Publications

October 2009
Case

A Big (Double) Deal: Anadarko's Acquisition of Kerr-McGee and Western Gas Resources

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis Rising

On June 23, 2006, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation announced that it was simultaneously acquiring two public companies, Kerr-McGee and Western Gas Resources, in all-cash deals. The total price was about $24 billion, a figure close to Anadarko's market cap at the time.... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Model; Transformation; Negotiation; Organizational Culture; Public Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Alignment; Valuation; Energy Industry; United States

August 2014
Case

Netflix in 2011

By: Willy Shih and Stephen Kaufman

Reed Hastings founded Netflix to provide a home movie service that would do a better job satisfying customers than the traditional retail rental model. But as it encountered challenges it underwent several major strategy shifts, ultimately developing a business model... View Details

January 2021 (Revised June 2021)
Supplement

Eaton Corporation: Portfolio Transformation and The Cost of Capital (Abridged)

By: Benjamin C. Esty, E. Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher

In 2000, Eaton Corporation was a broadly diversified industrial conglomerate. But its strategy was evolving and its focus was narrowing around “power management” and more recently on “intelligent power,” the use of digitally enabled products and services designed to... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Business Divisions; Cost of Capital; Corporate Finance; Value; Valuation; Industrial Products Industry; United States; Denmark; Republic of Ireland

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

actions. Change is possible! A new view of the past helps pave the way toward a belief in a different version of the future. Telling a great story builds hope. It should also show other people what’s in it for them. So a great leadership story is about how the View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Web

Pursuing a JD/MBA Joint Degree - MBA

Government Health Care / BioTech Manufacturing Private Equity Real Estate Retail Social Enterprise Technology Venture Capital Audiences Audiences FirstGen+ College Diverse Perspectives International LGBTQ+ Military Socioeconomic Inclusion... View Details

July 2004
Article

Determinants of Control System Design in Divisionalized Firms

By: Margaret A. Abernethy, Jan Bouwens and Laurence van Lent

We investigate two determinants of two choices in the control system of divisionalized firms, namely decentralization and use of performance measures. The two determinants are those identified in the literature as important to control system design: (1) information... View Details

Keywords: Design; Organizational Design; Business Divisions; Management Systems; Performance Evaluation

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October 2011
Supplement

Jack Hughes, Founder and Chairman of TopCoder, In-class comments 4/8/11

By: David A. Garvin

TopCoder's crowdsourcing-based business model, in which software is developed through online tournaments, is presented. The case highlights how TopCoder has created a unique two-sided innovation platform consisting of a global community of over 225,000 developers who... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Growth and Development; Technological Innovation; Problems and Challenges; Motivation and Incentives; Competition; Online Technology; Information Technology Industry

March 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Patagonia: 'Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder'

By: Brian Trelstad, Nien-hê Hsieh, Michael Norris and Susan Pinckney

In September 2022, Yvon Chouinard, the iconoclastic founder of outdoor apparel company Patagonia, announced a new ownership model for his company. Chouinard and his family had held complete control of the company's voting and non-voting stock since its founding 50... View Details

09 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place

right way, and that means you can't focus as much on the base business back home," Alcácer says. In addition to making sure the resources are in place, corporate leaders must decide which strategic locations to target. Companies... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

14 Mar 2023
In Practice

What Does the Failure of Silicon Valley Bank Say About the State of Finance?

exposures, since they fell below the Fed’s threshold for annual collection of Form FR Y-14A Capital Assessments and Stress Testing. At the moment, we also cannot track what fraction of SVB’s deposits was connected to the local venture... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Financial Services; Banking

01 Sep 2023
Blog Post

Harvard Business School Announces 2023 Goldsmith Fellows

across India and Malawi. He said, “The fellowship will give me a platform to test out ideas and hypotheses while collaborating with other recipients, starting in my first year.” Paul Lachman. Paul comes to HBS from Fairchain, a social impact View Details

01 Jun 2024
News

Alumni Achievement Awards 2024

the four or five days surrounding the IPO in 1980. We bet the company at every board meeting.” Superpower: “I think I would say picking good people. I know the real thing when I see it. A lot of it is intuition.” Back to top John B. Hess (MBA 1977) CEO, Hess View Details

May 2008
Supplement

Finansbank 2006 (CW)

By: C. Fritz Foley and Linnea Meyer

How do financial policy requirements and benefits of ownership concentration affect the need for and process of corporate restructuring? This case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the restructuring of a Turkish multinational business group by way of a... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Financing and Loans; Policy; Compensation and Benefits; Growth and Development Strategy; Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Banking Industry; Russia; Turkey; Romania; Switzerland; Ukraine

February 2022
Case

Launching the Social

By: Tom Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Tom Quinn

This case features the same protagonists as Ample Hills Creamery (HBS No. 822-073), and can be used as a continuation of that story.
Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Small Business; Brands and Branding; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion

25 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 25

Sloan Management Review (forthcoming) Abstract Many people today in the information technology world and in corporate boardrooms are talking about "big data." Many believe that, for companies that get it right, big data will be... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2022
Chapter

Lessons Learned from Support to Business during COVID-19

By: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Benjamin Iverson and Adi Sunderam

The authors survey the new federal subsidies and loans provided to businesses in the first year of the pandemic—including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and aid targeted at specific industries such as airlines... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Small Business; Government Legislation; Policy

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February 2017 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Rapid7

By: Mitchell Weiss, Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali

That Corey Thomas, vice president at Boston-based Rapid7, Inc., was about to enter his investor’s boardroom to negotiate a potential acquisition of Metasploit, LLC, was already an unlikely achievement of sorts. After all, Rapid7 was a venture-backed, corporate... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Computer Hacking; Open-source; Corey Thomas; Rapid7; Exploit Testing; Mergers and Acquisitions; Cybersecurity; Computer Industry; North and Central America; Boston

April 2001 (Revised March 2003)
Case

XUMA

By: Andrew P. McAfee and Kerry Herman

XUMA is a Silicon Valley start-up that builds customized eBusiness software suites for its corporate clients. This market is crowded with large players, including the major consulting and systems integration companies. To date, building these suites has been a very... View Details

Keywords: Production; Software; Business Startups; Innovation and Invention; Information Technology Industry; California

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June 2004
Case

Aventis SA (A): Planning for a Merger

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Eight executives at Hoechst and Rhone-Poulenc must make four crucial decisions on the eve of merging their companies to become Aventis--what would become the world's third largest pharmaceutical firm. In addition to formulating a vision and strategy, the two firms must... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Mergers and Acquisitions; Horizontal Integration; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States