Publications

March 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems? (with video links)

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Kelly McNamara

As the case opens in 1999, several key leaders at BlackRock, Inc., then a relatively small asset management firm, are trying to convince CEO Larry Fink and others that the firm should begin to offer Aladdin—its proprietary analytics and trading platform—to other asset... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States

01 Dec 2001
News

Passing the Torch

General Electric, the world's most valuable company and the firm where he has spent his entire career, Immelt good-naturedly dealt with the... View Details

Keywords: Support Activities for Transportation; Transportation; Motor Vehicle and Parts Dealers; Retail Trade

March 2001 (Revised May 2001)
Case

&Samhoud Service Management

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Ashish Nanda and Monica Mullick

&Samhoud, a small service management consulting firm in the Netherlands, grapples with the dilemma of firing its largest client while introducing Heskett's theory of the service profit chain. View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Management Practices and Processes; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Consulting Industry; Netherlands

08 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

How Centuries of Restrictions on Women Shed Light on Today's Abortion Debate

mobility, female genital cutting, and anti-abortion attitudes. Will women stray when men are away? Becker, who works at the intersection of anthropology and economics, finds evidence for View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

December 2009
Case

Philips versus Matsushita: The Competitive Battle Continues

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

Describes the development of the global strategies and organizations of two major competitors in the consumer electronics industry. Over four decades, both companies adapt their strategic intent and organizational capability to match and counter the competitive... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Organizational Culture; Multinational Firms and Management; Restructuring; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry

01 Jun 2012
News

Made in the USA

to know that across the country, the population of ethnic consumers was growing. “I’ve always subscribed to the View Details

Keywords: Blagg, Deborah; cheese; lobster fishing; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises

February 2007
Case

Update: The Music Industry in 2006

By: John R. Wells and Elizabeth Raabe

The global recorded music industry was undergoing a major transition in 2006. Sales had been declining for a decade, and consumers were buying music in new formats and through different distribution channels. CD sales still accounted for the majority of revenues, but... View Details

Keywords: History; Arts; Music Entertainment; Intellectual Property; Market Timing; Performance Evaluation; Trends; Music Industry

2018
Chapter

The Orphan Drug Act at 35: Observations and an Outlook for the Twenty-First Century

By: Nicholas Bagley, Benjamin Berger, Amitabh Chandra, Craig Garthwaite and Ariel Dora Stern

On the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the Orphan Drug Act (ODA), we describe the enormous changes in the markets for therapies for rare diseases that have emerged over recent decades. The most prominent example is the fact that the profit-maximizing price of new... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Laws and Statutes; Research and Development; Investment; Markets; Monopoly

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2008
Working Paper

Attracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients: Conflicts of Interest and Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice

By: Lauren Cohen and Breno Schmidt

We explore a new channel for attracting inflows using a unique dataset of corporate 401(k) retirement plans and their mutual fund family trustees. Families secure substantial inflows by being named trustee of a 401(k) plan. This affords the plan sponsor potential... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Conflict of Interests; Financial Services Industry

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Article

Products to Platforms: Making the Leap

By: Feng Zhu and Nathan Furr

Following the path of companies such as Apple and Amazon, more and more firms are trying to become not just product purveyors but also platform providers, facilitating direct connections between customers and other groups. Although launching a platform can generate new... View Details

Keywords: Product; Digital Platforms; Expansion

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27 May 2014
News

Crowdsourcing the Capitalist's Dilemma

brings a group together in an online forum to solve a specified "challenge." The participating HBS alumni researched the issues of long-term growth and job creation, generated... View Details

Keywords: April White; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management of Companies and Enterprises

Inequality regimes in Africa from pre-colonial times to the present

While current levels of economic inequality in Africa receive ample attention from academics and policymakers, we know little about the long-run evolution of inequality in the region. Even the new and influential ‘global inequality literature’ that is associated... View Details

24 Jan 2025
News

The Network Effect

Karan Mathur (left) and Dina Model (Illustration by Gisela Goppel) When Dina Model and Karan Mathur (both MBA 2015) met through mutual friends during their first year at HBS, neither was envisioning a future business deal. “We didn’t realize that we had shared... View Details

August 2003
Case

Mercury Computer Systems: The Evolution from Integrated Technology to Open Standard

By: Rebecca Henderson and Nancy Confrey

For 20 years, Mercury Computer Systems has thrived, providing products and services that support ultrafast processing of real time data. Now Jay Bertelli, the CEO, faces a critical question: How can the firm compete once the standards on which its products are based... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Open Source Distribution; Strategic Planning; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

03 Oct 2019
News

Where Are All the Women in Private Equity?

September 2008
Article

Does Innovation Cause Stock Market Runups? Evidence from the Great Crash

By: Tom Nicholas

This article examines the stock market's changing valuation of corporate patentable assets between 1910 and 1939. It shows that the value of knowledge capital increased significantly during the 1920s compared to the 1910s as investors responded to the quality of... View Details

Keywords: History; Technological Innovation; Patents; Stocks; Valuation; Financial Crisis; Financial Services Industry; United States

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13 Aug 2020
Blog Post

The U.S. Job Search for International Students

given student’s unique career vision, they are going to utilize different approaches to the job search, and a lot of this revolves around timing. Some companies, typically the... View Details

2021
Working Paper

Racial Disparities in the Paycheck Protection Program

By: Sergey Chernenko and David S. Scharfstein

Using a large sample of Florida restaurants, we document significant racial disparities in borrowing through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and investigate the causes of these disparities. Black-owned restaurants are 25% less likely to receive PPP loans.... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Paycheck Protection Program; Economic Injury Disaster Loans; Bank Lending; Nonbank Lending; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Prejudice and Bias; Race

SSRN

March 2023
Article

Attracting the Sharks: Corporate Innovation and Securities Class Action Lawsuits

By: Elisabeth Kempf and Oliver Spalt

This paper provides novel evidence suggesting that securities class action lawsuits, a central pillar of the U.S. litigation and corporate governance system, can constitute an obstacle to valuable corporate innovation. We first establish that valuable innovation output... View Details

Keywords: Class-action Litigation; Turnover; Lawsuits and Litigation; Innovation and Invention; Risk and Uncertainty