Susan, a first-year analyst at a trading firm, is the only woman among a tight-knit group of 30 analysts, now that Paulette has just been promoted to associate from third-year analyst. She and the rest of the analysts are summoned to an HR meeting because one of the male analysts has been putting Post-It Notes with drawings of penises in Paulette's workspace. All the analysts know who the offender is, but no one, including Susan, identifies him. After the meeting, Susan realizes that what she had considered a joke is actually harassment that could be hurting Paulette. The B case follows Susan's decision and ensuing actions.
Susan, a first-year analyst at a trading firm, is the only woman among a tight-knit group of 30 analysts, now that Paulette has just been promoted to associate from third-year analyst. She and the rest of the analysts are summoned to an HR meeting because one of the male analysts has been putting Post-It Notes with drawings of penises in Paulette's workspace. All the analysts know who the offender is, but no one, including Susan, identifies him. After the meeting, Susan realizes that what she had considered a joke is actually harassment that could be hurting Paulette. This B case follows Susan's decision and ensuing actions.
The Jobs to Be Done methodology is both a theory and a practical approach for understanding customer behavior and why people make the choices they make. Many practitioners, whether they work for startups or incumbent businesses, find Jobs to Be Done useful because it provides an uncommon solution to a common problem - understanding your customers as you start a new enterprise or losing touch with customers as your business grows. The theory of Jobs to Be Done is taught at Harvard Business School in the course "Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise ("BSSE," in HBS shorthand), which was created by the late Professor Clayton Christensen. It is practiced by many alumni of the course, as well as by numerous industry practitioners. Beyond them, there is a wider circle of professionals who are familiar with the theory or curious about it, and who are interested in converting that curiosity into practice. This multimedia toolbox walks through all of the stages of understanding and implementing Jobs to Be Done, including the foundational theory and its benefits to businesses; how to recruit customers, interview them, and analyze results; and feed that analysis into product development and marketing. The toolbox is a collection of original content as well as existing resources aggregated from across the web. To illustrate the theory the authors conducted a Jobs to Be Done research project to understand why our students "hire" Harvard Business School.
In 2017, the general manager of Rajarambapu Patil Co-operative Sugar Factory, a 50-year-old sugar plant in India, needed to recommend a strategy for the factory's upcoming production cycle. For the aggregate production plan, he was considering three options: a chase strategy, a level strategy, and a subcontracting strategy. The company faced multiple challenges, including a limited pool of skilled labourers, employee poaching by competitors and allied manufacturers, the wide availability of job options in metro cities, and pressure from the labour union. Company management wanted to optimize profits, while reducing risks and incurring no extra costs. How should the general manager decide which strategy would best meet all the criteria?
In 2017, the general manager of Rajarambapu Patil Co-operative Sugar Factory, a 50-year-old sugar plant in India, needed to recommend a strategy for the factory’s upcoming production cycle. For the aggregate production plan, he was considering three options: a chase strategy, a level strategy, and a subcontracting strategy. The company faced multiple challenges, including a limited pool of skilled labourers, employee poaching by competitors and allied manufacturers, the wide availability of job options in metro cities, and pressure from the labour union. Company management wanted to optimize profits, while reducing risks and incurring no extra costs. How should the general manager decide which strategy would best meet all the criteria?
In 2020, the global fashion industry was faced with substantial disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic had had disruptive consequences, both on the demand and supply sides. But the fashion industry was in distress long before the pandemic struck. In the last decade, the industry had come under intensifying scrutiny for being exploitative, environmentally damaging, and unsustainable. Numerous stakeholders were increasingly concerned about environmental issues, such as the impact of textile production and waste on climate change, as well as social issues, such as exploitative labor conditions for low-wage workers at the bottom of the value chain, especially in developing countries. Emilie had been asked to prepare a proposal on the future of the fashion industry in the post-pandemic era. She was due to present her proposal to the board the following Monday.
Following problems during the 2016 Iowa caucus, the Democratic National Committee mandated the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) to publish raw vote totals for the upcoming 2020 Iowa caucus. This mandate coincided with the IDP's shift for the 2020 caucus from a partnership with Microsoft, Inc. to one with a political consultancy, Shadow Inc., for developing a vote-recording application (app)---a partnership choice believed by many to have been politically motivated. Shadow developers were given much less time and resources than Microsoft had been afforded for the previous caucus. When the time came for the app to be used on February 3, eligible users could not download the app, which led to several problems. The consequences of the problematic app led to embarrassment for the Democratic Party, political ridicule by the Republican Party, distrust among democrat voters, and ambiguity and a delay in election results.
Both founded in the mid-2000s as two of China's earliest online video platforms and both emphasizing creative, original content, Youku and Tudou enjoyed popularity among China's young netizens, while constantly battling each other for market leadership. Both firms went public, on the NYSE and Nasdaq respectively. Facing China's hyper-competitive online video market, the twin firms decided to engage in a series of transactions, including a merger of the two, the delisting of Tudou, a major investment from and eventually the acquisition by Alibaba, and the delisting of Youku Tudou and transformation into part of Alibaba. Together with Baidu's iQIYI and Tencent Video, Youku Tudou will continue to shape China's entertainment and media landscape.
After breaking into China's smartphone market, where it becomes a leading brand, Xiaomi sees sales stagnate and then decline as the disruption strategy that empowered its rise loses momentum. As competitors counter every move, targeting its core consumer segment, the company urgently needs to reignite growth and develop a sustainable competitive advantage. The case describes the changing market landscape, Xiaomi's product portfolio, distribution systems, partnerships, brand management, promotion and pricing. The question is whether to remain focused on smartphones-on which Xiaomi's reputation has been built-or transform into an IoT 'ecosystem' encompassing a wider range of product categories. The challenge is to understand the respective pros and cons and formulate a detailed implementation plan for the chosen strategy.
Both founded in the mid-2000s as two of China’s earliest online video platforms and both emphasizing creative, original content, Youku and Tudou enjoyed popularity among China’s young netizens, while constantly battling each other for market leadership. Both firms went public, on the NYSE and Nasdaq respectively. Facing China’s hyper-competitive online video market, the twin firms decided to engage in a series of transactions, including a merger of the two, the delisting of Tudou, a major investment from and eventually the acquisition by Alibaba, and the delisting of Youku Tudou and transformation into part of Alibaba. Together with Baidu’s iQIYI and Tencent Video, Youku Tudou will continue to shape China’s entertainment and media landscape.
Following problems during the 2016 Iowa caucus, the Democratic National Committee mandated the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) to publish raw vote totals for the upcoming 2020 Iowa caucus. This mandate coincided with the IDP’s shift for the 2020 caucus from a partnership with Microsoft, Inc. to one with a political consultancy, Shadow Inc., for developing a vote-recording application (app)---a partnership choice believed by many to have been politically motivated. Shadow developers were given much less time and resources than Microsoft had been afforded for the previous caucus. When the time came for the app to be used on February 3, eligible users could not download the app, which led to several problems. The consequences of the problematic app led to embarrassment for the Democratic Party, political ridicule by the Republican Party, distrust among democrat voters, and ambiguity and a delay in election results.
自從聯合國有關教育發展的指南（the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development）在2005年被提出，在各個領域中的教學融入永續發展的知識已是培養國際公民刻不容緩的事。而在不動產市場的探討中，綠建築課題是結合永續概念和經濟及產業發展的重要議題。在綠建築的發展史上，台灣相當早便已提出綠建築的評估系統，但由於綠建築是較新的課題，不管是在國內或國外，非探討建築本身工法的知識，而是以市場發展、誘因、限制的角度出發的教材十分有限。因此，本個案將藉由市場發展的角度，評估市場誘因、限制，將可以引導讀者思考這個兼具多項永續概念的課題。
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 crowd-sourcing platform, while it transitioned away from traditional screen printing to a digital print-on-demand model. Concurrently, the company jettisoned its warehouse and built a worldwide network of manufacturers that could print and ship Threadless orders on demand. Threadless also launched a new platform called Artist Shops that allowed graphic artists to sell apparel in uniquely branded online stores, with the option of having Threadless manage their pricing and promotional events. The software Threadless developed to facilitate its manufacturing network and Artist Shops platform also led Threadless to increasingly view itself as a technology company performing intermediary services, rather than merely an online apparel company. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 accelerated the company's transition, triggering the sale of Threadless's office and a move to working from home. Nickell wondered what the next steps for the company should be.
By the end of 2019, two brands accounted for 84% of hard seltzer sales, a segment that had recently taken the U.S. beer market by storm, growing from $3 million in 2015 to over $2.7 billion by the start of the summer of 2020. White Claw was the dominant market leader with a 58% market share. Analysts were worried about fragmentation and commoditization in the category, which had grown from 10 brands in 2018 to more than 65 by 2020. This made competition in the segment increasingly fierce. How could White Claw best drive the category's transition from niche to mainstream and how could it hold onto and/or expand its market share as the category exponentially grew? White Claw was quickly becoming the "Kleenex" of hard seltzer, so the team need to further differentiate itself from encroaching competitors. Should the team narrow the currently broad target market as competitors launched increasingly microtargeted offerings? Should they lower price as generic hard seltzers hit the market? And, how could the team best manage the White Claw brand to mitigate their chances of riding a boom-to-bust lifecycle of a fad product?
Founded in 2020 by Jewel Burks Solomon and her partners, Barry Givens and Justin Dawkins, Collab Capital was a new investment firm built on two pillars: first, it would identify and support ventures founded by Black entrepreneurs, a group underrepresented in venture-financed entrepreneurship. Second, Solomon and her partners had developed a novel financial instrument that incorporated both profit-sharing and equity to offer an alternative to traditional venture capital (VC) for startups. They believed their approach offered venture-level returns for investors while also closing a critical funding gap for Black entrepreneurs. But Limited Partners (LPs) were not yet convinced.