All too often fitness centers, medical providers, colleges, and organizations in many other industries seek to distinguish themselves only on the quality, convenience, and experience of what they sell, say the authors. It''s not that those things aren''t important. But they matter only as means to the ends that people seek. Too many organizations lose sight of this truth. Even when they do promote what they sell in relation to consumers'' .....more

Niccol was the CEO of Taco Bell before he became the chief executive of Chipotle, in 2018. He had watched Chipotle''s launch and rise with fascination and had enjoyed its burritos and bowls. But now he saw that it needed to get its business back on track fast. Customer lines were moving slowly. Some workers didn''t seem properly trained. The marketing was unmemorable. Niccol and his team focused on strengthening the company''s .....more

For decades, negotiators have been working out agreements by focusing on interests, not positions. But the messy problem of how to share the gains created by deals has remained unresolved--until now. The answer, argue Yale''s Nalebuff and NYU''s Brandenburger, lies in accurately identifying and sizing the negotiation "pie," which they define as the additional value produced by an agreement to work together. It''s .....more

In September 2020, Diana Ferguson, was nearing her first Audit Committee meeting as the newly appointed Audit Committee chair of Mattel, Inc. Mattel was just recovering from an accounting scandal which had revealed the company''s poor internal controls and weak board oversight over financial reporting, and the committee had important decisions to make going forward. In early 2018, Mattel''s Tax team had discovered a significant reporting .....more

The two vignettes within "Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance" (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms ("PSFs"). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to bring on outsiders to sit on the firm''s Executive Leadership Board and the potential implications of doing so. In the second, a U.S.-headquartered Private .....more

The case describes the patrimonial situation of Marcela and Jorge Mansilla. The siblings descend from a family of landowners with fields in the province of Buenos Aires. They developed gastronomy and real estate activities and diversified risks. However, the bifurcation of destinations and businesses generated constant friction between the siblings. Frequent discussions made the situation very tense, and they are determined to do something to prevent .....more

In April 2018, Amit Darekar, director of operations at Hydropack India Pvt. Ltd. (Hydropack), was focused on revamping the company''s information technology (IT) infrastructure. This had become crucial in the face of a product design leak resulting from an employee who had left Hydropack to join a rival company and taken valuable data with him in the process. The design that Hydropack had made was for a tender floated by a public sector company. .....more

Spreadsheet supplement for case W21348.

In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop and a mobile app for customers was growing swiftly, but with nearly all barbershops shut down to prevent the spread of the disease and no revenue coming in, should they cut back, or .....more