Publications

October 2018
Supplement

African Bank Investments Limited (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Personal Finance; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Insurance; Leadership; Management; Risk Management; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry; Africa; South Africa

October 2018
Case

American Family Insurance and the Artificial Intelligence Opportunity

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

October 2018
Case

Learning How to Honnold

By: Eugene F. Soltes, Sara Hess and Dutch Leonard

Alex Honnold is the world’s most accomplished free climber. To many, climbing sheer vertical faces of rock—like the famed El Capitan—without a rope is viewed as not simply risky but reckless. Honnold contrasts this sentiment by presenting his perspective on risk taking... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Goals and Objectives; Personal Development and Career; Perspective

2018
Book

Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time

By: Geoffrey Jones

Published at a time of ever-increasing warnings that the pace of climate change and other environmental changes risk making the Earth unsustainable within our own lifetimes, this book looks at the past of green business to identify lessons for the future. It provides... View Details

Article

Navigating Talent Hot Spots

By: William R. Kerr

Innovation clusters like San Francisco and Boston have long had an outsize impact on the global economy, and their influence keeps growing. In 2017, for instance, America’s ten largest tech hubs accounted for 58% of U.S. patents. Globally, cities such as Tokyo, Paris,... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Innovation and Invention; Urban Scope; Industry Clusters; Innovation and Management

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August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
Case

LendingClub (A): Data Analytic Thinking (Abridged)

By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler

LendingClub was founded in 2006 as an alternative, peer-to-peer lending model to connect individual borrowers to individual investor-lenders through an online platform. Since 2014 the company has worked with institutional investors at scale. While the company assigns... View Details

Keywords: Data Science; Data Analytics; Investing; Loans; Investment; Financing and Loans; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Model

August 2018
Case

BlackBuck (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

The case presents the challenges of scaling an asset-heavy company (that relies on its operations). It highlights how decisions on the early team impact a company’s ability to scale, linkage between growth and cash flows, as well the organizational impact of high... View Details

Keywords: Founders; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Delivery; Cash Flow; Growth Management; Truck Transportation; Online Technology; India

2018
Working Paper

Detecting Anomalies: The Relevance and Power of Standard Asset Pricing Tests

By: Malcolm Baker, Patrick Luo and Ryan Taliaferro

The two standard approaches for identifying capital market anomalies are cross-sectional coefficient tests, in the spirit of Fama and MacBeth (1973), and time-series intercept tests, in the spirit of Jensen (1968). A new signal can pass the first test, which we label a... View Details

Keywords: Investment Management; Anomalies; Portfolio Construction; Transaction Costs; Investment; Management; Asset Pricing; Market Transactions; Cost

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July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Teaching Note

Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country... View Details

Keywords: Argentina; Argentine Exceptionalism; Infrastructure Finance; Investing; Finance; Inflation and Deflation; Government and Politics; Energy Generation; Infrastructure; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Argentina; South America

July 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

Project Helios: Harvesting the Sun

By: Mark Egan and E. Scott Mayfield

Aware of the impact that modern society was having on the environment, Ashley Telkes had always tried to be cognizant of her own impact on the environment and to take reasonable steps to mitigate her own effects. Having already implemented a number of passive measures... View Details

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Personal Finance; Decision Making; Environmental Sustainability

July 2018
Article

Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs: A Review of Recent Literature

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and Tina Xu

We review the extensive literature since 2000 on the personality traits of entrepreneurs. We first consider baseline personality traits like the Big-5 model, self-efficacy and innovativeness, locus of control, and the need for achievement. We then consider risk... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Venturing; Personality Traits; Characteristics; Big-5; Risk Attitudes; Goals; Skills; Entrepreneurship; Personal Characteristics; Goals and Objectives; Competency and Skills; Success; Demographics; Research

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2018
Chapter

The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin

Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Learning; Safety; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency

May 2018 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Argentina Power—Don't Cry for Me Argentina

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree

In 2016, Bruce Wayne, Managing Director of Energy Finance Corporation (“EFC”), was refining the Investment/Credit Committee materials for the development of up to 10 power generating plants in Argentina. As a subsidiary of the much larger International Conglomerate... View Details

Keywords: Cross Border; Energy Markets; Infrastructure Finance; Infrastructure Development; Business Subsidiaries; Business Cycles; Macroeconomics; Energy Generation; International Finance; Project Finance; Government and Politics; Demand and Consumers; Infrastructure; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Argentina; Latin America

May 2018
Case

Harvest City: The Intelligent Procurement System Project

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Ramiro Montealegre

The Harvest City case describes the implementation of a cloud- and IoT-based intelligent procurement system at a new convention complex in the U.S. Midwest. The decision to build a convention complex is a strategic initiative for this city and involves extensive use of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Projects; Management; Decision Making; Business and Government Relations; Information Technology Industry

2018
Working Paper

Business, Governments and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America since 1970

By: Geoffrey Jones and Rachael Comunale

This working paper provides a new perspective on how businesses have responded to political risk in South Asia and Latin America over the last half century. The existing business history literature on political risk is focused on the experiences of Western... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Risk Management; Government and Politics; Business History; South Asia; Latin America

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May–June 2018
Article

What Most People Get Wrong about Men and Women: Research Shows the Sexes Aren't So Different

By: Catherine H. Tinsley and Robin J. Ely

Why have women failed to achieve parity with men in the workplace? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because women prioritize their families over their careers, negotiate poorly, lack confidence, or are too risk averse. Meta-analyses of published studies show that... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Organizational Culture; Change Management