Publications

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01 Dec 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is Quality of Labor? And How Is It Achieved?

jobs as well as labor, most agreed with author Gregory Clark's thesis that "labor quality," not just low cost, is a major driver of capital flows that leads to economic prosperity. This raised... View Details

Keywords: by by Jim Heskett

September 2011
Case

AXA Private Equity: The Diana Investment

By: Michael J. Roberts and William A. Sahlman

The case focuses on an investment made by AXA Private Equity, a French manufacturer of food ingredients. The investment is made at the height of the financial markets, and financed with significant debt. Soon thereafter, the financial crisis impacted the company's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Ethics; Investment; Financial Crisis

April 2000 (Revised July 2000)
Case

Ameritrade Holding Corporation

By: Lisa K. Meulbroek

Some of the senior managers at Ameritrade, an Internet brokerage firm, are selling their holdings in the firm. Why are the managers selling, how will it affect shareholders, and what should the CEO do about it? The CEO is concerned that the market will interpret... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Internet and the Web; Stock Options; Risk Management; Financial Services Industry

October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin

In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details

Keywords: Water; Pricing; Nonprofit Organizations; Projects; Price; Decision Making; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Equity; Green Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Africa; Dubai

06 Feb 2013
What Do You Think?

Is ‘Conscious Capitalism’ an Antidote to Income Inequality?

Summing Up Can "Conscious Capitalism" Become a Viable Antidote to Income Inequality? Conscious capitalism as an antidote to income inequality apparently is an idea that attracts the attention of a diverse community, judging from... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

May 2020
Article

The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets

By: Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev and Josh Lerner

This paper explores the creation and evolution of new stock exchanges around the world geared towards entrepreneurial companies, known as second-tier exchanges. Using hand-collected novel data, we document the proliferation of these new stock exchanges that were... View Details

Keywords: Stock Exchanges; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Initial Public Offering; Capital; Entrepreneurial Finance

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Research Summary

Impact Investing

In the last decade, inspired by the success of commercial microfinance, the concept of applying the practice of equity investing to the delivery of high social impact interventions has drawn increasing attention in development circles, business academia and... View Details

December 2019 (Revised June 2024)
Case

The Dutch East India Company in 1612 (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

The Dutch East India Company’s board of directors must decide what to do about an impending legal requirement to liquidate the company’s assets and return to shareholders their capital and any profits earned during a ten-year lock-up period. The charter granted to the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Laws and Statutes; Financial Markets; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Business History; Shipping Industry; Netherlands

November 2012
Case

Tracy Palandjian at Social Finance US (A)

By: Alnoor Ebrahim, Catherine Clark and Beth Bafford

It had been eighteen months since Tracy Palandjian had left her position as a managing director at The Parthenon Group to start an ambitious venture called Social Finance US. With a mission "to mobilize investment capital to drive social change," her new organization... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career

2025
Working Paper

Investor Influence on Media Coverage: Evidence from Venture Capital-Backed Startups

By: Brian K. Baik and Albert Shin

We examine whether and how investors influence media coverage of their private portfolio companies. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design, we find that media coverage of startups increases significantly following venture capital (VC) investment. The effect... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Media; Reputation; Information

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18 Nov 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Payout Taxes and the Allocation of Investment

Keywords: by Bo Becker, Marcus Jacob & Martin Jacob

Reza R. Satchu

Reza Satchu is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Management Unit at the Harvard Business School where he teaches The Entrepreneurial Manager, The Founder Mindset and Founder Launch. He is also the Founder, Managing Partner and majority shareholder of... View Details

May 1999 (Revised December 2007)
Case

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Development Strategy

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Marie Bell

Despite revenues in excess of $93 million in 1998, world-renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute constantly faces an operating shortfall and looks to its highly successful development office to help cover the deficit. The development office raises money annually (with a... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Capital; Revenue; Growth and Development Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Nonprofit Organizations

November 2006 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Malaysia: Halfway to 2020

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

This country case on Malaysia extends forward by seven years the case “Malaysia: Capital and Control” (702-040). It is based on Malaysia's ninth plan, which took effect in 2006. The ninth plan proposed five thrusts—moving the economy to higher value-added goods and... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategic Planning; Welfare; Equality and Inequality; Malaysia

November 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

NovoCure Ltd.

By: William A. Sahlman and Sarah Flaherty

Venture capitalist William Doyle must raise $35 million for a portfolio company with a promising, novel cancer therapy, just as global capital markets are imploding in the fall of 2008. NovoCure, Ltd., has developed an electrical-field-based therapy, called Tumor... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Technological Innovation; Financial Services Industry

August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
Case

PayPal: The Next Chapter

By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb

Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Finance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Entrepreneurship; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry

June 2005 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Vidient (A)

Vidient, a young company, is in the process of being spun out of a much larger, established Japanese business. Vidient is in the business of analyzing the feeds from security cameras and catches security breaches automatically, without human assistance. The parent... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Business Growth and Maturation; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Service Industry; Japan

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09 Sep 2015
News

Entrepreneurship: Increasingly, the Province of the Wealthy

December 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Impossible Foods

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown started the company out of concern over livestock production’s impact on climate change. Impossible’s mission is to end consumption of animals by 2035, and its strategy is to develop and market plant-based foods so similar to... View Details