Publications

April 2000 (Revised May 2000)
Case

Hotbank: Softbank's New Business Model for Early Stage Venture Incubation

Softbank Venture Capital (SBVC) has established a business incubator, Hotbank. Ellen Levy, a "Netbatsu Development Officer" with SBVC, is faced with a decision about which relationships among Hotbank/SBVC portfolio companies to facilitate. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups

25 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 25

firms to alleviate capital constraints and increase capital expenditures. Yet we also find instances in which governments use their minority positions View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

21 Feb 2005
Research & Ideas

The VC Quandary: Too Much Money

It might be hard for the ordinary business owner or consumer to imagine having "too much" money. But that's exactly where the venture capital industry finds itself: with too much money available... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette; Financial Services

December 1985 (Revised October 1986)
Case

J.C. Penney (A)

An assistant treasurer at J.C. Penney is looking at various alternatives for financing the company's $2.5 billion store expansion and modernization program. The case provides a listing of different ways/capital markets issues to obtain this financing. Designed to be... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Capital Markets; Financing and Loans; Retail Industry; United States

2008
Book

Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers

By: Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman

Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Nonverbal Communication; Customer Satisfaction; Books; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Consumer Behavior; Failure; Nonprofit Organizations; Behavior; Emotions

Find at Harvard

July 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

What Happened at Citigroup? (A)

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

What went wrong at Citigroup? In 1998, the Travelers Group and Citicorp merged to create Citigroup Inc., considered the first true global "financial supermarket" and a business model to be envied, feared, and emulated. By year-end 2006 the firm had a market... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Globalized Firms and Management; Leadership; Risk Management; Failure; Financial Services Industry

October 2016
Case

Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Sarah Mehta

The case is used to illustrate the place of ‘Purpose’ versus financial risk and returns in a founder’s objectives. It also addresses personal risk profile of different founders, and when paired with the Risk Tolerance Exercise, it enables evaluating one’s own appetite... View Details

Keywords: Electric Vehicle; Solar Power; Vision; Trade-offs; Leadership; Mission and Purpose; Risk and Uncertainty; Entrepreneurship; Failure; United States; North America

11 Jan 2011
News

Clean Energy Sector Hit by Financing Crunch

05 Jul 2012
News

Interview with Rebecca Henderson

28 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 28

SEOs. We use price pressure resulting from purchases by mutual funds with large capital inflows to identify overvalued equity. This is a relatively exogenous overvaluation indicator as it is associated with... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Firm and aggregate volatility

US publicly traded companies have become more volatile over the postwar period. This trend has been the result of increased competition in product markets through deregulation, through more intensive innovation activity, and through easier access to capital markets.... View Details

March 2003
Case

Investing in Japan

By: Peter A. Hecht and Luis M. Viceira

The evolution of the macroeconomic environment, capital markets, financial institutions (including banks, public and private pension funds, and mutual funds), and financial regulation in Japan during the period 1980 to 2002, are examined long-term demographic... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Investment; Financial Institutions; Macroeconomics; Japan

Find at Harvard

24 May 2010
News

Raise Your Prices!

September 2005 (Revised January 2009)
Case

E-Duction, Inc.

By: Peter Tufano

E-Ductions, a small privately held start-up, developed a new voluntary employee benefit: a payroll-deduction-linked credit card. The CLEAR card provided workers, especially low-income and credit-challenged employees, access to a card with tight credit limits, zero APR,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Credit; Credit Cards; Compensation and Benefits; Employees

03 Dec 2013
News

China’s Challenge: Press censorship in the internet era

12 Mar 2015
Video

Edith Dorsen - Making A Difference

September 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Charles River Partnership XI

By: William A. Sahlman

Describes a situation confronting the management of a highly successful venture capital firm in April 2002. The industry has changed materially since it raised a $1.2 billion dollar fund, and the partners must decide whether to scale back the size of the fund. View Details

Keywords: Management; Venture Capital; Partners and Partnerships

17 May 2013
News

Live With Former Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Robert S. Kaplan

Article

The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Outcomes and Expectations

By: Alexander Bartik, Marianne Bertrand, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca and Christopher Stanton

To explore the impact of COVID on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred—just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Stimulus; CARES Act; Health Pandemics; Small Business; Surveys