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Managing Customers for Growth (MCG) is a 14-session elective course for second-year MBA students at Harvard Business School. It is designed for business professionals engaged in roles centered on customer-driven growth activities. The course explores the dynamics of customer acquisition, retention, and development, aiming to assist managers in achieving sustainable customer growth. MCG focuses on examining the complexities of managing customer relationships in an environment characterized by increasing data availability and rapid technological advancements. The course blends case studies and practical exercises/workshops, aiming to provide comprehensive insights into customer management strategies, key frameworks, and tools for enhanced decision-making. It also highlights the challenges that today's managers face, especially regarding the ethical and responsible use of data to protect consumer privacy and prevent algorithmic bias. The interactive workshops enable students to engage with various forms of customer data, which will be analyzed to inform strategic decisions. The aim of these workshops is to hone students' quantitative intuition and to improve their ability to effectively collaborate with data science teams, thereby enhancing their data-driven decision-making capabilities. This note outlines the course objectives, the key questions, and the core ideas explored throughout the course.

Over the course of the 20th century, most of the world's major multinational corporations framed their mission around Milton Friedman's famous mantra: that the sole purpose of the firm is to maximize its shareholders' profits. Recently, however, growing numbers of for-profit firms have embedded and embraced missions that go far beyond profit maximization or commercial gain; missions that include some of the world's greatest and most complex challenges: mitigating climate change, for example, advancing economic mobility, ameliorating racial or gender injustice, and attacking global health challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet these are still for-profit firms, operating as commercial entities rather than government bureaucracies or non-profit organizations. So how, then, are they meant to operate? What can these firms measure and reward if profits are no longer their only goal? And what must these firms do differently if they truly seek to change the world? The principles described in The ICARUS Principles: What It Takes to Tackle the World attempt to answer these questions, and to sketch out the characteristics that distinguish more typical firms from those that are actively aiming to tackle massive societal challenges. Based on the first letters of these characteristics, we have assembled a list of six principles and refer to them as "the ICARUS Principles."

Two of the most important computer science principles in the technology industry are abstraction and platformization. Our aim with this note is to explain these concepts in an approachable way that brings managers and computer scientists a little closer together.

The expression "think before you speak" brings up a question that this technical note answers: What should someone think about before communicating as a leader? This note recommends taking an audience-centered approach. Through a short vignett

The role of marketing in any organization is to improve performance by establishing and nurturing worthwhile relationships (for companies, “worthwhile” usually means profitable) with customers, clients, sponsors, or other stakeholders. The professional practice of marketing, however, is more complicated than the unfortunate media-created stereotypes of fast-talking salespeople and manipulative advertisers. Indeed, marketers have many ways to win. This note explains the major choices that all marketers face and the ways in which marketing decisions can be made to obtain winning relationships with stakeholders.

The role of marketing in any organization is to improve performance by establishing and nurturing worthwhile relationships (for companies, "worthwhile" usually means profitable) with customers, clients, sponsors, or other stakeholders. The professional practice of marketing, however, is more complicated than the unfortunate media-created stereotypes of fast-talking salespeople and manipulative advertisers. Indeed, marketers have many ways to win. This note explains the major choices that all marketers face and the ways in which marketing decisions can be made to obtain winning relationships with stakeholders. Please note that this product replaces the previous version "Note on Marketing Management" product no. 9A99A032.

After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, companies around the world built and refined models of working in both fully remote and hybrid environments. While many of these policies and programs focused on maintaining operational productivity, few intentionally considered equity in their structures or outlined guidelines to ensure all employees felt they were treated fairly, regardless of chosen work modality or other external factors. While many organizations looked at factors such as pay, promotion rate, and attrition across different demographics as key measurements of equity, the onset of remote work appeared to require an expansion of these variables to include work modality so that companies can more clearly understand how physical presence in the office might impact these measures of advancement in the workplace. This technical note offers an overview of equity and remote work, including benefits of remote work for marginalized groups and challenges presented by remote work, including career-limiting factors. At the Darden School of Business, it is taught in first-year and second-year ethics electives. It would also be suitable in a module covering diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This technical note explores the "self-focus" and "mission-focus" mindsets based on two of the Arbinger Institute's book

This technical note graphically presents various working capital ratios (days inventory outstanding, days sales outstanding, days payables outstanding, cash conversion cycle, and operating cycle) over the 2016-2022 period by industry and for specific well-known companies. Students are given the opportunity to craft an intuitive "story" around the ratios they are presented.

For strategists, a good hypothesis is invaluable, both as a starting point and as a guide to help structure a good analysis. A hypothesis-driven approach is widely regarded as the gold standard in tackling problems where uncertainty and ambiguity make it difficult to identify obvious solutions. "What needs to be true?" (WNT) is a framework that highlights the power and importance of assumptions in strategic decision-making; thus, it is an essential complement to a hypothesis-driven mindset. It is meant to be an "everyday carry" tool in the strategist's arsenal-something that is simple and compact enough to be quickly deployed on the fly. It is versatile and can be used as a reliable starting point for any evaluative exercise.

This is a background note that surveys part of the extensive literature on organizational learning. The focus is on learning from experiences, how those learnings get translated into organizational routines and processes, and how that can also lead to getting stuck in competency traps. There is discussion on the learning curve, how that led to forward pricing strategies, and brief discussions on improvement, biases, and organizational memory.

This technical note introduces convertible note financing for early-stage start-up companies. These unpriced securities offer significant advantages related to delayed valuation, greater speed, and lower cost of completion compared to venture capital financing. As a result, the number of early-stage companies raising capital through convertible notes over the past decade has greatly increased. The note discusses the most frequently used terms and arrangements of early-stage convertible notes, the estimation of noteholders' equity ownership from delayed valuation, and the costs and risks of this form of financing to both entrepreneurs and investors. It offers a number of numerical examples that walk students through calculations of convertible note payoffs under different success scenarios and different valuation caps. It also explores how convertible notes affect subsequent equity rounds' pricing. Finally, the note offers statistical data on the state of convertible note issuance. This note is a successor to an older note, ""Convertible Notes: A Form of Early-Stage Financing"" (UVA-F-1925). The cases ""Should udu a Convertible Note?"" (UVA-F-2025) and ""MedMetri

Technologists, particularly product managers, do not make design choices in a vacuum. Often, they have quantitative objectives they hope to achieve as part of their quarterly goals. But purely pursuing those objectives without considering risks to various stakeholders-for example, erosion of users' attention or users becoming politically radicalized-may result in considerable harm for not only the product's users but also for the organization. This technical note helps managers think about the unintended consequences of shipping a given feature. It will also help identify win-win solutions that can enable one to hit target metrics while mitigating negative stakeholder consequences.

Pharmaceutical companies have historically relied on their ability to research, develop, manufacture, and sell drug products. Developing a successful drug is a complex and lengthy process, with no guarantee of success, and the total cost of approving a new drug is estimated at $2.5 billion, and rising. This technical note offers an overview of changes in the biotechnology industry related to drug development, focusing on M&A, the milestone model, and venture capital.

Many companies are very bad at hiring people—although they often don’t realize this—and they cannot get better if they don’t recognize that they need to improve. This note explores the common errors organizations make when attempting to hire employees and outlines the steps they should take to hire better and with improved diversity outcomes. The note is written from the perspective of someone who not only has interviewed thousands of job candidates but also is familiar with the literature on recruitment and selection. It serves as a practical guide that leans heavily on existing research.

Many companies are very bad at hiring people-although they often don't realize this-and they cannot get better if they don't recognize that they need to improve. This note explores the common errors organizations make when attempting to hire employees and outlines the steps they should take to hire better and with improved diversity outcomes. The note is written from the perspective of someone who not only has interviewed thousands of job candidates but also is familiar with the literature on recruitment and selection. It serves as a practical guide that leans heavily on existing research.