Publications

30 Oct 2019
Blog Post

Candidates Seeking Opportunities After Graduation: Lessons Learned

opportunity.” Matt Severson: Starting over for the right fit In the spring, Matt Severson (MBA 2019) directed his search toward venture capital, exploring his options among friends and family in the Bay Area around San Francisco. The... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

01 Dec 2010
News

How to Survive Past Start-up

Art by Craig Frazier Related Links Alumni New Venture Contest Opens Webinar series (ongoing) Entrepreneurship at HBS (video) Harvard Launches Innovation Incubator Why is it that even when smart, educated, well-networked people launch new... View Details

Keywords: Bill Murphy Jr.; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information; Health and Personal Care Stores; Retail Trade

August 2002
Case

Trilogy University

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Paley

In early 2001, Trilogy Software faced a slowdown in its business, a large number of unsuccessful customer deployments, and an overall weakening in the enterprise software market. In response, the company revamped its business model and restructured the organization.... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Alignment; Restructuring; Organizational Structure; Change Management; Business Strategy; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Information Technology Industry

September 1996 (Revised June 1998)
Case

InterSoft of Argentina (B)

By: Linda A. Hill and Stacy Palestrant

Focuses on InterSoft of Argentina, a growing software company in Argentina. In 1993, InterSoft acquires a Russian software company and Emilo Lopez, the vice president and director of InterSoft's Systems Software Lab, must manage a creative, cross-cultural, "virtual"... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Business Growth and Maturation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Management Teams; Groups and Teams; Partners and Partnerships; Conflict Management; Information Technology Industry; Argentina; Russia

October 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Innovating Beyond Ochsner

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Olivia Hull

The Ochsner Health System has developed a proprietary software tool designed to treat hypertension. Built into the system’s electronic medical records, the Hypertension Digital Medicine program allows patients to record their blood pressure at home and share readings... View Details

May 2020
Case

Trust Merchant Bank

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Salim Dewji

Trust Merchant Bank (TMB), a leading bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), needs to decide whether to enter the soon-to-be-liberalized insurance industry. Since its founding in 2004, TMB has played a pivotal role in reshaping the DRC banking landscape by... View Details

Keywords: Retail Banking; Financial Services; Financial Inclusion; Turnaround; Fintech; Banks and Banking; Financial Condition; Insurance; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Business Model; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Monopoly; Banking Industry; Insurance Industry; Africa; Congo, Democratic Republic of the

20 Mar 2025
Blog Post

Scaling Climate Tech Innovation with Lee Scott (MBA 2023)

Ideally, these companies can fund their projects with project finance since that has a lower cost of capital than venture dollars. However, infrastructure investors typically prefer established technologies... View Details

June 2015
Case

Beacon Group of Hong Kong: Finding Light in the Shadow Education Industry

By: Christopher Marquis, Qi Li and Guy Leung

After more than 25 years of operation, Beacon Group had grown from having 3 small classrooms on the fourth floor of a commercial building, to a network of 21 centers across Hong Kong with over 60,000 students enrolled per year. The key long-term challenge for the... View Details

Keywords: Online Education; Education; Tutoring; Incentives; Hong Kong; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Family Business; Education Industry; Hong Kong

March 2000 (Revised May 2000)
Case

Evolution of eCoverage in the Online Insurance Market, The

David Riker, the founder and chairman of eCoverage, an online insurance company, describes the various phases of company development, such as presenting a business plan, gathering a management team, getting the word out, and running the site. View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Insurance Industry

May 1994 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Motorola-Penang

By: Shoshana Zuboff and Janis Lee Gogan

S.K. Ko managed Motorola's Penang, Malaysia factory, producing telecommunications components and equipment. As a female manager of a multi-ethnic and labor-intensive plant in Asia, Ko faced a number of challenges. She had already promoted quality circles and quality... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Transformation; Decision Making; Ethnicity; Gender; Training; Leading Change; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Problems and Challenges; Technology Industry; Malaysia

Career Coach

Sasha Grinshpun

Sasha (HBS '02) combines her gift for quickly gauging life passions of HBSers with her experience in formulating effective job searches for them to score their dream jobs. Her eclectic background spanning consulting, design thinking, and entrepreneurial View Details

Keywords: Technology; Technology; Technology; Technology; Technology; Technology

January 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone

By: William C. Kirby, Joycelyn W. Eby, Shuang L. Frost and Adam K. Frost

CEO and Founder of Uber Technologies, Travis Kalanick, had made clear to investors and the public that expansion into China was one of his company's major priorities for 2016. Uber had already demonstrated remarkable capacity for rapid, global scaling, and for... View Details

Keywords: China; Uber; Start-up Growth; Regulation; Ride-sharing; Transportation; Business Startups; Growth and Development; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; China

01 Mar 2008
News

Innovation, Inc.

help students launch and creatively manage new businesses, including both stand-alone start-ups and ventures operating within an established organization. Tripsas notes, “Whenever a firm introduces a truly novel product, it has... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Mary Tripsas; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Management

01 Dec 2005
News

Baker’s back

climate-controlled, and technologically advanced, much of the majesty of the original building remains. There is a comfortable hint of the past as well as a sparkling nod to the future. In the early 1990s, the School began to consider a... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young; Construction of Buildings; Construction; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

June 2024
Case

Arete Research on Unity Software

By: Joseph Pacelli and Tonia Labruyere

Richard Kramer had founded Arete Research, an independent financial research provider, in 2000 after a successful career as a sell-side analyst at Goldman Sachs. He reflects on his team's coverage of Unity Software, a U.S.-based mobile games software company, that... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Initial Public Offering; Analytics and Data Science; Applications and Software; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Valuation; Value Creation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Reports; Financial Services Industry; Video Game Industry; United Kingdom; United States

Profile

Arjun Goyal

pitched Foresight to HBS Business Angels, an alumni investment group, and have high hopes for the annual New Venture Competition. “On a commercial level,” Arjun explains, “Foresight is innovative in the way it applies new View Details

April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Supplement

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (B)

By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin

Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details

Keywords: Laundry; O2O; Online-to-offline; Service Operations; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Service Industry; China

2016
Chapter

Financing Entrepreneurial Experimentation

By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Keywords: Innovation; Investing; Abandonment Option; Failure Tolerance; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship

April 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

BlackRock (B): Acquire MLIM? (with video links)

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin, Stuart C. Gilson and Aldo Sesia

In early 2006, BlackRock, Inc. is considering acquiring Merrill Lynch’s asset management business. The asset management industry was in a state of transition. In the prior year, more than 130 mergers and acquisitions had taken place. The proposed deal between BlackRock... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; United States