Publications

TeachingInterests

Founders' Dilemmas

Founders' Dilemmas examines the early, often difficult, decisions that have important long-term consequences for founders and their ventures. Potential consequences include losing control of their ventures, breaking up of the founding team due to tensions between... View Details

October 2022 (Revised September 2023)
Case

SolarWinds Confronts SUNBURST (A)

By: Frank Nagle, George A. Riedel, William R. Kerr and David Lane

On December 12, 2020, SolarWinds learned that malware had been inserted in its software, potentially granting hackers access to thousands and thousands of its 300,000 customers. General Counsel Jason Bliss needed to orchestrate the company response without knowing how... View Details

Keywords: Cyberattacks; Cybersecurity; Corporate Disclosure; Crisis Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Legal Liability; Information Technology Industry; United States

February 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Case

CrossFit (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Ali Huberlie and Christopher Payton

The case provides a sense of motivations of venture capital firms, the pivotal role that founders play, and explores the limits of founder-driven growth.
CrossFit (CF) describes the approach taken by its founder Greg Glassman in setting up one of the most... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Venture Capital; Strategy; Organizational Culture; Entrepreneurship; Franchise Ownership; Innovation and Invention; United States; North America

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Improve and Innovate

Keywords: by Mark D. Cannon & Amy C. Edmondson

April 2014
Article

Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity

By: F. Gino and S. Wiltermuth

We propose that dishonest and creative behavior have something in common: they both involve breaking rules. Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty (as shown in prior work), and dishonesty may lead to creativity (the hypothesis we tested in... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Creativity; Attitudes

Read Now

During a break after starting and selling several successful technology based startups, Hadi Partovi decided to make a short film to inspire students to learn computer science. “Code.org started as a hobby project,” Hadi said. “I had helped pay my way through... View Details

January 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Adeo Health Science: Turning a Product into a Brand

By: Elizabeth A. Keenan and Jill Avery

For decades, American parents were warned to avoid introducing potential allergens to their babies prior to their first birthday. But two influential clinical studies caused the medical establishment to radically reverse its position. Parents were now warned that... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Health Care; Consumer; Consumer Products; Branding; Distribution; Retailing; Go To Market Strategy; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry; United States; North America

2012
Chapter

The Small Worlds of Business Groups: Liberalization and Network Dynamics

By: Jon Brookfield, Sea-Jin Chang, Israel Drori, Shmuel Ellis, Sergio G. Lazzarini, Jordan I. Siegel and Juan Pablo von Bernath Bardina

Using comparative data from six major emerging economies — Brazil, Chile, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan — we examine how ownership networks in those societies responded to a roughly similar “ structural break ” of economic liberalization during the 1990s... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Economies; Ownership; Corporate Governance; Emerging Markets

September 2021
Article

Shaking Things Up: Disruptive Events and Inequality

By: Letian Zhang

This paper develops a theory of how disruptive events could reduce racial and gender inequality in organizations. Despite pressure from regulators and advocates, racial and gender inequality in the workplace remains high. I theorize that because such inequality is... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Equality and Inequality; Diversity; Race; Gender; Restructuring; Mergers and Acquisitions; Disruption

Read Now

10 Apr 2020
News

How to Be an Inclusive Leader Through a Crisis

23 Apr 2014
HBS Seminar

David Lazer, Northeastern University

21 Aug 2023
Book

You’re More Than Your Job: 3 Tips for a Healthier Work-Life Balance

breaks and to reallocate their time will keep a talent pipeline filled, instead of forcing good employees out of the work force entirely. “We need to allow highly ambitious professionals to have chapters of life that require reallocation... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

25 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

Breaking the ‘shame spiral’ In another recent paper, Jachimowicz and colleagues found that people experiencing financial difficulties experience shame, which leads them to avoid dealing with their problems and often makes them worse. Such... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

June 2022
Teaching Plan

Lifebank Nigeria

By: Brian Trelstad, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal

The aspiration of addressing maternal deaths in Nigeria, which were mostly caused by blood shortages, led Temie Giwa-Tubosun to found LifeBank in 2015. LifeBank developed an online platform that enabled hospitals to connect and purchase blood from local blood banks and... View Details

Keywords: Systems Design; Social Business; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Health Care; Blood; Social Enterprise; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Finance; Health Industry; Transportation Industry; Africa; Nigeria

Article

Financial Shame Spirals: How Shame Intensifies Financial Hardship

By: Joe J. Gladstone, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Adam Eric Greenberg and Adam D. Galinsky

Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110)—including data from customer bank account histories and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Hardship; Financial Decision-making; Shame; Guilt; Personal Finance; Financial Condition; Decision Making; Emotions

Article

Toward Resource Independence—Why State-Owned Entities Become Multinationals: An Empirical Study of India's Public R&D Laboratories

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna

In this paper, we build on the standard resource dependence theory and its departure suggested by Vernon to offer a novel explanation for why state-owned entities (SOEs) might seek a global footprint and global cash flows: to achieve resource independence from... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Resource Allocation; Supply Chain; State Ownership; Growth and Development Strategy; India