Publications

June 2007 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Bert Twaalfhoven: The Successes and Failures of a Global Entrepreneur

Bert Twaalfhoven (70; HBS '54) is faced with two offers to acquire the manufacturing holding company he had built up over 40 years. Despite the attractive price, which would net Twaalfhoven and his family $70 million, he is reluctant to sell the company because his... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Globalization; Management Succession; Manufacturing Industry

February 2001
Case

BarnesandNoble.com (B)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dickson Louie and William A. Sahlman

At the end of 1998, Jonathan Bulkeley, the newly-named CEO of barnesandnoble.com, is faced with a challenge. As the second leading online bookseller behind Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com must build its market share. With Forrester Research predicting that the online... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Publishing Industry

January 2019
Case

King Abdullah Economic City: Population Drivers and Cash Flow

By: John D. Macomber

CEO of high profile new economic city in Saudi Arabia must decide how to allocate limited investment funds across projects under duress. Issues include understanding core economic drivers; planning infrastructure investment and return; attracting multinationals; and... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Infrastructure; Project Finance; Resource Allocation; Decision Making; City; Real Estate Industry; Saudi Arabia

September 2002 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Athleta

By: William A. Sahlman and Taslim Pirmohamed

The management team at Athleta is attempting to raise equity capital for the company in March 2002. Athleta is a catalog and online retailer of women's athletic clothing. The company has made substantial progress, with anticipated 2002 sales over $20 million, but has... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Financing and Loans; Business Model; Business Strategy; Equity; Capital; Retail Industry

October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Khan Academy 2018

By: William Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2008, Khan Academy was a global educational nonprofit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone anywhere in the world. By 2018, the organization had expanded into numerous content areas, product areas, and geographic markets.... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Sustainability; Scaling; Social Entrepreneurship; Nonprofit Organizations; Strategy; Education; Entrepreneurship; Teaching; Education Industry; California

09 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

How to Revive Health-Care Innovation

Hwang, M.D. (HBS MBA '06), the most essential innovations begin with simplicity and accessibility. As they note in the book excerpt below, Toyota made a name for itself in the United States first with a Corona; the far more ambitious Lexus came later. Many other View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman, M.D. M.D. & Jason Hwang; Health

March 2018
Article

Global Business over Time

By: Geoffrey Jones

This article explores how business enterprises have been powerful actors in the spread of global capitalism between 1840 and the present day. It also shows how global firms, emerging out of industrialized Western economies, created and co-created markets and ecosystems... View Details

Keywords: Global; Multinational; Business History; Globalization; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Economic Systems

July 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Athletic Brewing Company: Crafting the U.S. Non-Alcoholic Beer Category

By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne V. Wilson

Athletic Brewing Company (“Athletic,” for short) was founded by Bill Shufelt and John Walker in 2017. In creating Athletic, Shufelt and Walker opened the first U.S. brewery and taproom fully devoted to the production of non-alcoholic (NA) craft beer. By 2021, Athletic... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Product Marketing; Product Positioning; Product Launch; Product Design; Product; Competition; Marketing; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Cultural Entrepreneurship; Culture; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

analysis reveals that, contrary to intuition, prices low enough to "kill" p2p are not optimal in large markets. The industry is better off setting higher prices and attracting those consumers ready... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

May 2015
Case

Transforming Alkermes into a Global Biopharmaceutical Company

By: C. Fritz Foley and Nicholas Haas

In the summer of 2011, Jim Frates, CFO of Alkermes faced choices about how to finance the acquisition of Dublin, Ireland-based Elan Drug Technologies (EDT)—a deal that was expected to close in the fall. The case describes the history of Alkermes, provides information... View Details

Keywords: Financing; Debt; Merger; CFO; Financial Management; Biotechnology Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States; Europe

13 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

How Government can Discourage Private Sector Reliance on Short-Term Debt

sector's tilt toward short-term financing was merely the industry responding to a lack of available government debt instruments, such as short-term risk-free Treasuries, that were much in demand by investors during the global savings... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Financial Services

November 2017 (Revised September 2020)
Case

Miami's Tech Future (A): Twenty-first Century Changes and Challenges

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

In the decade starting in 2000, a new mayor focused on infrastructure and leadership from a foundation investing in arts and culture helped the Miami region transform and attract younger people to a newly vibrant central city and arts district. In 2011, the Knight... View Details

Keywords: Change; Leadership; Business and Community Relations; Strategic Planning; Technology Industry; Miami; Florida

March 1989 (Revised March 1999)
Case

Metabo GmbH & Co. KG

By: Robert S. Kaplan

A privately owned German power tool company was dissatisfied with its existing cost system. The system could not produce timely accurate reports on cost center operations, and newly purchased automated machines were attracting large overhead costs. A new, highly... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Cost; Budgets and Budgeting; Capital Budgeting; Cost Management; Reports; Private Ownership; Business or Company Management; Consumer Products Industry; Germany

11 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 11, 2018

Betfair was an underfunded second mover in the betting exchange space, it was able to attract punters at a much faster rate than the better-funded first mover, Flutter. Moreover, while Betfair and traditional bookmakers competed... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

April 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Ping An: Pioneering the New Model of ‘Technology-driven Finance’

By: Feng Zhu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai

In mid-December 2018, Peter Ma, Chairman and CEO of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. was considering whether the company should grow a fifth ecosystem of Smart City Services. Established in 1988, Ping An was one of the top 10 global financial... View Details

Keywords: Business Ecosystems; Fintech; Finance; Information Technology; Business Model; Expansion; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

31 Mar 2020
Blog Post

Know Your Audience – Recruiting HBS Students for Investment Management

firms that post roles in our recruiting platform receive large numbers of applications from talented candidates, but often only have the headcount for one or two interns or full-time hires. Given the supply/demand imbalance across investment management, the majority of... View Details

Keywords: Investment Management / Hedge Fund

Research Summary

Competing on a Common Platform

Why have over 100 firms joined the Eclipse Foundation to collectively produce an open source platform and tools for software application development? What are they trying to accomplish? This research analyzes IBMs divestment of the Eclipse Java Integrated Development... View Details

October 2003 (Revised October 2004)
Case

AT&T Canada (A)

By: Andre F. Perold and Kwame C. Van Leeuwen

AT&T Canada (ATTC) is a merger arbitrage situation where AT&T Corp. has a contractual commitment to purchase the shares of ATTC at an escalating formula price. However, ATTC's business is performing poorly, and its bonds are trading at significant discounts to par.... View Details

Keywords: Agreements and Arrangements; Valuation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Investment; Telecommunications Industry; Canada

2013
Article

Optimizing the Amount of Entertainment in Advertising: What's So Funny about Tracking Reactions to Humor?

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Horst Stipp

Humor and other entertaining content, as opposed to demonstrations of product features and "selling," are increasingly used in advertising, such as TV commercials, to attract and keep consumers' attention. This study uses facial tracking to explore how marketers can... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Content; Entertainment; Face Perception; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Television Entertainment; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

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