strategic direction. Maggelet, daughter of the company’s founder, has led FJ Management since 2009 when she stepped in as CEO...
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Keywords:
Turnaround;
Company History;
Family Business;
Transformation;
Volatility;
Change Management;
Entrepreneurship;
Ethics;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Cash Flow;
Insolvency and Bankruptcy;
Financial Liquidity;
Financial Management;
Governance;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Controls;
Leadership;
Leading Change;
Crisis Management;
Negotiation;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Family Ownership;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Business Strategy;
Energy Industry;
Travel Industry;
Retail Industry;
Service Industry;
Utah
- August 2016 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
AnswerDash (Abridged)
By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman
It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of...
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Keywords:
Pricing;
Economic Value Estimation;
Price Metrics;
Organizational Selling;
Innovation Adoption;
Business To Business;
Marketing;
Customer Lifetime Value;
Venture Capital;
Customer Relationship Management;
Price;
Marketing Strategy;
Entrepreneurship;
Technology Adoption;
Business Startups;
Sales;
Innovation and Invention;
Product Marketing;
Financial Services Industry
- June 2016 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
AnswerDash
By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman
It is 2014, and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of...
View Details
Keywords:
Pricing;
Economic Value Estimation;
Price Metrics;
Organizational Selling;
Innovation Adoption;
Business To Business;
Marketing;
Customer Lifetime Value;
Venture Capital;
Customer Relationship Management;
Price;
Marketing Strategy;
Entrepreneurship;
Technology Adoption;
Business Startups;
Sales;
Innovation and Invention;
Product Marketing;
Financial Services Industry
- May 2016 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
India's Amul: Keeping Up with the Times
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Tarun Khanna, Namrata Arora and Tanya Bijlani
Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative founded in 1947—eight months before India's independence from British rule—and owned by over three million farmers in the state of Gujarat. It is India's largest food product marketing organization, selling 46 products, including...
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