Publications

October 2012
Case

Hill Country Snack Foods Co.

By: W. Carl Kester and Craig Stephenson

Hill Country Snack Foods, located in Austin, Texas, manufactures, markets, and distributes snack foods and frozen treats. The CEO is passionate about maximizing shareholder value and believes in keeping tight control over costs and operating the business as efficiently... View Details

Keywords: United States; Financial Strategy; Debt Management; Retail Trade; Risk Management; Food; Capital Structure; Corporate Finance; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Texas

March 2022
Case

The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program: 2009-2021

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Julia Kelley

In December 2021, more than a decade after its founding, Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program was still going strong — and the firm now needed to evaluate potential program modifications to reach a wider group of small business owners. Launched in the... View Details

18 Apr 2020
Working Paper Summaries

How Are Small Businesses Adjusting to COVID-19? Early Evidence From a Survey

Keywords: by Alexander Bartik, Marianne Bertrand, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, and Christopher Stanton

20 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

How Small Businesses Can Survive the Coronavirus Outbreak

worse than the financial crisis,” says Mills, who led the United States Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013. “Many small businesses will not survive more than a... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Service; Food & Beverage

3 Jun 2005
Other Presentation

How Business Can Lead a Health Care Revolution

By: Michael E. Porter

This presentation draws on a forthcoming book with Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg (Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results, Harvard Business School Press). Earlier publications about the work include the Harvard Business Review article... View Details

Keywords: Health; United States

Teaching Interest

The Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports (MBA)

By: Anita Elberse

This second-year MBA course is primarily designed for students pursuing a career in the entertainment, media and sports sectors -- including film, television, music, publishing, video games, the performing arts, sports, fashion, and advertising -- or who plan to work... View Details

2010
Working Paper

Medium Term Business Cycles in Developing Countries

By: Diego A. Comin, Norman Loayza, Farooq Pasha and Luis Serven

We build a two-country asymmetric DSGE model with two features: (i) endogenous and slow diffusion of technologies from the developed to the developing country, and (ii) adjustment costs to investment flows. We calibrate the model to match the Mexico-U.S. trade and FDI... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Developing Countries and Economies; Trade; International Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Mathematical Methods; Mexico; United States

May 2025
Case

Dell Med: Transforming Care Delivery & Payment

By: Robert S. Kaplan, David N. Bernstein and Mary L. Witkowski

Health care in the U.S. and globally continues to undergo massive transformation, surging towards a system that rewards value for patients. However, widespread adoption of value-based health care remains a challenge. This case study focuses on the care delivery... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Practice Units; Outcomes Measurement; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Leading Change; Decisions; Transformation; Service Delivery; Adoption; Value; Health Industry; United States; Texas

24 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

The Trick of Balancing Business and Government

Asked which institutions must be in place in order for African countries to grow, experts on a panel at the Africa Business Conference had no shortage of suggestions. One panelist, representing the International Monetary Fund, voted for a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

14 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

The Business Case for Becoming a Jack-of-All-Trades

“Young scholars frequently like to study a lot of different things, but they are often encouraged to really focus,” says Frank Nagle, assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

10 Oct 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Scaling Two Businesses Against the Odds: Wendy Estrella’s Founder’s Journey

Keywords: Re: Jeffrey J. Bussgang; Legal Services; Real Estate

09 Jan 2020
Book

Rethinking Business Strategy in the Age of AI

World. The book’s authors, Harvard Business School Professors Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani, say Peloton is just one example of how digital technologies such as analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are fundamentally shifting... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

March 2017 (Revised December 2018)
Case

Reawakening the Magic: Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company

By: David Collis and Ashley Hartman

Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Buzz Lightyear strolled down Main Street at the grand opening of Hong Kong Disney in the fall of 2005, pausing to snap selfies with enthusiastic children in Mickey Mouse ears. Bob Iger, newly appointed CEO of The Walt Disney Company,... View Details

Keywords: Franchise Management; Brand Management; Culture Change; Business Units; Acquisition Strategy; Technological Change; Disney; ESPN; Cord-cutting; Bob Iger; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Integration; Media; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Consumer Products Industry

19 Oct 2015
Research & Ideas

Business Research that Makes for Smarter Public Policy

credit went unanswered. So when Mills left SBA to come to HBS, she did the research herself. The resulting 2014 working paper found that small business was experiencing a credit crunch, particularly in lending from banks, despite creating... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

21 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Fighting the COVID Blues: Advice from Business Research

Life was hard enough for the one-third of Americans who had wrestled with anxiety prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the disease that has killed almost 100,000 in the United States, left millions unemployed, and socially distanced many... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman and Danielle Kost

2018
Other Unpublished Work

Trump's Populism: What Business Leaders Need To Understand

By: Rafael Di Tella

In the 2016 United States presidential election, candidates from both major political parties used anti-establishment messaging to appeal to Americans, a theme that had been on the sidelines of US political discourse for decades. Donald Trump, in particular, played... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Globalization; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Government and Politics; Demographics; United States

July–August 2012
Article

A Better Way to Tax U.S. Businesses

By: Mihir Desai

The article argues that U.S. taxation reform should reduce corporate taxes, incorporate an awareness of the global marketplace, and generate revenue-neutral incentives for innovation. According to the article, a reduction in corporate tax rates would be offset by a tax... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Taxation; Globalization; Labor; Innovation and Invention; United States

2003
Chapter

British and Dutch Business History

By: G. Jones and Keetie Sluyterman

Keywords: Business History; United Kingdom; Netherlands