Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
Filter Results: (8) Arrow Down

Growth ManagementRemove Growth Management →

Page 1 of 8 Results

Is Happiness at Work Really Attainable?

Francesca Gino discuss whether Henco Logistics' focus on employee happiness can endure through the Mexican company's rapid growth and leadership transition. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

by Julia Austin

As small companies grow to around 100 employees, the skills of their managers are challenged in new ways. Julia Austin describes how leaders themselves must scale. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Marketplace Scalability and Strategic Use of Platform Investment

by Jin Li, Gary P. Pisano, and Feng Zhu

One well-known feature of marketplace platforms like Airbnb and eBay is their scalability. This paper identifies the strategic trade-off and implications for scalability when a platform provides services to existing and potential sellers that help reduce their fixed costs of running the business. Timing this investment is an important consideration for maximizing marketplace scalability.

Careem: Riding the First Unicorn in the Middle East

Doubling in size every two-and-a-half months, ride-hailing service Careem was experiencing growing pains operationally and culturally. Shikhar Ghosh discusses how the founders struggled to keep its 4 million customers satisfied. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Turbulence, Firm Decentralization and Growth in Bad Times

by Philippe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen

What makes some firms more resilient than others to large negative macro shocks? This paper finds that the internal organization of firms—specifically, the extent to which decision-making is decentralized from headquarters to plant managers—is an important mediating factor through which macroeconomic shocks affect firm performance and, ultimately, growth.

Towards a Prescriptive Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategic Choice, Learning, and Competition

by Gary P. Pisano

This paper explore how firms’ choices about capability investments shape competitive outcomes. In essence, while general-purpose management capabilities rooted in such activities as quality management systems and corporate governance may contribute to performance differences across firms, firms also need to develop market-specific capabilities to compete. It is also crucial to manage two types of uncertainty: supply side uncertainty to create new capabilities and demand side uncertainty about the value of those capabilities.

Leadership Lessons of the Great Recession: Options for Economic Downturns

by Sandra Sucher & Susan Winterberg

In the new case study “Honeywell and the Great Recession,” Sandra Sucher and Susan Winterberg explore employer tradeoffs when a downturn hits: conducting layoffs vs. orchestrating furloughs. Plus: Video interviews with Honeywell CEO Dave Cote. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Starbucks Reinvented

by Julia Hanna

Nancy Koehn's new case on the rebirth of Starbucks under Howard Schultz "distills 20 years of my thinking about the most important lessons of strategy, leadership, and managing in turbulence." Closed for comment; 0 Comments.