Publications

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28 May 2019
News

Turning Point: Into the Wild

on one of our host’s horses. It was a beautiful day, and as I rode I began to see all kinds of wildlife—impalas, dik-diks, wildebeests, giraffes. I got closer to the game on... View Details

01 Dec 2016
News

The US Patent System’s Uncertain Fate

(Illustration by Peter Arkle) What is really at stake when we talk about patents? Lauren Cohen: Innovation is the future of the US economy. Given that View Details

Keywords: April White

25 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University

Prominent among them were Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and MIT. Together, they have evolved to share common institutional traits, a sort of university DNA. Much as the identity View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen & Henry J. Eyring; Education

05 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Fixing the ‘I Hate Work’ Blues

that only 30 percent of employees are engaged in their work. The issues raised are ones I have worked on for many years. With the drive for higher productivity in View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

March 2013
Article

The Client Is King: Do Mutual Fund Relationships Bias Analyst Recommendations?

By: Michael Firth, Chen Lin, Ping Liu and Yuhai Xuan

This paper investigates whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst recommendations. Using a unique data set that discloses brokerage firms' commission income derived from each mutual fund client as well as the... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Funds

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November 1989 (Revised January 1990)
Case

Paul Revere Insurance Co. (C): Competing For the Baldrige Award--The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Exercise

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award requires firms to submit applications that conform to a rigorous quality-assessment system. This case consists of several parts of a service company's 1988 Baldrige application together with material from the Malcolm Baldrige... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation

17 Dec 2020
Working Paper Summaries

How Do CEOs Make Strategy?

Keywords: by Mu-Jeung Yang, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and Jan Rivkin

January 2008 (Revised January 2008)
Case

Two Brattle Center: A Mental-Health Clinic in Search of a Viable Operating Model

By: Robert G. Eccles

Two Brattle Center (TBC) is a struggling for-profit private mental health clinic based in Harvard Square. Its founder, Dr. Joan Wheelis, is a nationally recognized practicing psychiatrist who has developed outpatient treatment programs based on Dialectical Behavior... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Medical Specialties; Nonprofit Organizations; Emotions; Health Industry; United States

2009
Article

Empirical Capital Structure: A Review

By: Christopher Parsons and Sheridan Titman

This survey provides a synthesis of the empirical capital structure literature. Our synthesis is divided into three parts. The first part examines the evidence that relates to the cross-sectional determinants of capital structure. This literature identifies and... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Corporate Finance

17 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Who is Boss in the Sharing Economy?

types of decisions that affect the joint payoffs of the firm and the professionals:... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Service; Technology

Jan 2014
Case

Rail Transportation in the United States

structured way of thinking through the issues facing rail transportation and discusses three recent freight rail infrastructure projects that hold promise for View Details

September 1994 (Revised September 1994)
Case

Acer Group, The: Vision for the Year 2000

By: D. Quinn Mills and Richard C. Wei

In the early 1990s, Acer, Inc. set two goals: to be a top-five PC company worldwide in 1995 and to be a global consortium of companies by the year 2000. The company identified potential obstacles concerning capital, image, number of experienced international managers,... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Goals and Objectives; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Organizational Structure; Global Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Experience and Expertise; Marketing Strategy; Production; Rank and Position; Business Strategy; Capital; Computer Industry; Japan

September 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Burunda Prince at The Farm, a Comcast NBCUniversal Innovation Hub (Powered by Boomtown)

By: Linda A. Hill, Eric Mankin and Emily Tedards

After a successful inaugural year, Burunda Prince, the Managing Director of Comcast’s startup business accelerator The Farm, was getting ready for an eventful 2019. Comcast was America's largest cable and internet service provider, having built a profitable business... View Details

01 Apr 2000
News

A Place in the Sun

in a culture where it's very difficult for people to tell other people what to do. It's not the usual supervisory manager-submanager structure found in the United States."... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna and Garry Emmons

March 2009
Journal Article

Does Individual Performance Affect Entrepreneurial Mobility? Empirical Evidence from the Financial Analysis Market

By: Boris Groysberg, Ashish Nanda and M. Julia Prats

Our paper contributes to the studies on the relationship between workers' human capital and their decision to become self-employed as well as their probability to survive as entrepreneurs. Analysis from a panel data set of research analysts in investment banks over... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investment Banking; Retention; Human Capital; Performance Effectiveness; Banking Industry

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January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Pioneer Natural Resources: Enhancing the Capital Return Strategy with Variable Dividends

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Elisabeth Kempf and E. Scott Mayfield

In February 2021, Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources (an independent oil and gas company based in Texas), was considering the possibility of enhancing the firm’s capital return strategy by introducing a variable dividend tied to cash flows in... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Finance; Cash Flow; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Profit; Policy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; United States; North America; Texas

October 2019
Article

Does Political Uncertainty Increase External Financing Costs? Measuring the Electoral Premium in Syndicated Lending

By: Olivia S. Kim

This article investigates the impact of political uncertainty on contractual lending terms using a large sample of syndicated loans and a within-firm estimation approach to achieve identification. Firms pay 7 basis points (bps) more on loans originated when their... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Political Elections; Financing and Loans; Developing Countries and Economies

June 2016
Supplement

Duff & Phelps: Scaling an Entrepreneurial Venture (B)

By: Lynda M. Applegate and David Lane

In September 2005, Duff & Phelps closed on a deal to acquire a much larger firm that quadrupled its size to 500 employees. Almost immediately, the company faced challenging integration issues. Gottdiener and Silverman realize that they must now turn away from the... View Details

Keywords: Duff ＆ Phelps; Entrepreneurial Management; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Entrepreneurial Financing; Entrepreneurship; Mergers and Acquisitions; Integration; Business Model; Organizational Structure; Management