Publications

Teaching Interest

Deals

By: Kevin P. Mohan

This advanced negotiation course includes both negotiation simulations and analysis of actual corporate deals. In the first part of the course, students will participate in complex negotiation simulations and debrief their results in class. In the second part of the... View Details

22 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

Online Banks Fill Funding Needs for Small Business

(Editor's note: This is the last in a series of four articles based on a Harvard Business School working paper by Karen Mills that analyzes the current state of availability of bank capital for small business.) Banks are the principal... View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills; Banking; Financial Services

Article

The Wisdom of Competitive Crowds

By: Kenneth C. Lichtendahl, Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Phillip E. Pfeifer

When several individuals are asked to forecast an uncertain quantity, they often face implicit or explicit incentives to be the most accurate. Despite the desire to elicit honest forecasts, such competition induces forecasters to report strategically and nontruthfully.... View Details

Keywords: Forecast; Forecasting and Prediction

Research Summary

Exclusivity and Control (joint with A. Hagiu)

We analyze platform competition for content in the presence of strategic interactions between content distributors and content providers. Contrary to standard results concerning double marginalization and pricing of complementary goods, we prove that a platform gaining... View Details

May 2014
Article

How to Outsmart Activist Investors

By: Bill George and Jay W. Lorsch

We offer opinions on how management and corporate boards of directors can best manage investor relations with activist stockholders such as hedge funds who are demanding major changes within a corporation to improve stockholder return. Beverage industry firm PepsiCo is... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism

September 2006 (Revised September 2007)
Case

VMware, Inc. (A)

By: David B. Yoffie, Ward Bullard, Nikhil Raj and Suja Vaidyanathan

VMware, Inc., the first company to crack the software virtualization market, faces new challenges from competitors' plans to bundle free virtualization solutions in operating systems. VMware, acquired by data storage giant EMC Corp. in 2003, has delivered top-line... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Open Source Distribution; Competition

January 1992 (Revised March 2006)
Case

The DAG Group

Chris Hackett and Val Rayzman have spent six months after graduating from business school exploring the possibility of building a chain of upscale drycleaners. This fragmented industry looked ripe for an innovative new entrant. Chris and Val have researched the... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Market Entry and Exit; Entrepreneurship; Acquisition; Service Industry

January 2009 (Revised May 2009)
Case

College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact

By: Stacey M. Childress and Geoff Eckman Marietta

College Summit, a nonprofit organization "committed to the day when every student who can make it in college makes it to college," was faced with an important strategic decision. After growing rapidly at more than 30% a year for the last several years, founder and CEO,... View Details

Keywords: Secondary Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Nonprofit Organizations; Education Industry

29 Jul 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Who Is Governing Whom? Senior Managers, Governance and the Structure of Generosity in Large U.S. Firms

Keywords: by Christopher Marquis & Matthew Lee

November 2021
Article

Panel Experiments and Dynamic Causal Effects: A Finite Population Perspective

By: Iavor Bojinov, Ashesh Rambachan and Neil Shephard

In panel experiments, we randomly assign units to different interventions, measuring their outcomes, and repeating the procedure in several periods. Using the potential outcomes framework, we define finite population dynamic causal effects that capture the relative... View Details

Keywords: Panel Data; Dynamic Causal Effects; Potential Outcomes; Finite Population; Nonparametric; Mathematical Methods

December 2019
Case

Steemit: A New Social Media?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Alexander White and Karen Elterman

This case discusses the alternative social media site Steemit, including the principles it was founded on in 2016 and the challenges it faced in 2019. Steemit was a blockchain-based platform that aimed to differentiate itself from other social media companies by... View Details

March 2011 (Revised November 2011)
Case

Harmonic Hearing Co.

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Craig H. Stephenson

Harmonic is a small, privately held manufacturer of hearing aids. Harriet Burns and Marc Davis, two employees at Harmonic, have an opportunity to purchase the company from the founder. As well-informed insiders who understand the industry, Burns and Davis believe the... View Details

Keywords: Debts; Quantitative Analysis; Financing; Entrepreneurial Finance; Development Stage Enterprises; Small ＆ Medium-sized Enterprises; Small Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Cash Flow; Mathematical Methods; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Borrowing and Debt; Equity; Manufacturing Industry

Forest L. Reinhardt is the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and HBS’s Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotions and Tenure.

Professor Reinhardt is interested in the relationships between market and nonmarket... View Details

Keywords: agribusiness; agriculture; beverage; biotechnology; chemical; energy; federal government; food; food processing; forest products; nonprofit industry; oil ＆ gas; paper; petroleum; tourism; transportation

Teaching Interest

MBA Elective Curriculum Personal Selling and Sales Force Management

Personal selling is the primary (and sometimes the only) form of marketing activity for many firms, especially in a business-to-business context. The course focuses on the tactical component of managing a salesforce and on the strategic element of linking sales... View Details

Article

Formal Measures in Informal Management: Can a Balanced Scorecard Change a Culture?

By: Robert Gibbons and Robert S. Kaplan

Agency theorists, historically, have analyzed what kinds of performance measures should be used in formal incentive contracts. For example, after Kaplan-Norton proposed a balanced scorecard of both financial and non-financial measures, some envisioned its role only in... View Details

Keywords: Relational Contracts; Performance Measurement; Informal Management; Balanced Scorecard; Economics; Mathematical Methods

January 2006 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Andres Hervas and Jordan Mitchell

We study competitive interaction between two alternative models of digital content distribution over the Internet: peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and centralized client-server distribution. We present microfoundations for a stylized model of p2p file sharing where all... View Details

Keywords: Price; Profit; Distribution; Competition; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure

September 1991 (Revised December 1993)
Case

Tombow Pencil Co. Ltd.

Tombow Pencil Co. Ltd., one of Japan's two premier pencil manufacturers, has been using a subcontractor network in order to respond to changing market conditions. The system currently faces a new challenge as Tombow moves to address a volatile business market for... View Details

Keywords: Production; Supply Chain Management; Manufacturing Industry; Japan

January 2008
Article

Mastering the Management System

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Companies have always found it hard to balance pressing operational concerns with long-term strategic priorities. The tension is critical: World-class processes won't lead to success without the right strategic direction, and the best strategy in the world will get... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Systems; Operations; Performance Improvement; Strategy