Research - Global Initiative - Harvard Business School

December 2020
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...

December 2020
Teaching Material

Komatsu Smart Construction: Launch Video

By: Rajiv Lal, David J. Collis and Akiko Saito

short video of the concept of "Smart Construction" that was shown at the launch of the business by Komatsu. Illustrates what the automated construction site might look like in the future.

December 2020
Teaching Material

Komatsu: Video of Future Building Site

By: Rajiv Lal, David J. Collis and Akiko Saito

Short video that illustrates how an automated construction site would operate

December 2020
Case

Tokio Marine Group (A)

By: David J. Collis and Akiko Kanno

Tokio Marine, Japan's leading insurance company, has spent nearly two decades building a global footprint in different insurance businesses around the world. As the company becomes majority non-domestic it has to make a choice of what...

December 2020
Teaching Material

Tokio Marine Group (B)

By: David J. Collis and Akiko Kanno

Updates the Tokio Marine A case by providing information on the organisation structure adopted by the Japanese insurance firm as it moved to integrate its global operations, along with changes in HR policies that sought to balance traditional Japanese practices with...

November 2020
Teaching Material

Social Salary Setting at Spiber

By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears

This case tells the story of Spiber, a Japanese technology start-up company. To reflect the company’s values, the leadership team implemented a new and unique salary-setting process: each employee had the authority to choose their own salary. In the course of...

November 2020
Case

Integrating Beam Suntory (A)

By: David G. Fubini, Rawi Abdelal and David Lane

The spring 2014 acquisition of U.S. alcoholic spirits maker Beam Inc. by Japan’s Suntory Holdings vaulted Suntory from 15th to third-largest international spirits company in the world. Yet Suntory had borrowed nearly the entire $16...

November 2020
Teaching Material

Integrating Beam Suntory (B)

By: David G. Fubini, Rawi Abdelal and David Lane

Supplements (A) case: The spring 2014 acquisition of U.S. alcoholic spirits maker Beam Inc. by Japan’s Suntory Holdings vaulted Suntory from 15th to third-largest international spirits company in the world. Yet Suntory had borrowed nearly...

September 2020
Case

Jan Swartz: Steering Princess Cruises Through the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Norris

In the summer of 2020, Jan Swartz, President of Princess Cruises, was persevering to lead her company back from the depths of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Diamond Princess, one of Princess Cruises’ 18 ships was the site of one of the earliest large outbreaks of COVID-19...

September 2020
Case

Hitachi Rail Limited (A)

By: David J. Collis, Akiko Kanno and Nobuo Sato

Hitachi must decide whether to make a British executive, who has successfully built its European rail business from scratch, head of its global rail division even though the bulk of revenues for the unit still come from Japan. The case...

September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Teaching Material

Hitachi Rail Limited (B)

By: David J. Collis, Akiko Kanno and Nobuo Sato

as knowledge transfer from Japan proves difficult. Dormer creates a new global organisation structure with executives based in different geographies and tries to maintain the traditional Hitachi values in the new organisation.

September 2020 (Revised September 2020)
Case

Catalys Pacific

By: Joshua Lev Krieger

In 2019, BT Slingsby founds Catalys Pacific, the first biotech “venture creation” fund in Tokyo. After convincing some of the biggest Japanese pharmaceutical firms to invest, BT hopes the fund can make a big splash and transform biotechnology innovation in

September–October 2020
Article
Harvard Business Review

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create...

June 2020
Teaching Material

Shiseido Acquires Drunk Elephant

By: Jill Avery

On October 7, 2019, the Shiseido Group announced that it would acquire clean skincare brand Drunk Elephant for $845 million, a valuation of 8.5 times sales. Did Shiseido pay too much or too little for this brand asset? How much was the Drunk Elephant brand worth and...

June 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Social Salary Setting at Spiber

By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears

Can a “set your own salary” system boost employee happiness and motivation? Spiber made synthetic silk built from proteins mimicking the proteins found in spider silk, the world’s toughest known material by weight. Kazuhide Sekiyama and Junichi Sugahara established...

May 2020
Case

M-Lab: Enabling Innovation at Mitsubishi Corporation

By: Krishna Palepu and Allison M. Ciechanover

M-Lab’s founding goals were to infuse an innovation mindset into Mitsubishi Corporation; to catalyze new business opportunities; and to enable a dialogue between Japanese business and Silicon Valley. M-Lab housed representatives from each of Mitsubishi Corporation’s...

May 2020
Teaching Material

Shiseido: Reinvesting in Brand

By: Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-026. Shiseido was in the midst of a six year corporate turnaround, trying to reverse the effects of decades of under-investment in R&D and marketing that had led to a vicious cycle of declining customer support and brand value. Would...

April 2020 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Oriental Land Co., Ltd.—Tokyo Disney Resort

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Akiko Kanno

This case describes the history of Oriental Land Co. Ltd.’s (OLC's) Tokyo Disney Resort (TDR), its operations, the extent of vertical integration, and the challenges it faced in 2018 as OLC's chairman and CEO, Toshio Kagami, contemplated how best to deal with...

March 2020
Article
Journal of Financial Economics

Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior

By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer and Charles C.Y. Wang

After decades of deprioritizing shareholders' economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country's "best-run" companies by annually selecting the 400 most...

February 2020
Teaching Material

Essential Explorations at MUJI

By: Tomomichi Amano and Das Narayandas

Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had...