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14 Feb 2021
Blog Post

Celebrating Love @ HBS in 2021

Love at HBS is an annual celebration of the diverse expressions of love that exist on our campus and in the world around us. Even with the unique challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, love has endured, and our students have... View Details

May 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Third Point in 2020: Growth Is Where the Value Is?

By: Robin Greenwood, James Williams and Denise Han

In early May 2020, Daniel Loeb’s team at Third Point was evaluating a potential growth opportunity in the Walt Disney Company and whether investor activism might play a role. Battered by the effects of COVID-19, the company’s stock had initially tumbled to $86 and then... View Details

Keywords: Growth; Equity; Disney; Value; COVID-19 Pandemic; Economics; Strategy; Growth and Development; Investment Return; Opportunities; Business and Stakeholder Relations; North America

March 2015
Case

Discover Capital

By: William Sahlman, Robert White and Stephanie Puzio

"Discover Capital" provides an in-depth look at a first time search fund run by the tenacious Kelly Quann Bianucci. It provides background information about search funds and follows Kelly as she successfully raises her over-subscribed fund and begins the search... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Buyout; Loans; Acquisitions

2013
Article

Immigration and Employer Transitions for STEM Workers

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We analyze the career trajectories of STEM workers and firm-level hiring of immigrants using the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database of the US Census Bureau. We find STEM career adjustments during periods of abnormally high immigration into the... View Details

Keywords: Nationality; Employment; Immigration

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2015
Chapter

Reliable Sustainability Ratings: The Influence of Business Models on Information Intermediaries

By: Robert G. Eccles, Jock Herron and George Serafeim

A new generation of corporate reporting—integrated reporting—is emerging that will help investors and other key stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, and NGOs develop a deeper and more comprehensive appreciation of corporate performance than what is... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Business Models; Business Model

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September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Gain Liquidity

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Evan Richardson

Samir Kaul, a Partner at Khosla Ventures, looked out his office window. It was late June, 2011, and like almost every day in Menlo Park, the sun was shining. Kaul was reflecting on what had been a very positive 10 months in the venture capital business. Over that span,... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Financial Strategy; Business or Company Management; Partners and Partnerships; Product Development; Investment Portfolio; Financial Services Industry

14 Jan 2014
First Look

First Look: January 14

help-friendly organization has to be actively nurtured, however, because helpfulness among colleagues does not arise automatically: competition, pride, or distrust may get in the way. The trickiness of this management challenge-to increase a discretionary behavior that... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

18 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 18, 2009

useful and saleable by-product. The term "by-product synergy" (BPS) has been coined to describe this practice. By converting waste into by-product, the firm not only reduces its waste disposal cost and potentially increases... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January 2021
Article

Chain Stability in Trading Networks

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Alexandru Nichifor, Michael Ostrovsky and Alexander Westkamp

We show that in general trading networks with bilateral contracts, a suitably adapted chain stability concept (Ostrovsky, 2008) is equivalent to stability (Hatfield and Kominers, 2012; Hatfield et al., 2013) if all agents' preferences are fully substitutable and... View Details

Keywords: Matching; Trading Networks; Chain Stability; Stability; Competitive Equilibria; Full Substitutability; Laws Of Aggregate Supply And Demand; Contracts; Market Design; Balance and Stability

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March 1998 (Revised December 2005)
Case

Beta Golf

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael J. Roberts and Laurence E. Katz

The Beta Group is a technology incubator in Menlo Park, CA that has successfully built a portfolio of businesses in the medical, consumer products, and industrial technology sectors by systematically matching proprietary technologies to unmet market needs. Beta has... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Investment; Financial Strategy; Information Technology; Commercialization

March 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Supercell 2.0: Clash of Plans

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and George Gonzalez

Founded in 2010, Supercell was a Helsinki, Finland-based mobile gaming company that had developed and launched five global hit mobile games: Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Hay Day, Brawl Stars, and Boom Beach. The company’s early philosophy was that it could produce... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Restructuring; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Video Game Industry; Finland

January 2008 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited: A Global Company's China Strategy

By: William C. Kirby, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Wong

After fifty-five years in the semiconductor industry, Morris Chang, founder and Chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), was seeing a change. After four decades of regular double-digit growth the industry was still growing-but now at a much slower... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Globalized Firms and Management; Market Entry and Exit; Business and Government Relations; Expansion; Semiconductor Industry; Shanghai; Taiwan