Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(6,298)
- Faculty Publications (2,163)
- 2023
- Working Paper
Corporate Leaders Say They Are for Stakeholder Capitalism—But Which Version Exactly?: A Critical Look at Four Varieties
By: Lynn S. Paine
The past few years have seen an outpouring of articles and statements heralding the
arrival of a new and more inclusive form of capitalism often called stakeholder capitalism. The
new capitalism promises to strengthen companies, improve outcomes for their... View Details
- July 2023
- Case
Honeycomb
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Honeycomb, an audio app enabling seniors to record stories and save family memories, suddenly draws interest from a younger user demographic. The co-founders consider pivoting to better serve this new user demographic. How should they think about strategy, brand, and... View Details
- July 2023
- Supplement
Honeycomb (B): Jumping on The Generative AI Bandwagon?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Honeycomb, an audio app enabling users to record stories and save family memories, considers pivoting to embrace generative AI. What should the co-founders business model look like if they pursued this new direction? View Details
- July 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Clair
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Marcos Quirno
Clair was founded with a simple mission: to expedite America’s workers access to their hard-earned wages. In the headwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup had successfully raised a seed round of $4.5 million, and within two years the earned wage access (EWA)... View Details
- 18 Jul 2023
- Interview
Jeffrey Rayport on Product Market Fit, Profit Market Fit and Whiplash, and More
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Doug Levin
This episode of "Lessons from Startup Life" podcast features Jeffrey Rayport, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Jeffrey specializes in teaching and researching growth-stage technology ventures and their scalability. Prior to... View Details
- 2023
- Book
The State and Capitalism in China
By: Meg Rithmire, Margaret M. Pearson and Kellee S. Tsai
This element explains China's political economic evolution from state socialist economy to a reform era state capitalism model to a more politicized, risk management approach we call "party-state capitalism." We emphasize the internal and external sources of perceived... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Second- versus Third-party Audit Quality: Evidence from Global Supply Chain Monitoring
By: Maria R. Ibanez, Ashley Palmarozzo, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Capitalizing on the superior credibility and flexibility and potential lower cost of external assessments, many global buyers are relying less on their own employee (“second-party”) auditors and more on third-party auditors to monitor and prevent environmental and... View Details
- June 2023 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
Social Media Background Screening at Fama Technologies
By: Joseph Pacelli, Jillian Grennan and Alexis Lefort
Fama Technologies is an online screening company that uses AI to analyze job applicants' publicly available online content for signs of risk and culture fit. The case opens with Ben Mones, founder and CEO, looking to secure funding from venture firms. He is running... View Details
- June 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Sober Sidekick
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Case on the nascent business model of a mobile health IT startup. In particular, should they pivot away from their successful lead generation business model to charging health plans. View Details
- June 2023 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Collaboration Wars: Slack vs. Microsoft Teams 2023
By: David B. Yoffie, Kriti Gupta, Mehek Punatar, Poonam Sacheti and Poorvi Vijay
What's the future of corporate communications? Email? Corporate messaging? The battle for corporate messaging in 2023 was stacking up as a fight between Slack, which had been recently acquired by Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams. This case explores a classic judo... View Details
- June 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Creating World-Class Board Governance at SECO
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Emer Moloney
In Spring 2023, SECO CEO Massimo Mauri had the ambition to grow the €200 million revenue technology company to a €1 billion company by 2030. Founded in Italy in the 1970s, the family-owned company had gone through a period of growth and internationalization,... View Details
Keywords: Family Business; Business Model; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Engineering; Governance; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth and Development Strategy; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Going Public; Strategic Planning; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Value Creation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Italy; Europe; Germany; United States; China
- June 2023
- Case
Block: Creating an Ecosystem of Ecosystems
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel, Grace Headinger and Ruoshi Qi
At Investor Day 2022, Block announced a new vision for its businesses: creating an ecosystem of ecosystems. Outside the norm for many public growth companies, Block had recently acquired a variety of new business streams in the creator economy and Bitcoin despite a... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth; Fintech; Company Management; Growth Strategy; Innovation And Strategy; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Change; Finance; Growth Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Communication Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California; San Francisco
- June 2023
- Article
Do Job Seekers Value Diversity Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment and Human Capital Disclosures
By: Jung Ho Choi, Joseph Pacelli, Kristina M. Rennekamp and Sorabh Tomar
We examine how information about the diversity of a potential employer's workforce affects individuals’ job-seeking behavior. We embed a field experiment in job recommendation emails from a leading career advice agency in the U.S. The experimental treatment involves... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
ESG: From Process to Product
By: George Serafeim
ESG measurement, analysis, management, and communication is a process that the financial industry has turned into a product, resulting in many investment funds using the ESG label. This has caused confusion, generating demand for a framework that defines... View Details
- May 2023
- Teaching Note
Away: Scaling a DTC Travel Brand
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Jill Avery
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 520-051. Away, a direct-to-consumer, digital native e-commerce seller of travel luggage, is debating how to invest its latest round of venture funding. How quickly could and should Away scale and what were the most promising growth... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Politics of Philanthropy in China
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu
This working paper looks historically at business philanthropy in China. In the West, the literature has distinguished between entrepreneurial and customary philanthropy, while the phenomenon of spiritual philanthropy has been identified in many emerging markets. This... View Details
- May 2023
- Technical Note
Venture Capital at a Crossroads
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Venture capital is a cyclical, ever-changing industry, as seen in recent years. The late 2010s and early 2020s witnessed record amounts of capital flowing into the sector, high valuations, and new types of investors entering the market. Innovations in the seed stage,... View Details
Keywords: Venture Capital
- May 2023
- Article
Political Ideology and International Capital Allocation
By: Elisabeth Kempf, Mancy Luo, Larissa Schäfer and Margarita Tsoutsoura
Does investors' political ideology shape international capital allocation? We provide evidence from two settings—syndicated corporate loans and equity mutual funds—to show ideological alignment with foreign governments affects the cross-border capital allocation by... View Details
- April 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Background Note
Note on Healthcare in Ghana
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo
This note provides an overview of the healthcare system in Ghana. It discusses the public and private sector as well as traditional medical practice. It also discusses the country’s pharmaceutical industry. It is recommended as a companion to Professor Regina... View Details
Keywords: Africa; Pharmaceutical Companies; Pharmacy Benefit Manager; Health Care; Health Care Costs; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Entrepreneurship; Telehealth; Health Equity; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Health Care and Treatment; Business and Government Relations; Health Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Ghana
- April 2023
- Case
Elliott Management: Capital Allocation in Biopharma
By: Amitabh Chandra, Paul Clancy and Lauren Gunasti
The case explores the intersection of capital allocation and shareholder activism in the biopharmaceutical industry. As many biopharma companies face looming patent expirations for key medicines, the case asks the question of whether investing in R&D and M&A is an... View Details