Publications

22 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The ‘Mother of Fair Trade’ was an Unabashed Price Protectionist

California pharmacist and drugstore owner who balked at the price-slashing practices of chain store competitors and spearheaded a local price-control movement to protect her own bottom line—a crusade that would ultimately gain such... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Health; Legal Services

26 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

The Power of the Noncompete Clause

company in Boston, I was recruited by another speech recognition firm in Silicon Valley. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to take the job given the noncompete agreement I had signed in Boston, but I was nonetheless able to make the move because the View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Dec 2000
What Do You Think?

Have We Overdone Deregulation and Privatization?

effects. The highly publicized shortcomings of questionable efforts to deregulate are not encouraging—witness the case of the California electric power industry. It's not clear whether attempting to educate consumers about what to expect... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

17 Feb 2015
HBS Case

HBS Cases: The Battle for San Francisco

says Rose, who grew up in the Bay Area. "People are afraid that this special culture in this special place could get lost." Wealth And Culture Rose tackles these tensions in a new case study, San Francisco, 2015 #tech #inequality, cowritten with HBS View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology

25 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ‘Can China Lead?’

of higher education are in the process of slow-motion self-destruction. The University of California system, once the greatest system of public higher education in the world, has been weakened and made increasingly dysfunctional due to... View Details

Keywords: Re: William C. Kirby & F. Warren McFarlan; Education; Technology

19 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

LEED-ing by Example

spillover effect to the private sector. The authors studied what happened after municipal governments in California adopted policies that required public (but not private) building renovations and new construction to build "green," which... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Construction; Real Estate; Energy; Utilities

18 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Who Controls Water?

over the next 40 years. “The basic problem from the farmers' point of view is that the water is in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The 2009 case "Woolf Farming & Processing" illustrates many of these challenges through the eyes of Stuart Wolf, a... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Agriculture & Agribusiness

11 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

Economic Jitters Push Pandemic Job Seekers to Big Companies, Not Startups

established, are perceived safer during the crisis, and suddenly have a unique advantage in terms of attracting talent.” Bernstein teamed up with Richard R. Townsend from the University of California San Diego and Ting Xu from the... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

12 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Untold Story of ‘Green’ Entrepreneurs

In the 1920s, on pitch black nights in rural eastern Montana, the farmhouse owned by the parents of brothers Marcellus and Joe Jacobs stood out for one reason: it had light, although located far from power lines and gasoline supplies. It was a beacon in the dark that... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

20 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

How Much Is Freedom Worth? For Gig Workers, a Lot.

average driver out of their preferred shift is as bad as cutting their weekly earnings by more than 5 percent. For the California drivers that we study, the ability to start or stop working at any moment and the flexibility to change... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Technology

February 1995 (Revised May 1996)
Teaching Note

Arundel Partners: The Sequel Project (TN)

By: Timothy A. Luehrman

Teaching Note for (9-292-140). View Details

Keywords: Motion Pictures and Video Industry; California

June 2020
Supplement

Shellye Archambeau: Becoming a CEO (B)

By: Tsedal Neeley and Briana Richardson

With the economy in a freefall, MetricStream is losing customers, hemorrhaging cash and struggling to make payroll. Several board members are threatening to quit. Others are pressing to sell the company even at dismally low valuations. It’s 2008 and lightning has... View Details

Keywords: Race; Gender; Leadership Style; Risk and Uncertainty; Change; Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making; Personal Development and Career; Technology Industry; California

September 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Western Technology Investment

By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Nicole Keller

Based in Portola Valley, California, Western Technology Investment (WTI) specialized in a hybrid form of debt and equity financing for early-stage companies. Like traditional venture capital and private equity firms, WTI raised funds from institutional investors and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Equity; Finance; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; California

April 2015 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Instacart and the New Wave of Grocery Startups

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Instacart is testing an Uber-style solution to the challenge of building a home-delivered grocery business. It is backed by $220 million of venture funding. Will this model succeed where businessses like Webvan failed? What are the questions that this exploratory... View Details

Keywords: Food Retailing; Outsourced Grocery Delivery; Online Ordering; Dynamic Pricing; Data Analytics; Marketing Strategy; Food; Distribution Channels; Business Startups; Food and Beverage Industry; California

March 2013 (Revised July 2014)
Case

Bay Partners (A)

By: Josh Lerner and Lauren Barley

In April 2010, Salil Deshpande has recently resigned from Palo Alto, California-based Bay Partners (Bay) where he had been a general partner. Although Deshpande had built a successful track record at the venture firm, he resigned with two other Bay general partners as... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Venture Capital; Conflict Management; Partners and Partnerships; Resignation and Termination; Policy; Management Teams; Financial Services Industry; California

April 2009
Case

Keeping Google "Googley" (Abridged)

By: Boris Groysberg, David A. Thomas and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Web Services Industry; California

March 2008
Teaching Note

2006 Hurricane Risk (TN)

By: André Perold and Erik Stafford

Teaching Note for [207075]. View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Loss; Investment; Insurance; Natural Disasters; California

October 2001
Teaching Note

Zaplet, Inc. (A)TN

By: Dorothy A. Leonard and Brian DeLacey

Teaching Note for (9-601-165). View Details

Keywords: Information Technology Industry; California

October 2001 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Anagene, Inc.

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Christina L. Darwall

An entrepreneurial, publicly traded biotech company has begun production and sales of its core product--cartridges that permit DNA samples to be analyzed on a microchip. In the early quarters, sales are difficult to forecast and the company has experienced fluctuating... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Production; Performance Capacity; Risk and Uncertainty; Genetics; Governing and Advisory Boards; Biotechnology Industry; California