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- February 2021
- Case
Threadless: The Renewal of an Online Community
By: Shane Greenstein, Karim Lakhani and Christian Godwin
Threadless, an online apparel company and artist community which Jake Nickell founded in 2000, continued to maintain its status as a top company in the online apparel industry during its second decade. From 2010 to 2020, Threadless continued to operated its...
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Keywords:
Business Model;
Decision Making;
Entrepreneurship;
Innovation And Invention;
Leading Change;
Management;
Marketing;
Product Launch;
Operations;
Supply Chain;
Distribution;
Networks;
sales;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Technology;
Software;
Technology Platform;
Apparel And Accessories Industry;
Technology Industry;
North America
- February 2021
- Case
Sarah Breedlove: Changing the World
By: Robert L. Simons and Max Saffer
This case describes the rise of Sarah Breedlove, who later called herself Madam C.J. Walker, from the cotton fields of Louisiana to the head of a successful, nationwide beauty company providing opportunity and hair care products to Black women. The case describes how...
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- February 2021
- Article
How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice
By: Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci
Amid growing calls for transparency and social and environmental responsibility, companies are employing different strategies to improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Some pursue internal initiatives that reduce their negative social or environmental impacts...
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- January 2021
- Teaching Note
Maritz Automotive
By: Ashley V. Whillans and Lamar Pierce
This case focuses on Charlotte Blank, the Chief Behavioral Officer at Maritz, as she tries to assist a major automotive manufacturer (CarCo) with increasing their sales by prepaying monthly bonuses to independently franchised car dealers and clawing them back if the...
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- Article
How Long Can a Company Thrive Doing Just One Thing?
By: Andy Wu and Scott Duke Kominers
The news that the chat app Slack was being sold to veteran customer relationship management company Salesforce for $27.7 billion raised a lot of eyebrows. Why sell after a year of explosive growth? The deal, however, epitomizes a question facing so-called best-of-breed...
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- September 2020
- Article
Customer Supercharging in Experience-Centric Channels
By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
We conjecture that for online retailers, experience-centric offline store formats do not simply expand market coverage, but rather, serve to significantly amplify future positive customer behaviors, both online and offline. We term this phenomenon “supercharging” and...
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- July 2020
- Technical Note
Digital Natives Growing Without a Sales Force
By: Das Narayandas, Michael Norris and Amram Migdal
This brief case describes the rise of so-called digital natives (also called born-in-digital) in the 2000s and 2010s that successfully grew without a sales force. The case highlights the emergence of business-to-business Internet and cloud-based companies and their...
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Keywords:
Business Growth And Maturation;
Customers;
Customer Focus And Relationships;
Customer Relationship Management;
Innovation And Invention;
Disruptive Innovation;
Innovation Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Marketing;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
sales;
Technology;
Information Technology;
Internet;
Online Technology;
Software;
Technology Adoption;
Information Technology Industry;
Australia;
North And Central America;
United States;
Illinois;
Chicago;
California;
San Francisco
- April 2020
- Teaching Note
Oaktree: Pierre Foods Investment
By: Victoria Ivashina, Michael Harmon and Terrence Shu
Teaching Note for HBS No. 219-018. This case is a setting to discuss “loan to own” investment strategy that is often pursued by distressed investors. The aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis left many companies with poor liquidity and limited ability to obtain...
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- April 2020
- Supplement
Oaktree: Pierre Foods Investment
By: Victoria Ivashina and Terrence Shu
This case is a setting to discuss “loan to own” investment strategy that is often pursued by distressed investors. The aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis left many companies with poor liquidity and limited ability to obtain credit. One of these companies was Pierre...
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- November 2019
- Article
How Do Sales Efforts Pay Off? Dynamic Panel Data Analysis in the Nerlove-Arrow Framework
By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Byoung G. Park
This paper evaluates the short- and long-term value of sales representatives’ detailing visits to different types of physicians. By understanding the dynamic effect of sales calls across heterogeneous physicians, we provide guidance on the design of optimal call...
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- September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy
By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma
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...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Development Economics;
Entrepreneurship;
Innovation And Invention;
Intellectual Property;
Emerging Markets;
Market Design;
Marketplace Matching;
Science;
Genetics;
Natural Environment;
Environmental Sustainability;
Climate Change;
Social Enterprise;
Strategy;
Strategic Planning;
Technology;
Ownership;
Social Psychology;
Trust;
Society;
Biotechnology Industry;
South America;
Amazon Basin
- September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Blenheim Chalcot
By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock
In April 2019, Manoj Badale and Charles Mindenhall, co-founders of Blenheim Chalcot, were contemplating how they might go about developing their portfolio. Since founding the company as an internet consultancy called netdecisions in 1998, Badale and Mindenhall had...
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- August 2019
- Case
The Allstate Corporation, 2019
By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock
In July 2019, Allstate, the United States’ number-three property and casualty (P/C) insurer, released its second-quarter earnings, which reported first-half revenues of $22.1 billion, up 11.4% year-over-year. Shareholders cheered the top-line growth, but P/C premiums...
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- Article
Why ‘Tell Them Something They Don't Know’ Is Bad Advice in B2B Sales
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Tracy DeCicco
Common advice in sales is to provide insights to customers during sales calls. But this advice generally stays at the level of “tell people something they don’t already know” and results in sales conversations littered with many irrelevant factoids. This article...
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- August 2019
- Case
Lemonade: Disrupting Insurance with Instant Everything, Killer Prices, and a Big Heart
By: Elie Ofek and Danielle Golan
Launching its first products in the fall of 2016 in New York, insurtech startup Lemonade was on a mission to disrupt the insurance market by using AI and behavioral economics principles. The company offered renters, homeowners, and condo insurance and mainly targeted...
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- February 2019 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Sales Force Management at Nobel Ilac
By: Doug J. Chung and Gamze Yucaoglu
Nobel Ilac was a Turkish generic pharmaceutical company marketing more than 100 drugs in 20 countries and, as of 2017, had over 2,500 employees worldwide. Nobel had implemented a transformation strategy—more specifically, a customer segmentation plan—whereby the sales...
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- November 2018 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Almarai Company: Milk and Modernization in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
By: Kristin Fabbe, Safwan Al-Amin, Esel Cekin and Natalie Kindred
With SAR 14 billion ($3.7 billion) in 2017 revenues, Almarai was Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy producer, distributor, and marketer, with a large portfolio of branded dairy products, juices, bakery goods, and infant formula and a sales presence across the Gulf region,...
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Keywords:
Dairy;
Agriculture;
Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia;
Almarai;
Schorderet;
Food Security;
Public Policy;
Self Sufficiency;
Gulf;
Gcc;
Business And Government;
Agribusiness;
Marketing;
Distribution;
Change Management;
Leading Change;
Strategy;
Government And Politics;
Policy;
Diversification;
Integration;
Horizontal Integration;
Vertical Integration;
Food;
Brands And Branding;
Growth And Development Strategy;
Business And Government Relations;
Agriculture And Agribusiness Industry;
Food And Beverage Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Saudi Arabia;
Middle East
- August 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Oaktree: Pierre Foods Investment
By: Victoria Ivashina and Mike Harmon
This case is a setting to discuss “loan to own” investment strategy that is often pursued by distressed investors. The aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis left many companies with poor liquidity and limited ability to obtain credit. One of these companies was Pierre...
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- August 2018
- Case
Performance Improvement Consulting and Hi-R-Me: Making Sales Calls
By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Mattson
This case study focuses on a professional services firm (“Performance Improvement Consulting”) and its sales calls on Hi-R-Me, a potential client. The case is supplemented by videos showing the initial contact call, a follow-up discovery call, and a face-to-face...
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- April 2018
- Case
Globalizing Japan's Dream Machine: Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd.
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta
Recruit Holdings, an advertising media, staffing, and business support conglomerate was founded in 1960 by Hiromasa Ezoe. Recruit was built on the principle that the company should add value to society. To do this, it hired young and talented employees and created a...
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