Research - Global Initiative - Harvard Business School

2020
Book Chapter

Luxury Tourism and Environmentalism

This chapter examines the evolution of luxury tourism and its environmental impact. Whilst mass tourism is widely seen as environmentally damaging, the impact of luxury tourism is nuanced. During the first stage of the growth in the nineteenth century, the numbers of...

September 2020
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...

September 2020
Teaching Material

Uber: Competing Globally

By: Alexander J. MacKay

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 720-404.

August 2020
Case

Nubank: Democratizing Financial Services

By: Michael Chu, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo

Nubank, a wholly-digital solution created to disrupt Brazilian banking, with 6 million clients and a $4 billion valuation after five years, must decide whether to expand to Mexico. The company was founded in Sāo Paulo in 2013 by Colombian-born David Vélez to seize what...

August 2020
Case

Latam Airlines and COVID-19: Seeking Bankruptcy Protection in the United States

By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Larrain, Carlos Vilches and Sarah Jeong

On May 26, 2020, Latam Airlines became the largest airline in the world to be driven to bankruptcy by COVID-19. With a complex debt structure and international investor composition, the company decided to file for bankruptcy protection in the United States, which...

July 2020
Case

Karen Bruck: Growing Managers at MercadoLibre

By: Joshua D. Margolis, Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal

Karen Bruck, Corporate Sales Director at MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, needs to make a decision about one of her managers, who, while analytically savvy, has an approach that does not fit in with the company's culture.

June 2020
Teaching Material

Global Brand Management of Anheuser Busch InBev's Budweiser

By: Jill Avery

Brian Perkins, chief architect of the $6 billion Budweiser brand, was excited about 2018, in which the company would launch Budweiser into several new markets in Africa and Latin America. He was feeling the pressure to finalize a global brand strategy that would define...

2020
Working Paper

EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms

By: Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra and Marcela Eslava

Emerging economies are characterized by an extremely high prevalence of informality, small-firm employment and jobs not fit for working from home. These features factor into how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the economy. We develop a framework that, based on...

May 2020 (Revised June 2020)
Case

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (A)

By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin

In April 2020, the world struggled to contain the exponential escalation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Dozens of countries had imposed restrictions on travel, work, and social gatherings. A large share of the global population was under lockdowns and...

2020
Working Paper

Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang

The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19...

April 2020 (Revised June 2020)
Case

Uber: Competing Globally

By: Alexander J. MacKay, Amram Migdal and John Masko

This case describes Uber’s global market entry strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors. It details Uber’s entry into New York City (United States), Bogotá (Colombia), Delhi (India), Shanghai (China), Accra (Ghana), and London (United Kingdom). In...

April 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Unrest in Chile

By: Vincent Pons, William Mullins, John Masko, Annelena Lobb and Rafael Di Tella

In 2020, Chileans would head to the ballot box to decide their country’s future. Many international observers credited Chile’s decades of neoliberal governance with turning the country into Latin America’s “Tiger,” a prosperous, diversified economy on its way to...

March 2020
Case

Odebrecht's 'Transformation Journey'

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Mariana Cal

At the center of one of the largest corruption scandals in Latin America, Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht signed a leniency agreement with American, Swiss and Brazilian prosecutors in 2016 admitting to paying bribes in 12 countries. In an effort to regain financial...

February 2020
Case

Rotoplas: Bringing More and Better Water

By: John D. Macomber and Carla Larangeira

Private companies were being turned to for potable water in the world’s megacities due to impacts of climate change including droughts and flooding. Mexico City had endured several water-related crises, with its population suffering from floods, droughts, water...

January 2020
Case

Banorte Móvil: Data-Driven Mobile Growth

By: Ayelet Israeli, Carla Larangeira and Mariana Cal

In mid-2019, Carlos Hank was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil—the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico’s most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had...

January 2020
Case

Terra Nova: A Social Business Trying to Unlock Land Rights for the Urban Poor in Brazil

By: Julie Battilana, Ruth Costas, Marissa Kimsey and Priscilla Zogbi

Brothers André and Daniel Albuquerque founded the company Terra Nova in 2001 to mediate land disputes between poor families illegally living in urban areas and the official landowners—with the aspiration to improve the lives of the poor. A business-led approach to the...

January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Rumo: Infrastructure for a Healthier Economy

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Mariana Cal, Ruth Costas and Natalie Kindred

Brazilian logistics company Rumo operated 13,500 km in railway networks, port terminals, and inland transshipment terminals, connecting major Brazilian ports to the agriculture hubs of Mato Grosso and São Paulo state. Controlled by Cosan, Brazil's leading sugar and...

December 2019 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Mãe Terra and Unilever (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

The case concerns the sale of Mãe Terra, one of Brazil's leading brands for packaged organic foods, to the consumer goods giant Unilever in 2017. Working with Unilever management, Mãe Terra’s CEO Alexandre Borges must determine whether and how to keep Mãe Terra's B...

December 2019
Teaching Material

Mãe Terra and Unilever (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Mariana Cal

Unilever is making strides to integrate the operations of Mãe Terra—one of Brazil's leading brands for packaged organic foods—into its own structures, after acquiring the company in 2017. Mãe Terra’s CEO, Alexandre Borges, must decide whether to implement his original...

December 2019
Case

Grupo Éxito: Facing Colombia's Competitive Grocery Retail Industry

By: Jose Alvarez, Carla Larangeira, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Miguel Diaz Moreno

Grupo Éxito, a leading South American retailer, faced declining market shares in Colombia in 2019 with the arrival of low-cost competitors and emerging digital trends. Originally founded in Medellín, Éxito had over the course of its seventy-year history evolved from a...