Research
Research
- January 2021
- Teaching Material
Barbara Krakow Gallery (B): Art and the Pandemic
By: Jose B. Alvarez and David Lane
| Updates (A) case by describing the early impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the art market, the renaming of the gallery as the Krakow Witkin Gallery, and the response of its partners and staff to the pandemic.
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- January 2021
- Case
mPharma (A)
By: Rembrand Koning, John D. Macomber, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal
| mPharma pioneered electronic prescriptions in Ghana, and aimed to increase drug affordability and accessibility in Africa, but the company remained unprofitable. Following investor concerns about mPharma's business, CEO Gregory Rockson considered alternative business...
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- January 2021
- Case
TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Malini Sen
| Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a multinational IT services company headquartered in Mumbai, is a subsidiary of one of India’s most reputed conglomerates, the Tata Group. In 2020, TCS was valued at $144.7 billion, the highest for any company in the IT sector,...
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- Winter 2021
- MIT Sloan Management Review
How Would-Be Category Kings Become Commoners
By: Rory McDonald and Keith Krach
| Category creation is the holy grail in business, but more often than not, the very companies that establish lucrative new markets don’t end up being the category kings. Why? Many executives undermine their own ventures’ standing by misinterpreting and misfiring on...
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- 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 cost and time while improving...
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- December 2020
- Case
PG&E and the First Climate Change Bankruptcy
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott
| In early 2020, the California-based utility PG&E filed a second amended plan of reorganization. PG&E had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of more than $30 billion of legal claims brought against it for its alleged role in causing California wildfires. The...
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- December 2020
- Research Policy
Different Founders, Different Firms: A Comparative Analysis of Academic and Non-academic Startups
By: Maria P. Roche, Annamaria Conti and Frank T. Rothaermel
| What role do differences in founders' occupational backgrounds play in new venture performance? Analyzing a novel dataset of 2,998 founders creating 1,723 innovative startups in biomedicine, we find that the likelihood and hazard of achieving a liquidity event are...
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- December 2020
- Teaching Material
France Télécom (B): A Wave of Staff Suicides
| In the B case we learn that at least 19 France Telecom employees took their own lives between 2006 and 2009, 12 others attempted suicide, and eight suffered from serious depression for reasons reportedly related to work. Some of these deaths occurred in public places,...
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- December 2020
- Case
France Télécom (A): A Challenging Restructuring
| These cases explore the impacts of industry shocks, resulting corporate actions that had a devasting impact on employees, and the legal conviction of corporate leaders for “institutional harassment." This case series follows the evolution of France Telecom from a...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation
By: Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning and Ramana Nanda
| Using data from a prominent online platform for launching new digital products, we document that the composition of the platform's ‘beta testers’ on the day a new product is launched has a systematic and persistent impact on the venture's success. Specifically, we use...
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- November 2020
- Case
Holaluz: Taking on the Spanish Energy Market
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg, Elena Corsi and Emer Moloney
| In 2020, the three cofounders of Holaluz, a newcomer to Spain’s electricity retail market, is preparing to launch a new offering: installing and managing solar panels on households' roofs at no extra cost for the consumer, who would still benefit from the energy...
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- November 2020
- Case
HP Instant Ink: (Self) Disrupting the Consumer Printing Market
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and George Gonzalez
| Seeking to disrupt the consumer printing market (before being disrupted by others), and in response to customer pain points, in 2013 HP Inc. launched an ink replenishment service called Instant Ink, where customers pay a monthly subscription fee based on the number of...
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- November 2020
- Teaching Material
DayTwo: Going to Market with Gut Microbiome
By: Ayelet Israeli
| Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-010. DayTwo is a young Israeli startup that applies research on the gut microbiome and machine learning algorithms to deliver personalized nutritional recommendations to its users in order to minimize blood sugar spikes after meals....
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- 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 the entire $16 billion...
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- 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 billion purchase price, and relied on...
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