Publications

28 Jun 2017
News

Patent Trolling Isn’t Dead — It’s Just Moving to Delaware

04 Aug 2014
Op-Ed

Why Small-Business Lending Is Not Recovering

more tentative for small firms than for large firms. Regarding points of access to capital, community banks have long been crucial to small business lending. But community bank... View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills; Banking; Financial Services

2011
Working Paper

Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Joshua D. Coval and Christopher J. Malloy

This paper employs a new empirical approach for identifying the impact of government spending on the private sector. Our key innovation is to use changes in congressional committee chairmanship as a source of exogenous variation in state-level federal expenditures. In... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Investment; Spending; Government Administration; Employment; Managerial Roles

February 1994 (Revised September 1995)
Case

Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, Inc.: Portfolio Insurance

By: Peter Tufano

Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, a small financial advisory firm founded in 1980, has created a successful business by selling a product commonly known as portfolio insurance. Portfolio insurance is a trading strategy that institutional investors use to establish... View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Insurance; Product; Financial Services Industry

2022
Working Paper

Where the Cloud Rests: The Location Strategies of Data Centers

By: Shane Greenstein and Tommy Pan Fang

This study provides an analysis of the entry strategies of third-party data centers in the United States. We examine the market before the pandemic in 2018 and 2019, when supply and demand for data services were geographically stable. We compare with the entry... View Details

Keywords: Cloud Computing; Location Strategies; Data Centers; Information Infrastructure

06 Mar 2015
Video

An Economy Doing Half Its Job - Boston, MA

31 Mar 2010
Working Paper Summaries

When Open Architecture Beats Closed: The Entrepreneurial Use of Architectural Knowledge

Keywords: by Carliss Y. Baldwin

November 2001 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Smartix (A): Dancing with Elephants

By: Donald N. Sull, James K. Sebenius and Noam Wasserman

This case describes issues facing the founder-CEO of a high-tech start-up in Boston, as he negotiates with multiple large potential partners and investors. The negotiations include a potential business partnership with FleetCenter and Madison Square Garden, and a... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Venture Capital; Negotiation; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Power and Influence; Technology Industry; Boston

January 2017
Article

Innovation Under Regulatory Uncertainty: Evidence from Medical Technology

By: Ariel Dora Stern

This paper explores how the regulatory approval process affects innovation incentives in medical technologies. Prior studies have found early mover regulatory advantages for drugs. I find the opposite for medical devices, where pioneer entrants spend 34% (7.2 months)... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Find at Harvard

August 2023
Teaching Note

Kunshan, Incorporated: The Making of China’s Richest Town

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 313-103. The case is designed to give the students an understanding of the local Chinese entrepreneurial state and how foreign and Chinese firms have worked with it to create China’s richest small city. The major themes are—local state... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Economic Systems; Business and Government Relations; Development Economics; China

We use the 2020 Small Business Credit Survey to study the sources of racial disparities in use of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Black-owned firms are 8.9 percentage points less likely to receive PPP loans than observably similar white-owned firms. About... View Details

February 2021 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Shopify: The Conquest for Chinese E-Commerce

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Avani Patel, Samantha Lin and Ariel Yang

In mid-2020, Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, faced a critical decision on how to time potential expansion into the China market. Over the prior 15 years, his Canadian software-as-a-service company had grown from a small e-commerce solutions provider to a full service... View Details

Fall 2020
Article

Sizing Up Corporate Restructuring in the COVID Crisis

By: Robin Greenwood, Benjamin Iverson and David Thesmar

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Economy; System Shocks; Financial Crisis; Restructuring

The spillovers from public R&D grants are large and reach far across geographic and technological space, and focusing only on firms that directly receive grants causes... View Details

March 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Case

DigiPlex: Ante-Up or Cash Out

By: Josh Lerner and James Mason

In November 2020, the co-founders of DigiPlex study the future growth trajectory of their Nordic data center venture. A critical question was on the agenda: was now finally the right time to sell DigiPlex? Originally a $2.75 million investment in one small data center... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Decision Making

20 Oct 2009
First Look

First Look: October 20

Shareholders Using a Geographic Instrument Authors:Bo Becker, Henrik Cronqvist, and Rüdiger Fahlenbrach Abstract Large shareholders may play an important role for firm performance and policies, but identifying this empirically presents a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2017
Case

Promontory, Inc.

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Handlin

Promontory, Inc. is a small, privately owned firm in the promotional products (specialty advertising) industry. After starting the firm two years ago with the intention of pursuing a high-quality/high-price strategy, the CEO is seeking methods of increasing sales... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Marketing Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Business Model; Sales; Advertising Industry

January 2008 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Chocolates El Rey

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Gustavo Herrero and Regina Garcia-Cuellar

In late November 2006, Jorge Redmond, CEO of Chocolates El Rey, called a meeting with senior management to discuss the company's growth strategy. A relatively small firm with sales of around $14 million, El Rey produced top quality chocolate made with single origin... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Globalized Markets and Industries; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Segmentation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Venezuela

November 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Wallbox

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Max Hancock

Enric Asunción co-founded Wallbox, a private EV charger company, in Spain in 2015. As CEO, Asunción transformed the company from a small start-up, focused on the European market, to a multimillion-dollar enterprise with offices on three continents. In 2021, a private... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Going Public; Acquisition; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Startups; Entrepreneurial Finance; Spain; United States; United Kingdom