Publications

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Partners & Fellows | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Coney Island Prep Connecticut Office of the Governor Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Detroit Economic Growth Corporation Dillard University Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Endeavor Global Environmental Defense Fund Equal Justice... View Details

January 2003 (Revised May 2005)
Case

Zipcar: Refining the Business Model

By: Myra M. Hart, Michael J. Roberts and Julia Stevens

Zipcar is a start-up organized around the idea of "sharing" car usage via a membership organization. This case describes several iterations of the Zipcar business model and financial plan. These iterations include a very early version and a version developed just prior... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Renting or Rental; Business Model; Business Plan; Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Management Skills; Transportation; Business Startups; Financial Strategy; Corporate Finance; Growth and Development Strategy; Transportation Industry; Service Industry

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Partners - Case Method Project

Boquiren Preuss School La Jolla, CA Subjects: AP U.S. History, Western Civilization and Culture CA 6 of 65 Steven Chai Bakersfield Christian High School Bakersfield, CA Subjects: AP US History, AP US Government CA 7 of 65 Sabrina Chase... View Details

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Advisory Board - Entrepreneurship

mentor to a Robert A. Toigo Fellow, a member of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Leadership Forum, and a member of the Steering Committee for New England Springboard Enterprises. Daphne is a frequent guest lecturer at Harvard Business... View Details

May 2022
Article

Variance Analysis: New Insights from Health Care Applications

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Susanna Gallani

We use a health care application to illustrate how variance analysis can be used to benchmark costs across similar service delivery sites. Variances for personnel costs, typically the largest cost component in service organizations, are calculated for price, quantity,... View Details

Keywords: Variance Analysis; Benchmarking; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Health Care; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Service Industry

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March 2001 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Wilkerson Company

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The president of Wilkerson, faced with declining profits, is struggling to understand why the company is encountering severe price competition on one product line while able to raise prices without competitive response on another product line. The controller proposes... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Competition; Profit; Product; Consumer Products Industry

1984
Book

Restoring our Competitive Edge: Competing Through Manufacturing

By: Robert H. Hayes and Steven C. Wheelwright

Web

Teacher Profiles - Case Method Project

High School New Haven, CT Subjects: US History, Government and Politics, AP Government and Politics MD Steven Bellizzi Annapolis High School Annapolis, MD Subjects: AP US Government MA Don Benson Weston High School Weston, MA Subjects: AP... View Details

Working Paper

How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?

By: Paul A. Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing, investment selection, valuation, deal structure, post-investment value-added, exits, internal firm organization, and relationships... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Decision Choices and Conditions

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06 Jan 2015
News

Fostering discussion in the MBA classroom

Robert Steven Kaplan (MBA 1983), a former HBS professor who now serves as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has a passion for teaching that inspires his... View Details

Article

Reimagining the Balanced Scorecard for the ESG Era

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David McMillan

Companies are increasingly aware that their customers and society in general expect businesses to adopt and work towards social and environmental objectives as well as the traditional financial ones. This involves not only re-evaluating firms’ models but re-imagining... View Details

Keywords: ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Business Ecosystems; Balanced Scorecard; Adaptation; Business Model; Business and Stakeholder Relations

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1998
Book

Advanced Management Accounting

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Anthony A. Atkinson

Keywords: Management; Cost Accounting

April 1998 (Revised September 1998)
Case

Classic Pen Company, The: Developing an ABC Model

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Classic Pen has diversified from its core blue and black pen business by introducing new specialized colors. But costs have risen and margins on blue and black pens are decreasing. The controller turns to activity-based costing (ABC) for an explanation. View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Manufacturing Industry

2015
Working Paper

What Do Private Equity Firms Say They Do?

By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov

We survey 79 private equity investors with combined assets under management (AUM) of over $750 billion about their practices in firm valuation, capital structure, governance, and value creation. Investors rely primarily on internal rate of return (IRR) and multiples to... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Value Creation; Private Equity; Capital Structure; Valuation; Management Practices and Processes

SSRN

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Events - Business History

Radburn (Lancaster), Carolyn Roberts (Yale), Klas Rönnbäck (Gothenburg), Anne Ruderman (LSE), Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (IISG), and Marlous van Waijenburg (HBS). Dec 7 07 Dec 2020 Business History Seminar The Horde and the Mongol Exchange... View Details

01 Jun 2007
What Do You Think?

How Should Pay Be Linked to Performance?

downside, more gains on the upside. The company's goals are the (opposite)." Claude Des Rosiers warned that "There are enough challenges to get people in an organization to work together (without compounding the problem by paying for individual... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

November 2018
Case

Swissgrid: Enterprise Risk Management in a Digital Age

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes

Kurt Meyer, chief risk officer of Swissgrid, the Swiss national electricity transmission system operator, reflects on the risk management system he installed after the deregulation and liberalization of the European energy market. With 41 connections to other European... View Details

Keywords: Enterprise Risk Management; Energy Transmission; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Energy; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Switzerland

December 2001 (Revised February 2008)
Case

Borealis

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Bjorn N. Jorgensen

When Borealis, a European producer of plastics, used a traditional, time-consuming budgeting process, the budget was quickly out of date in a competitive environment characterized by continually changing input and output prices and dynamic market conditions. This case... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Budgets and Budgeting; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment; Governance Controls; Balanced Scorecard; Management Systems; Manufacturing Industry; Europe