Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (682)
- Article
Investing in Distressed Situations: A Market Survey
By: S. C. Gilson
The risks of investing in distressed companies—a practice popularly known as "vulture" investing—are highly firm specific and idiosyncratic. Investors who are adept at managing these risks, who understand the legal rules that must be followed in corporate bankruptcy,... View Details
- June 1995 (Revised June 1996)
- Case
White Nights and Polar Lights: Investing in the Russian Oil Industry
By: Debora L. Spar
In the latter half of the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet empire created an unprecedented opportunity for Western businesses. Among those most attracted were the oil firms, who rushed to investigate Russia's vast petroleum reserves. But, as they soon discovered,... View Details
- December 1994 (Revised October 2009)
- Case
AES Honeycomb (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Sarah C. Mavrinac
Senior managers of the AES Corp., an independent power producer, must decide whether to drop the company's emphasis on corporate values and revamp organizational controls as advised by investment analysts and outside counsel. The company is recovering from an incident... View Details
- September 1994 (Revised May 2010)
- Case
Hamilton Test Systems, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Norman Klein
The protagonists must decide whether to invest in an auto emissions testing company as the first investment in the leveraged buyout fund they recently formed. Issues of how to raise the needed equity capital and how to structure the acquisition are emphasized. View Details
- March 1994 (Revised December 1995)
- Case
McArthur/Glen Realty Corp.
By: William J. Poorvu and John H. Vogel Jr.
Jonathan Potter is considering an investment in the newly formed McArthur/Glen Real Estate Investment Trust. The case gives some background on real estate investment trusts and their history. Also discusses manufacturers' outlet shopping centers, the type of real... View Details
- October 1993 (Revised April 1994)
- Case
Jack Welch: General Electric's Revolutionary
By: Joseph L. Bower and Jay Dial
Describes the work of Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 1992, focusing particularly on his transformation of the company's portfolio through extensive dispositions and acquisitions and the company's culture through a mandated process called "work out."... View Details
- November 1992 (Revised December 1994)
- Case
BEA Associates: Enhanced Equity Index Funds
By: Andre F. Perold
BEA's enhanced index fund product uses derivatives and cash market securities to find the most efficient way to "track an index." The considerations involve transaction costs, custodial fees, withholding taxes on dividends, and fees from securities lending. In this... View Details
- February 1992 (Revised March 1993)
- Case
Intel Corp.--1992
By: Kenneth A. Froot
Intel Corp., the world's dominant designer and manufacturer of microprocessors (the "brains" of the personal computer), has accumulated a large amount of cash (net of debt). Furthermore, it expects to continue to accumulate cash at an unprecedented rate. Has the... View Details
- February 1991
- Case
Burlington Northern: The ARES Decision (A)
By: Julie H. Hertenstein and Robert S. Kaplan
Burlington Northern's decision whether to invest in ARES, an automated train control system, is a ($350 million) strategic investment in information technology. Although set in a service industry (railroad) the issues around this decision arise in many organizations... View Details
- August 1990 (Revised March 1991)
- Case
Eli Lilly and Co. (C): Japan
Describes the process of establishing an independent operation in Japan in the mid-1980s as a result of a decision to make a major investment in the market. Describes the challenges in setting up such an operation and focuses on the role of the country manager in... View Details
- December 1987 (Revised May 1991)
- Case
One Leather Street
By: William J. Poorvu and Jeffrey A. Libert
Presents a problem involving rehabilitating a small office building in Boston. Describes an investment decision which is knowingly underfunded. As construction proceeds, the developer realizes that it is not up to building code and faces difficult business and ethical... View Details
- September 1987
- Background Note
What Do Venture Capitalists Do?
Presents the results derived from 49 responses to a questionnaire mailed to 100 venture capitalists in late 1984. The purpose of the survey was to shed light on the relationship between venture capitalists and their portfolio companies. The survey revealed that the... View Details
- July 1987 (Revised October 2009)
- Background Note
A Method For Valuing High-Risk, Long-Term Investments: The "Venture Capital Method"
By: William A. Sahlman and Daniel R Scherlis
Describes a method for valuing high-risk, long-term investments such as those confronting venture capitalists. The method entails forecasting a future value (e.g., five years from the present) and discounting that terminal value back to the present by applying a high... View Details
- 1965
- Article
Group Decision Making: A Report of an Experimental Study
By: Joseph L. Bower
When a group of people must decide on some one action, such as where shall we go out to dinner, or in an investment club which stock shall we buy, how do the individual members come to a decision that affords the best resolution of the question at hand for the group as... View Details
- Forthcoming
- Article
Catching Outliers: Committee Voting and the Limits of Consensus When Financing Innovation
By: Andrey Malenko, Ramana Nanda, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Savitar Sundaresan
We document that investment committees of major VCs use a voting rule where one partner `championing' an early-stage investment is sufficient to invest. Their stated reason for this rule is to `catch outliers'. The same VCs use a more conventional `majority' rule for... View Details
- Research Summary
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
By: Sandra J. Sucher
In this research I develop cases and articles that provide thought-provoking, real-world examples of the ways in which social identity differences emerge and are managed in the workplace, and the skills needed to constructively engage with differences to create and... View Details
- Research Summary
Energy, IT, real estate, and sustainability
Professor Henderson’s current research focuses on the energy, information technology, and real estate sectors and the challenges firms encounter as they attempt to act in more sustainable ways. This work is an outgrowth of her decade-long examination of the... View Details
- Research Summary
Financing New Business Formation
By: Paul A. Gompers
New business creation has become a potent force for economicdevelopment in the United States. Prior to 1980, large firms created the majority of new jobs in the American economy. While considerable debate rages over whether small firms are the source of recent job... View Details
- Forthcoming
- Article
From Bupkis to Sechel in Health Care
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer
Fifty years ago, famed economist Milton Friedman declared that “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” This free market manifesto was adopted by the healthcare industry as well. But transactional has evolved into transformational with the... View Details
- Forthcoming
- Article
Group Size and Its Impact on Diversity-Related Perceptions and Hiring Decisions in Homogeneous Groups
By: Aneesh Rai, Edward H. Chang, Erika Kirgios and Katherine L. Milkman
Why do some homogeneous groups face backlash for lacking diversity, whereas others escape censure? We show that a homogeneous group’s size changes how it is perceived and whether decision makers pursue greater diversity in its ranks. We theorize that people make... View Details