Publications

May 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Case

The Crisis at Tyco - A Director's Perspective

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Aldo Sesia

In 2002, Wendy Lane had been a member of the board of directors at Tyco International a little more than a year when the company's CEO Dennis Kozlowski and other top executives were accused of fraud, which ultimately led to resignations, imprisonments, lawsuits, and... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Reputation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Crisis Management; Accounting Audits; Problems and Challenges; Risk Management; Finance; Managerial Roles; Lawsuits and Litigation; Service Industry; United States

June 2020
Article

Parallel Play: Startups, Nascent Markets, and the Effective Design of a Business Model

By: Rory McDonald and Kathleen Eisenhardt

Prior research advances several explanations for entrepreneurial success in nascent markets but leaves a key imperative unexplored: the business model. By studying five ventures in the same nascent market, we develop a novel theoretical framework for understanding how... View Details

Keywords: Search; Legitimacy; Organizational Innovation; Organizational Learning; Mechanisms And Processes; Institutional Entrepreneurship; Qualitative Methods; Business Model Design; Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Adaptation; Competition; Strategy

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2019
Article

Go-Shops Revisited

By: Guhan Subramanian and Annie Zhao

A go-shop process turns the traditional M&A deal process on its head: rather than a pre-signing market canvass followed by a post-signing “no shop” period, a go-shop deal involves a limited pre-signing market check, followed by a post-signing “go shop” process to find... View Details

Keywords: Go-shop Process; Mergers and Acquisitions; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Deal; Performance Effectiveness; Technological Innovation

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05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Reinventing Savings Bonds

Keywords: by Peter Tufano & Daniel Schneider; Financial Services

January 2002 (Revised October 2005)
Case

General Electric Medical Systems 2002

By: Tarun Khanna and James Weber

Discusses one of General Electric's flagship divisions--the world's leading provider of medical diagnostic imaging equipment. Provides an opportunity to examine a multinational confronting massive technological and demographic changes around the world. Genomics has... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Business Model; Change Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Genetics; Customer Value and Value Chain; Age; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; China; United States

10 Jan 2020
News

Competing in the Age of AI

21 Jul 2016
Blog Post

Coming Out and Finding Acceptance at HBS

whose religious beliefs made it challenging for them to condone our relationship asked me to coffee so he could more fully consider his stance. Several section mates have asked me how best to structure inclusive questions about gender on View Details

07 Jun 2016
Op-Ed

Can Brand Trump Win a Presidency?

lifestyle, these other products can add brand value and, being produced by others under license, they deliver some extra profit to the Trump organization. "In the world of representative democracy, you have to be the market share... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Advertising; Media & Broadcasting

27 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 27, 2007

in the world. But now the end seemed close. Was there a way to save eDonkey? Was it time for Yagan to get out? He had little time to figure out his next move. Purchase this case:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

15 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 15

system of expense allocation, and anti-inversion legislation—reflect the intuition that building "strong fences" around the United States advances American interests. This paper examines the interaction of a strong fences policy with the increasingly... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2019 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Away: Scaling a DTC Travel Brand

By: Jill Avery and Joseph B. Fuller

Away, a direct-to-consumer, digital native e-commerce seller of travel luggage, is debating how to invest its latest round of venture funding. How quickly could and should Away scale and what were the most promising growth trajectories to maximize its potential? Three... View Details

Working Paper

The Returns to Skills During the Pandemic: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

By: Livia Alfonsi, Vittorio Bassi, Imran Rasul and Elena Spadini

The Covid-19 pandemic represents one of the most significant labor market shocks to the world economy in recent times. We present evidence from a field experiment to understand whether and why skilled and unskilled workers were differentially impacted by the shock, in... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; System Shocks; Labor; Competency and Skills; Development Economics; Uganda

SSRN

Article

On the Causality and Cause of Returns to Organizational Status: Evidence from the Grands Crus Classés of the Médoc

By: Daniel Malter

This paper identifies the causal symbolic effect of status on the prices organizations charge for their products. I exploit the classification of the châteaux of the Médoc, which sorted 61 wine producers into five growth classes in 1855, as a fixed hierarchical symbol... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Status; Quality Signals; Conspicuous Consumption; Wine Classification Of 1855; Grand Cru; Status and Position; Quality; Reputation; Price; France

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November 2010 (Revised August 2012)
Case

The Indego Africa Project

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Rachel Gordon

Two young attorneys found and begin to build the Indego Africa Project, an NGO partnering with women's cooperatives in Rwanda. Indego connects the cooperatives to the international retail market for handmade artisan products, helps the cooperatives build their business... View Details

Keywords: Cooperative Ownership; Nonprofit Organizations; Business Growth and Maturation; Corporate Finance; Non-Governmental Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Rwanda

Dennis “DJ” DiDonna has dedicated his career to commercializing social science research to create organizations which positively impact the world.

He is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School where he teaches the... View Details

Christopher A. Bartlett

Professor Christopher A. Bartlett received an economics degree from the University of Queensland, Australia (1964), and both the masters and doctorate degrees in business administration from Harvard University (1971 and 1979).

As a practicing manager prior... View Details

Keywords: consulting; health care; management consulting; manufacturing; medical supplies; wine

February 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Taffi: Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia

By: Paul A. Gompers and Fares Khrais

Taffi was a tech-enabled fashion styling startup founded by Shahad Geoffrey in Saudi Arabia in 2020. Within three years of operating, Geoffrey had pivoted the business multiple times. In 2023, Geoffrey was attempting the business’s most ambitious pivot yet, shifting... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Fashion Industry; Technology Industry; Saudi Arabia; Arabian Peninsula

April 2020 (Revised October 2021)
Case

SpaceX, Economies of Scale, and a Revolution in Space Access

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl, Kylie Lucas and Mehak Sarang

From the time he transformed the world of online banking, Elon Musk established himself as a bold innovator. After selling X.com to PayPal in 2002, he founded a series of revolutionary start-ups, starting with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). Hoping to "make... View Details

Keywords: Space Tech; Space Access; Vision; Economies Of Scale; Technological Innovation; Emerging Markets; Commercialization; Finance; Aerospace Industry

June 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Sequoia Capital

By: Jo Tango, Christina Wallace, Srimayi Mylavarapu and Johnson Elugbadebo

Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm founded in 1972, quickly grew to become one of the most storied venture capital firms in the world. Fueled by a strong culture, Sequoia's investment track record included the names of some of the largest global successes.... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Restructuring; Corporate Strategy; Financial Services Industry