Publications

04 Sep 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Wellsprings of Creation: Perturbation and the Paradox of the Highly Disciplined Organization

Keywords: by David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats, Michael L. Tushman & David M. Upton

April 2021
Teaching Note

GreenFire Energy, 2020: Geothermal Innovation

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In June 2020, after ten years of effort, GreenFire Energy Inc. (GreenFire) demonstrated its new geothermal electricity generation technology, ECO2G™. While conventional geothermal electricity only supplied 0.5% of US demand, the new technology promised to increase this... View Details

Keywords: Green Energy; Geothermal; Entrepreneur; Renewables; Geothermal Electricity; Green Technology; Renewable Energy; Energy Generation; Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Commercialization

Article

CDS Trading and Nonrelationship Lending Dynamics

By: Jung Koo Kang, Christopher Williams and Regina Wittenberg-Moerman

We investigate how credit default swaps (CDSs) affect lenders’ incentives to initiate new lending relationships. We predict that CDSs reduce adverse selection that nonrelationship lead arrangers face when competing for loans. Consistently, we find that a loan is... View Details

Keywords: Credit Default Swaps; CDS Market; Non-relationship Lending; Debt Contracts; Adverse Selection; Lending Monitoring; Cross-selling

Article

Lone Inventors as Sources of Technological Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality?

Are lone inventors more or less likely to invent breakthroughs? Recent research has attempted to resolve this question by considering the variance of creative outcome distributions. It has implicitly assumed a symmetric thickening or thinning of both tails, i.e., that... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Patents; Groups and Teams; Creativity

July 2003 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (B), The

By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen

This case provides the outcome to "The Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (A)" in which the CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Joint Ventures; Financing and Loans; Auto Industry; Shanghai

03 Jan 2017
First Look

January 3, 2017

participation in a comparative cost study, management at Springfield Hospital, known for its heavy focus on operational excellence, become aware of opportunities for further improvement. Analysis of the... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

12 Oct 2017
Blog Post

Why I Spent this Summer Coding

The summer between RC and EC year represents a great opportunity for risk-free exploration. Encouraged by our outcome at the New Venture Competition and the funding I would receive as a Rock Summer Fellow, I forwent a business internship... View Details

Article

Turning Waste into By-Product

By: Deishin Lee

This paper studies how a firm can create and capture value by converting a waste stream into a useful and saleable by-product (i.e., implementing by-product synergy [BPS]). We show that BPS creates an operational synergy between two products that are jointly produced.... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Innovation and Invention; Cost Management; Opportunities; Market Participation; Framework; Profit; Competition; Wastes and Waste Processing; Product; Business Processes

March–April 2013
Article

Vaporware, Suddenware and Trueware: New Product Preannouncements under Market Uncertainty

By: Elie Ofek and Ozge Turut

A firm may want to preannounce its plans to develop a new product in order to stimulate future demand. But given that such communications can affect rivals' incentives to develop the same new product, a firm may decide to preannounce untruthfully in order to deter... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Announcements; Competition; Product Launch; Product Development

16 Nov 2020
Blog Post

Flatiron School: Reflections from Summer 2020

In the summer of 2020, HBS Career & Professional Development (CPD) partnered with Flatiron School to provide students with an opportunity to gain practical skills, statistics fundamentals, and real-life data science project... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

April 1985
Case

SEEQ Technology--1984

By: Kim B. Clark

Examines a decision about product and process technology facing a small, three-year old semiconductor company. The company must decide between pursuing a well-defined technology (N-MOS) with significant short-term advantages or an advanced technology (CMOS) that has... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Semiconductor Industry

17 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

play in these internal markets, Hall argues. “If you try to put water into a hose, it’s going to squirt out somewhere. No matter what decision you make, there will be something that needs to be controlled,” Hall says. “Every kink creates View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

03 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

changed, and with it the security that used to come almost automatically with an MBA degree. [ ] High-paying jobs are no longer guaranteed to graduates, and the opportunity costs of two years of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

November 2021 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place

By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as... View Details

Keywords: Business Ethics; Homelessness; Business And Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Corporate Accountability; Urban Development; Society; Information Technology; Ethics; Technology Industry; Seattle; United States; North America

April 2020
Teaching Note

Oaktree: Pierre Foods Investment

By: Victoria Ivashina, Michael Harmon and Terrence Shu

Teaching Note for HBS No. 219-018. This case is a setting to discuss “loan to own” investment strategy that is often pursued by distressed investors. The aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis left many companies with poor liquidity and limited ability to obtain... View Details

Keywords: Distress Investing; Investment; Debt Securities; Strategy; Restructuring

June 1987 (Revised August 1988)
Case

American Bank

By: Robert S. Kaplan

American Bank is developing a new system to compute product costs. The deregulated, more competitive environment for commercial banks has created both problems and opportunities for banking operations. In order to price existing products and assess the desirability of... View Details

Keywords: System; Consolidation; Commercial Banking; SWOT Analysis; Fair Value Accounting; Cost Management; Price; Banking Industry; North and Central America; United States