Faculty & Research

Strategy

Strategy

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About the Unit

The Strategy unit studies firms as competitors in an economic landscape. Key issues include: the development and effectiveness of firm strategy at both a business and corporate level; the analysis of the competitive environment; and the sustainability of strategy over time.

Our research, course development, and teaching draws on multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science, and focuses on both domestic and global competition. The objective of the work is to generate findings and develop concepts that will help managers improve their strategic decisions while advancing the state of knowledge in the academic study of strategy and related disciplines.

Recent Publications

Building Cities’ Collaborative Muscle

By: Jan Rivkin, Jorrit De Jong, Amy C. Edmondson, Mark Moore, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Eva Flavia Martínez Orbegozo and Santiago Pulido-Gomez
  • Spring 2021 |
  • Article |
  • Stanford Social Innovation Review (website)
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Shareholder Activists and Corporate Strategy

By: David J. Collis and Caeden Brynie
  • February 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
This library case examines the rise of shareholder activism in recent years, particularly in the public eye, and analyzes its effects on corporate strategy, growth, and shareholder value. It looks at three contemporary targets of shareholder activism in particular—Bed Bath and Beyond, Occidental Petroleum Corp, and Walt Disney Co.—and presents arguments both for and against the role of activist shareholders.
Keywords: Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Shareholder; Shareholder Activism; Board; Board Of Directors; Hedge Fund; Hedge Fund Activism; Strategy
Related

Spotify's Audio-First Strategy: Leading the Podcasting Market

By: Hong Luo and Carol Lin
  • February 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Related

Intellectual Property Strategy

By: Andy Wu and Aticus Peterson
  • February 2021 |
  • Module Note |
  • Faculty Research
Managing intellectual property (IP) in information technology—digital technologies like software or computing hardware—requires a distinct strategic approach. This note summarizes the high-level strategic considerations for managers of information technology businesses where IP may be relevant and provides selected examples of how strategy may be implemented.
Related

The Virtues and Limitations of Dynamic Capabilities

By: David J. Collis and Bharat Anand
  • 2021 |
  • Article |
  • Strategic Management Review
Related

The Virtues and Limitations of Dynamic Capabilities

By: Bharat Anand and David J. Collis
  • 2021 |
  • Article |
  • Strategic Management Review
Dynamic capabilities have been identified as a key determinant of competitive advantage. This paper explores the foundations of dynamic capabilities, and the limits to their effectiveness, first theoretically and then through the case of Danaher, the most successful US conglomerate for over three decades. Limitations of dynamic capabilities include that they (a) can be substitutable and (b) embody strategic choices themselves. The Danaher case, an exemplar of dynamic capabilities, illustrates how dynamic capabilities require long-term commitments in order to be effective, involve a set of choices that are closely tied to others made by the firm, and embody tradeoffs that imply that investments in any particular dynamic capability may be inconsistent with acquiring new ones
Keywords: Dynamic Capabilities; Danaher; Resources; Theory Of The Firm; Value-based Strategy
Related

Competitive Two-part Tariffs

By: Jorge Tamayo and Guofu Tan
  • 2021 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
We study competitive two-part tariffs in a model of asymmetric duopoly firms that offer (vertically and horizontally) differentiated products. We show that the sign of the markup for each product depends on the average expected demand among all customers as well as the marginal rate of substitution of the demand for access between the marginal price and fixed fee. We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for marginal-cost pricing to be an equilibrium. Under the logit demand system with an outside option, we show that competitive two-part tariffs, even in the symmetric setting, are not efficient. When firms are asymmetric, our results indicate that the equilibrium strategy in two-part tariffs involves “cross-subsidization” between the marginal price and fixed fee for the less efficient firm, with the efficient firm offering a marginal price above its marginal cost.
Related

Dynamic Competition for Customer Memberships

By: Jorge Tamayo and Christian Chica
  • 2021 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
A competitive two-period membership (subscription) market is analyzed. Two symmetric firms charge a “membership” fee that allows consumers to buy products or services at a given unit price for both periods. Firms can choose between long- or short-term memberships. When firms employ long-term membership, they have incentives to prevent their old customers from being poached by competitors, and to price-discriminate with their membership fee and unit price regarding customer purchase behavior. In contrast, with short-term membership, they do not discriminate between new and old customers with their unit price but only with their membership fees. Overall, the number of consumers poached is smaller with long-term memberships, but the equilibrium profits are higher when firms offer short-term memberships. Moreover, short-term membership is a Nash equilibrium.
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Contact Information

Strategy Unit
Harvard Business School
Morgan Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Strategy@hbs.edu