Small Business Finance - Publications - Faculty & Research

06 Dec 2022
News

Small Businesses Play a Big Role in Supply-Chain Resilience

01 Jun 1997
News

Carla Small

counselor at a children's center confirmed her interest in family care but also made her realize that she preferred to approach the field "from a business angle." In 1988, she left Leo Burnett to follow her heart. View Details

Keywords: Linda Goodspeed

March 2011
Background Note

Financing New Ventures

By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

Aid in understanding of financing entrepreneurship. View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans

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Educators

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06 Mar 2014
News

MBA Students Expand Their 'Across America' Outreach

Keywords: Small business; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

29 Mar 2019
News

Hard for voice of small businesses to be heard, says former SBA head

28 Aug 2014
Op-Ed

Government Can Do More to Unfreeze Small Business Credit

(Editor's note: This is the third in a series of 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.)... View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills; Banking

2025
Working Paper

With a Little Help from My Family: Informal Startup Financing

By: Brian K. Baik, Johan Ludvig S. Karlsen and Katja Kisseleva

Using Norwegian administrative data, we identify family equity investments in startups and examine their effects on investor returns and firm behavior. Informal investors earn lower returns than external individuals, and the firms they back are less likely to secure... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage Finance; Informal Investment; Household Finance; Risk Taking; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Family and Family Relationships; Business Startups; Investment; Norway

Citation

SSRN

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23 Apr 2020
News

‘Staying Nimble’: How Small Businesses Can, and Do, Shift Gears

2003
Chapter

Equity Financing

By: Paul Gompers and Joshua Lerner

Equity financing for entrepreneurial firms has attracted increasing attention in both the popular press and academic literature. The dramatic growth in the venture capital industry in the past two decades has been accompanied by new academic research that explores... View Details

Keywords: Angel Investors; Financing and Loans; Equity; Venture Capital; Business Startups

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27 Jul 2023
Blog Post

Buy big, sell small

If you live in a rural village or small city in India and run low on toothpaste, rice, or cooking oil, you’ll likely visit your local kirana, the equivalent of a US neighborhood variety store and a mainstay of the country’s $932 billion... View Details

Fast Answer

Buying a Small Business Pt1: General (For HBS Alumni)

by Jim S. Sharpe, Entrepreneur in Residence at the Arthur Rock Center, Harvard Business School. His blog on search and running SME’s covers rich materials. Buying Existing Business – a website by... View Details

Awards

European Finance Association. Nordea Prize. Best Paper on Corporate Finance

Won the 2011 Nordea Prize from the European Finance Association for the Best Paper on Corporate Finance for his paper with Victoria Ivashina, “Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence” (Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 10–107, June 2010. (Revised... View Details

30 Nov 2016
News

'Fintech' fast-cash loans are like 'wild west' for small businesses

02 Feb 2013
News

Finance as an Analytical Partner to the Business

14 Apr 2017
News

Humanizing Finance

06 Apr 2020
News

America’s $350 billion emergency loan program for small businesses may run out of money

March 2019
Case

Mahindra Finance

By: V.G. Narayanan and Tanvi Deshpande

Mahindra Finance is a non-banking lender operating mainly in the rural and semi-urban areas of India. Set up in 1991, the company had grown to become a market leader with assets of $8.5 billion and a presence in 3,30,000 villages across India. Since most of Mahindra's... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Business Model; Volatility; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Credit; Financing and Loans; Service Delivery; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry; India

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Educators

September 2012 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Doing Business in Turkey

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Robin J. Ely, Daniela Beyersdorfer, Emilie Billaud and Cigdem Çelik

In a rather flat international business environment characterized by shrinking markets and economic turmoil, Turkey promoted itself as one of the safe havens for investments. Led by the strong domestic demand of a young population, the country had tripled its GDP... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Market Finance; Emergent Countries; Business History; Economic History; Fieldwork; Emerging Markets; Business Ventures; Strategy; Turkey

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Educators