Publications

February 2024
Case

Nuwa Capital: Investing During Uncertainty

By: Paul A. Gompers and Fares Khrais

Nuwa Capital (Nuwa) was a venture capital firm based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. The business was founded in 2020 by Khaled Talhouni and his partners Sarah Abu Risheh, and Stephanie Nour Prince (they were later joined by Nitin Reen... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Decisions; Middle East; Saudi Arabia; United Arab Emirates; Dubai; Bahrain

September 2022
Article

Find and Replace: R&D Investment Following the Erosion of Existing Products

By: Joshua L. Krieger, Xuelin Li and Richard T. Thakor

How do innovative firms react when existing products experience negative shocks? We explore this question with detailed project-level data from drug development firms. Using FDA Public Health Advisories as idiosyncratic negative shocks to approved drugs, we first... View Details

Keywords: R＆D Investments; Drug Development; Product Shocks; M＆A; Biopharmaceutical Industry; FDA; System Shocks; Research and Development; Investment; Decision Making; Pharmaceutical Industry

17 Mar 2022
News

Venture Capital & Angel Investing - What We Know and Still Need to Learn

Keywords: Angel investing

September 2012 (Revised July 2014)
Case

Blackstone's Investment in Intelenet

By: Josh Lerner, Sandeep Bapat and Rachna Tahilyani

Three years had passed since Blackstone's investment in Intelenet Global Services, their third largest investment in India. Great progress had been made, but now a new challenge loomed. Globank, a large global bank, was Intelenet's largest customer. Intelenet's... View Details

Keywords: India; Blackstone; Private Equity; Financial Services Industry; India

06 Feb 2023
Blog Post

Meet the Black Investment Club

In 2020, Paul Ampofo (MBA 2020) and Brian Sykes (MBA 2020) founded the Black Investment Club at Harvard Business School to address the massive underrepresentation of Black investors in venture capital, private equity, and View Details

Keywords: Investment Management / Hedge Fund; Investment Management / Hedge Fund; Investment Management / Hedge Fund

February 2009 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Note on Socially Responsible Investing

By: Sandra J. Sucher, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Ian McKown Cornell

This note describes Socially Responsible Investing, providing a brief history, description of different socially responsible investing approaches, and overview of selected players and institutions involved in the socially responsible investing field. It has been... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability

March 2021
Case

Yale Investments Office: November 2020

By: Josh Lerner, Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

David Swensen and the Investments Office staff must decide whether to continue to allocate the bulk of the university's endowment to illiquid investments—hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate, natural resources—given the impact of the COVID-19... View Details

Keywords: University Endowment; Asset Allocation; Real Estate; Equities; Fixed Income; COVID-19; Asset Management; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Natural Resources; Resource Allocation; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Health Pandemics; Financial Crisis; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; Energy Industry; Connecticut

Clubs

Women in Investing Club

Keywords: Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging; Venture Capital / Private Equity / LBO

January 2013
Case

Omidyar Network: Pioneering Impact Investment

By: Michael Chu and Lauren Barley

Omidyar Network, having deployed to date over $500 million in ways ranging from donations to commercial equity capital, must decide whether to back Anudip, an Indian organization dedicated to providing the rural unemployed and marginalized with livelihoods linked to... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; India

June 2024 (Revised October 2024)
Background Note

Politics Comes to ESG Investing

By: Shawn Cole and Jonah Zahnd

While the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the incorporation of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards into investor practices, this momentum has shifted recently in the United States, as some politicians argued that ESG investing practices... View Details

April 2022
Article

Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment

By: Meg Rithmire

How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into a major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’... View Details

Keywords: Outward Investment; Capital Controls; Corruption; Foreign Direct Investment; Political Economy; State-owned Enterprises; Investment; Global Range; Capital; Globalization; Policy; Government and Politics; China

Find at Harvard

October 2005
Background Note

Portfolio Investment in Emerging Markets

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Kjell Ke-Li Carlsson

Provides distinctive data on investment flows into emerging markets. View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Investment

Find at Harvard

05 Sep 2013
News

Women and Sustainable Investing

2019
Chapter

Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Return on invested capital (ROIC) is a financial measure of the profitability of a firm or business unit. If it is greater than the business's cost of capital, then reinvestment of earnings increases shareholder VALUE. The ROIC also determines a maximum self-sustaining... View Details

Keywords: Capital Efficiency; Dupont Analysis; Financial Metrics; Schumpeterian Competition; Sustainable Growth; Competitive Advantage; Financial Strategy; Resource Allocation; Valuation; Value Creation

Find at Harvard

February 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Korea Venture Investment Corporation

By: Paul A. Gompers and Billy Chan

Financial service sector Korea Venture Investment Corporation (KVIC) is the venture capital arm of the Korean government with a founding mission to build a domestic startup ecosystem that would be as competitive as Silicon Valley. KVIC manages a basket of... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Society; Investment; Venture Capital; Mission and Purpose; State Ownership; Financial Services Industry; Asia; South Korea

1986
Chapter

Evaluating Foreign Investment

By: L. T. Wells Jr. and Dennis J Encarnation

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Performance Evaluation

21 Sep 2010
News

Investing in Experience

Keywords: Securities, Commodities, and Other Financial Investments; Securities, Commodities, and Other Financial Investments

February 2012 (Revised July 2012)
Background Note

The Promise of Impact Investing

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Sarah Appleby and Laura Moon

This note outlines the segments of a potential $500 billion social investment market; sectors such as housing, microfinance, health and education. The note sketches the roles of the various players and summarizes their investment perspectives. View Details

Keywords: Investment