Harvard Business Review Just Asked (and Answered) One of Deathcare’s Most-Asked Questions
Javier Montoya, the 76-year-old CEO of Chile’s Monteverde Memorial Group (MMG), confronts a strategic inflection point for his burial park business. For decades MMG has prospered by offering burial plots to the growing middle class. […] As cremation demand rises and burial economics tighten, Javier must decide: Should MMG continue investing heavily in memorial parks or pivot toward cremation and a more transactional, possibly digital future?
This is the premise of a case study published in the May–June 2026 issue of Harvard Business Review. The cemetery and CEO in the study may be fictional, but the question it poses is all too real for many deathcare establishments: Is what we’ve always done no longer enough?
Although access to Harvard Business Review case studies is paywalled, the narrative and the expert opinions at the end of this one might be worth the $11.95 article reprint fee — especially if you, like Javier, are considering changing your business model from what you’re doing right now to something that offers families more options — and, eventually, offers you more revenue.
Sound familiar?
You don’t have to own a cemetery in Chile to understand the terrain Javier is navigating. According to the NFDA’s recent Cremation & Burial Report, U.S. cremation rates are projected to hit 63.4% in 2025, climbing toward a staggering 82.3% by 2045. Traditional burial is on a long, slow decline. Consumer expectations have shifted. Families want personalization, transparency, and options that feel less transactional and more meaningful. Direct cremation providers are marketing aggressively online. Death doulas are expanding their footprint. Alternative disposition methods like natural organic reduction (NOR) and alkaline hydrolysis are gaining both legal footing and cultural curiosity.
Needless to say, the deathcare business model that served funeral homes and cemeteries well for more than a century is under more pressure than it has ever been.
What makes the HBR case study notable isn’t just that it asks the question — it’s who is asking it. Harvard Business Review doesn’t typically publish case studies about funeral companies. When one of the most prestigious business publications in the world turns its gaze to deathcare and frames it as a business model problem worth teaching in MBA classrooms, that’s a signal. The profession has arrived at a crossroads that business scholars find worth studying.
So what should Javier Montoya — and by extension, you — actually do?
The case study’s answer isn’t a single pivot, because a clean-cut easy solution isn’t a realistic scenario. Forward-thinking funeral professionals have demonstrated that education and dialogue can coexist alongside tradition, and the narrative HBR builds through Javier’s conversations with his team, a college professor, his daughter, and his son (who is also his heir-apparent at MMG), reflects that.
The experts weigh in
At the conclusion of the narrative detailing Javier’s current predicament, HBR asks the following question: Should Javier continue investing in burial parks or pivot to cremation?
The experts who respond to the question are John Fallon, a professor of practice at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, the former CEO of Pearson plc, and a coauthor of Resurgent: How Established Organizations Can Fight Back and Thrive in an Age of Digital Transformation, and Artem Manilov, founder and CEO of Tending, a subscription-based service for headstone restoration and grave maintenance — and whom Connecting Directors recently interviewed about his new digital offering.
Without giving away Fallon’s and Manilov’s specific responses, we can say that both experts provide thoughtful analyses based on their professional experiences and respective views on the future of deathcare. Neither offers a 100% guarantee that their solution will be immediately successful, and both recognize that their ideas come with substantial investments of funds, time, and education of not only staff, but the community at large. And, perhaps most importantly, both Fallon and Manilov demonstrate their respect for the traditions that have made the fictional Monteverde Memorial Group a success — and have made deathcare a lifelong and rewarding career.
