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Publications
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- Faculty Publications (518)
- May 2008
- Case
Sensors Unlimited: Bringing InGaAs Technology to the Market
By: Willy C. Shih
Sensors Unlimited was a small start-up in short-wavelength infrared imaging. Its learning base came out of Bell Labs, RCA's Sarnoff Lab, and the Rockwell Science Center, and as it built its capabilities and ventured into new application areas, it discovered a “killer... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised August 2014)
- Case
MedVal Ventures
Is medical travel a viable business opportunity? A group of MBA students consider the pros and cons of starting a business that would send people from the U.S. to India for elective non-emergency surgeries. View Details
- January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
- Case
Cape Wind: Offshore Wind Energy in the USA
By: Richard Vietor
Cape Wind is an extreme example of NIMBY--not in my backyard syndrome. This is the first offshore wind project planned for the United States, in Nantucket Sound, just south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Initially proposed six years ago, in 2001, the wind farm would be... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus
By: Zoltan J. Acs, Edward L. Glaeser, Robert E. Litan, Lee Fleming, Stephan J. Goetz, William R. Kerr, Steven Klepper, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Olav Sorenson and William C. Strange
Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise,... View Details
- November 2007 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
The Ice King
By: Tom Nicholas and Sandra Nicholas
Provides an opportunity to examine the risk-reward tradeoff and the travails of entrepreneurial venturing in the nascent U.S. economy. Traces the origins and development of Frederic Tudor's Ice Company, a business which developed during the 19th century to hack chunks... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
Zoots - Financing Growth (A)
By: Michael J. Roberts, William A. Sahlman and Todd Krasnow
Traces the genesis and founding of Zoots, the largest chain of dry cleaning establishments in the U.S. Founded by some of the founders of the very successful Staples chain, the company raises a very large amount of capital without fully proving its business model, and... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Cherrypicks
By: William R. Kerr
Cherrypicks is a Hong Kong communications start-up approaching a large Korean mobile operator for a partnership to take the operator's products to markets outside of Korea. SK Telecom's (SKT) Ring Back Tones (RBT) product is a spectacular success in South Korea, but... View Details
- January 2007 (Revised May 2008)
- Case
National Logistics Management: Founder Decisions
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins
Scott Taylor, CEO & founder of NLM, is a serial entrepreneur faced with an important decision. As his industry consolidates, he knows that his company must grow quickly, yet he believes he has reached the limit of what organic growth can achieve. Should he accept the... View Details
- January 2007 (Revised December 2008)
- Case
The Challenges of Launching a Start-Up in China: Dorm99.com
By: William C. Kirby, F. Warren McFarlan and Tracy Manty
After graduating from Harvard Business School in June 2006, Ken Pao and Bill Li were ready to fully commit to the Internet start-up they had been working on since they first stepped foot on the business school campus. They moved to Beijing, rounded out their management... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
Prosper Marketplace, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth Kind
Describes a set of financial and strategic decisions confronting the founding management team of a new online financial services company. Prosper Marketplace is an internet-based market for individuals to borrow money from other individuals who wish to invest in such... View Details
- June 2006 (Revised January 2012)
- Case
Teena Lerner: Dividing the Pie at Rx Capital (A)
By: Boris Groysberg, Victoria Winston and Robin Abrahams
Teena Lerner started her own hedge fund firm in 2001 after nearly 20 years as a star biotechnology analyst and hedge fund manager. After the start-up phase, her firm became highly profitable. In 2004, however, one of her four analysts lost a lot of money for the firm.... View Details
- May 2006 (Revised July 2007)
- Case
Tropos Networks
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Elizabeth Kind
As Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos Networks, walked through the halls of the firm's offices, he realized that the space they had moved into only about a year ago was already becoming too small. The company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was founded in late 2000... View Details
- May 2006 (Revised June 2006)
- Case
Codon Devices
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and David Kiron
In December 2005, 40-year-old John Danner was about to make his first presentation to the board of directors of Codon Devices, a one-year-old biotechnology start-up based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a month as the company's CEO, Danner was prepared to lay out... View Details
- May 2006
- Case
A123Systems
By: H. Kent Bowen, Kenneth P Morse and Douglass Cannon
A 123Systems was a young company that was founded on basic materials science research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A co-founder of the company, Yet-Ming Chiang, was a full professor at MIT and served as scientific adviser. Intellectual property based... View Details
- March 2006
- Module Note
Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World
Describes the second module of the 30-session Harvard Business School elective course Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World. The course helps students understand the challenges that uncertainty implies for innovation and how to overcome these challenges. The course... View Details
- March 2006 (Revised May 2009)
- Case
Entrepreneurial Insights
By: Joseph L. Bower and Sonya Hout
Presents a matrix of 42 video clips of interviews with seven entrepreneurial managers answering the same six questions about their experiences building their companies. The individual entrepreneurs (Vittorio Merloni, Merloni Elettrodomestici; Alex d'Arbeloff, Teradyne,... View Details
- January 2006 (Revised May 2006)
- Case
Akin Ongor's Journey
A retired bank CEO, one of Turkey's most admired leaders, wants to start a leadership institute to develop emerging leaders in the eastern Mediterranean region. Describes his biography and values, the models he established for excellent financial performance and... View Details
- December 2005 (Revised May 2007)
- Case
Cynthia Fisher and the Rearing of ViaCell
By: Robert F. Higgins, Richard G. Hamermesh and Ingrid Vargas
Describes the start up of Viacord, a Boston-based medical services firm founded by Cynthia Fisher (HBS MBA) in 1993. Told from Fisher's perspective, the entrepreneur details the conceptualization and launch of the business and the many obstacles and expenses faced in... View Details
- December 2005 (Revised October 2013)
- Case
Fred Khosravi and AccessClosure (A)
By: Richard Hamermesh and Liz Kind
Fred Khosravi is a serial medical device entrepreneur. In his latest venture, he must decide whether to sell now or continue to develop his current product and whether to market it, sell the company, or IPO. View Details
- June 2005 (Revised May 2006)
- Case
Covisint (A): The Evolution of a B2B Marketplace
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins
Ford Motor Co., General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler--the three original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that dominated the automotive industry throughout the 20th century--launched Covisint in February 2000 as an industry supply chain exchange that would drive out cost... View Details