Publications

September 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Urban Decay: A Great Idea

By: Lena G. Goldberg

Casual discussions of ideas for a new business can have unintended legal consequences and expectations about founder status and ownership shares may diverge widely. Using facts from a litigated case, the concept of inadvertent formation of a partnership is explored. View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Spoken Communication; Lawsuits and Litigation; Ownership Stake; Partners and Partnerships

01 Dec 1999
News

Q & A: Herb Kohl

cut spending. As a businessman, I know the money you don't spend often representsyour profit. In a Wisconsin vein, I'm working to change the formula by which dairy prices are paid to farmers. We are a dairy state, and because of a View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

05 Jun 2013
Op-Ed

Corporate Leaders Need to Step Up on Climate Change

policy activism and withdraw from associations that refuse to do so, like when Pacific Gas & Electric, Apple, and Nike left the US Chamber of Commerce over its opposition to View Details

Keywords: by Michael Toffel & Auden Schendler

11 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Non-competes Push Talent Away

employment"—including non-compete agreements. But in 1985, the state passed the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act (MARA), which sweepingly repealed dozens of laws and acts, including the inadvertent repeal of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology

01 Mar 2014
News

Ask the Expert: Taxing Questions

banks, so to impose a new tax seems like a counterproductive, political maneuver. Third, only a truly multilateral effort would succeed, and I don't see that happening. I'm all for fixing the financial sector's problems, but I'd go about... View Details

Keywords: ask the expert; Finance

10 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 10

economic harm that system operators could prevent or mitigate. Although the legal system can respond, regulations have mixed results. I examine the applicable legal rules that constrain online fraud and the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2016
Working Paper

The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Market

By: Feng Zhu

Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details

Keywords: Patent Wars; Patent Litigation; Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement; Institutions; Smartphone; Patent Thicket; Digital Platforms; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Globalized Markets and Industries; Business Strategy; Telecommunications Industry

04 Jun 2013
First Look

First Look: June 4

with U.K. and U.S. regulators the firm agreed to pay $450 million in fines. Within a few days of the settlement, Barclays' CEO, Robert Diamond, had resigned under pressure from British regulators. Diamond... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 13

country and firm-level data. Using data for 58 countries, we show that after the adoption of MCSR laws and regulations, the social responsibility of business leaders increases... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Bio-Piracy: When Western Firms Usurp Eastern Medicine

discover how immigration law affects the number of such patents, and explain how, under certain conditions, patenting traditional medicine can mutually benefit both corporate firms View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Legal Services; Biotechnology

12 Oct 2017
Blog Post

Why I Spent this Summer Coding

Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, Cloudflare's Matthew Prince). That’s not to say that non-technical business leaders will be less successful, but there’s a compelling argument that coding is becoming the new business literacy. Technology is always the future, View Details

25 Oct 2016
First Look

October 25, 2016

Abstract—Emissions regulation today is non-uniform, with some regions imposing carbon costs within their borders while many others do not. This gives rise to concerns over carbon leakage—offshoring and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 1994 (Revised April 2011)
Background Note

Note on Private Equity Partnership Agreements

By: Josh Lerner

Venture capital by necessity is a long-run investment. Consequently, since the mid-1960s virtually all venture financing has been raised through private partnerships with a ten-year or longer life span. To govern these investments, complex contracts have sprung up... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Investment; Governance; Contracts; Partners and Partnerships

April 2000 (Revised June 2001)
Case

DoubleClick Buys Abacus (A)

By: John A. Deighton

By acquiring Abacus, DoubleClick won the power to serve ads with unprecedented precision, because it brought together Web surfers' online and offline identities. Several competitors had developed advanced systems for serving ads on the web, but DoubleClick had the... View Details

Keywords: Information; Rights; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Competitive Advantage; Social Issues; Customer Focus and Relationships; Digital Marketing; Advertising Industry

Find at Harvard

18 Oct 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Venture Capital’s Disconnect with Clean Tech

MBA students often fall into one of two categories—those hungry to rush into careers as venture capitalists, and those eager to found a venture-funded start-up. For all of them, Harvard Business School professor Joseph Lassiter has some intriguing advice: Spend a few... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities; Financial Services

October 2010
Case

Cherie Blair: Inventing Herself

By: Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams and Lindsay Tanne

Cherie Blair was famous, or infamous, in the United Kingdom as first lady from 1997 to 2007. Her marriage to Tony Blair, however, was the result of her own groundbreaking career in law--a career she fought to keep during the 10 years of her husband's tenure as Prime... View Details

Keywords: Work-Life Balance; Success; Lawsuits and Litigation; Government Administration; United Kingdom

April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Petrobras in Ecuador (A)

By: Aldo Musacchio, Lena G. Goldberg and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

On October 18, 2007, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa announced his intention to migrate Petrobras' existing participation contracts to exploit oil reserves in Ecuador's Blocks 18 and 31 to servicing agreements under which Petrobras would be paid a production fee and... View Details

Keywords: Metals and Minerals; Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Governance; Government Administration; Taxation; Contracts; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Public Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Brazil; Ecuador