Publications

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24 May 2010
Research & Ideas

Stimulus Surprise: Companies Retrench When Government Spends

professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

October 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Teaching Note

Comcast Corporation

By: Sunil Gupta, Henry McGee and Felix Oberholzer-Gee

In March 2015, Richard Plepler, the CEO of Home Box Office (HBO) announced the company's new 'over the top,' or OTT service, HBO Now, that consumers could stream online for a monthly fee of $14.99 without paying for a cable subscription. Soon, CBS followed and... View Details

Keywords: Television Industry; Television; Marketing; Television Entertainment; Telecommunications Industry

1999
Other Unpublished Work

Executive Ownership and Control in Newly Public Firms: The Role of Venture Capitalists

By: Malcolm Baker and Paul Gompers

We study the implications of CEO equity ownership for incentives and control in a sample of 1,011 newly public firms. Before an initial public offering, equity investments by venture capitalists reduce CEO ownership by about half, from an average of 35 percent to 19... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Ownership; Motivation and Incentives; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Venture Capital; Managerial Roles; Cost Management; Governance Controls; Executive Compensation

Read Now

15 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 15, 2018

and hazards. Several techniques can enhance the power and efficacy of queries: Favor follow-up questions, know when to keep questions open ended, get the sequence right, use the right tone, and pay attention to group dynamics. Publisher's... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

November 2018
Case

Swissgrid: Enterprise Risk Management in a Digital Age

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes

Kurt Meyer, chief risk officer of Swissgrid, the Swiss national electricity transmission system operator, reflects on the risk management system he installed after the deregulation and liberalization of the European energy market. With 41 connections to other European... View Details

Keywords: Enterprise Risk Management; Energy Transmission; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Energy; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Switzerland

June 1991 (Revised October 1991)
Case

General Electric: Reg Jones and Jack Welch

By: Francis Aguilar and Christopher A. Bartlett

When GE's retiring Reginald Jones turned the job of CEO over to Jack Welch on April 1, 1981, the Wall Street Journal reported that GE had "decided to replace a legend with a live wire." Some wondered if the young dynamo could fill the elder statesman's very large... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Business or Company Management; Change Management; Leading Change; Restructuring; Investment; Strategic Planning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Succession

October 2012 (Revised May 2014)
Case

J Sainsbury Plc, Road to Recovery

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2012, J Sainsbury Plc (Sainsbury's), the number three supermarket chain in the UK with £22.3 billion in sales, appeared to have put the troubles of the past behind it. For over 70 years, Sainsbury's had been the UK's largest grocer, but Tesco had overtaken it in... View Details

Keywords: United Kingdom; Retailing; Food; Tesco; Sainsbury; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Global Strategy; Retail Industry; United Kingdom

20 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

Rocket-tunity: Can Private Firms Turn a Profit in Space?

this dynamic future for humanity.” Meanwhile, Blue Origin, under the ownership of Bezos—Amazon CEO and richest man in the solar system—is also pursuing citizen astronaut flights on its New Shepard rocket and space capsule. Weinzierl... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Wallask; Aerospace; Tourism; Transportation

October 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Case

First National Bank's Golden Opportunity

By: Shawn A. Cole, Peter Tufano, Daniel Schneider and Daryl Collins

Executives at First National Bank in South Africa are considering whether to launch a potentially exciting, but rather unorthodox, new savings product. Instead of paying interest, this product gives depositors the chance to win large cash prizes each month. Michael... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Banks and Banking; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Product Launch; Demand and Consumers; Banking Industry; South Africa

18 Apr 2022
HBS Case

Dick’s Sporting Goods Followed Its Conscience on Guns—and It Paid Off

Days after the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, a shaken Ed Stack, then the CEO and largest shareholder of Dick’s Sporting Goods, decided it was time for his 850-store chain to pull certain guns off its store shelves.... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

May 2017 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: Unilever and the Kraft Heinz Takeover Bid (A)

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

This case describes Kraft Heinz Company’s (KHC) February 2017 unsolicited $143 billion takeover offer to acquire Unilever. The offer was made to Unilever CEO Paul Polman by KHC chairman Alexandre Behring, who was also co-founder and CEO of Brazilian-based 3G Capital... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions

November 2023
Case

The Commons Project in Rwanda—Building Digital Infrastructure for the Global Public Good

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Tom Quinn

In September 2022, The Commons Project Foundation (TCP) CEO Zhenya Lindgardt and her team met on a Zoom call to discuss building tools to help Rwandans manage their health data. They believed that helping Africa build digital infrastructure would improve much-needed... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Capital; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Information Management; Adaptation; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology Industry; Rwanda; United States

20 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 20

business-government relations, nonmarket strategy, and organization theory. Read the paper: http://www.people.hbs.edu/shiatt/GMO_paper_AMJ.pdf ISO Standards Stamp Approval Authors:Michael James and Michael W. Toffel Publication:European View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2014
Case

Honeywell and the Great Recession (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Susan J. Winterberg

CEO Dave Cote spent six years turning around an ailing Honeywell and in 2008 Cote and his team face a new challenge: how to respond to the Great Recession. Cote does not want to give up the gains he made in transforming and unifying Honeywell. With a fall-off in... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Furloughs; Downsizing; Work Sharing; Short Time Work; Recessions; Earnings Forecast; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Cost Management; Executive Compensation; Crisis Management; Financial Crisis; Manufacturing Industry

December 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Vincent Marie Dessain, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Anders Sjoman

The Dutch "Verenigde Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer Cooperative" (VBA) was on of the world's largest flower exchanges. Around 6,300 flower growers, one half of them located in the Netherlands, used the auction to sell cut flowers and plants to more than 1,000 wholesalers. In... View Details

Keywords: Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Trade; Market Entry and Exit; Financial Markets; Segmentation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Netherlands

September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

TetraScience: Noise and Signal

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In 2019, TetraScience CEO “Spin” Wang needed advice. Five years earlier, he had cofounded a startup that saw early success with a hardware product designed to help laboratory scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces more easily collect data from... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Organization; Restructuring; Forecasting and Prediction; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Organizational Structure; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Boston

April 2019 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Kraft Heinz: The $8 Billion Brand Write-Down

By: Jill Avery

On Friday, February 22, 2019, following an unexpected and disappointing earnings report, The Kraft Heinz Company’s stock price fell 27%, wiping out $16 billion in market value. CEO Bernardo Hees had announced that the company had taken a $15.4 billion asset write-down,... View Details