Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(8,756)
- Faculty Publications (1,616)
- April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
Public Equities Impact Investing at BlackRock
By: Shawn A. Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi, Michael Norris and John Masko
In early 2021, BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM)—sought to become a leader in promoting environmental and social sustainability. Over the previous ten years, CEO Larry Fink had written an annual open letter to... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Renewable Energy; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Equity; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Management; Investment Funds; Investment Return; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Financial Services Industry; United States
- March 2021
- Case
P.F. Chang's
By: Ashish Nanda, Nitin Nohria and Margaret Cross
Excited yet apprehensive after being named CEO of P.F. Chang’s beginning July 1st, 2020, Damola Adamolekun was well aware of the extraordinary challenges facing the firm. The closure of businesses deemed “nonessential” owing to the COVID-19 pandemic had devastated the... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Aligning Mission and Margin at Southern Bancorp
By: Rebecca M. Henderson, Brian Trelstad and Eren Kuzucu
In October 2020, after spending almost a decade to turnaround Southern Bancorp, an Arkansan bank founded with the mission to provide financial services to rural, underserved communities, CEO Darrin Williams is wondering how Southern Bancorp should continue to grow.... View Details
- March 2021
- Supplement
CashDrop (B2)
By: Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick
After the events in CashDrop A, Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques, the founders of Harlem Capital partners, worried that Ruben Flores-Martinez, CashDrop’s founder, would take another offer while he waited for them to officially make an offer. HCP traditionally... View Details
- March 17, 2021
- Other Article
Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper
By: Ayelet Israeli, Eva Ascarza and Laura Castrillo
A first look at how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted e-commerce apparel shopping in the US and the UK. Extensive analysis and interactive graphics utilizing millions of transactions.
While the pandemic is still playing out, our preliminary investigations... View Details
While the pandemic is still playing out, our preliminary investigations... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Retail Analytics; Consumer; Pandemic; COVID; COVID-19; Apparel; Ecommerce; Online Shopping; Online Apparel; Online Sales; Returns; CRM; Customer Retention; Customer Experience; Customer Value; Digital; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customers; Health Pandemics; Consumer Behavior; Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Behavior; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry; United States; United Kingdom
- March 2021
- Supplement
Facebook's Libra (B): The Privatization of Money?
By: Marco Di Maggio, Ethan Rouen, George Serafeim and Amy Klopfenstein
This case addresses the events that took place following the conclusion of the case “Facebook’s Libra (A): The Privatization of Money?” In October 2019, several months after the conclusion of the A case, multiple members of the Libra Association announced that they... View Details
Keywords: Blockchain; Cryptocurrency; Accounting; Economics; Money; Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Governance Controls; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Information Infrastructure; Technology Industry; Europe; Switzerland; United States; California
- March 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Ayn Rand: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Max Saffer
This case traces the life of Ayn Rand from Russia to Hollywood to New York City. The case describes how Rand fled communist Russia and, in reaction to the deprivations she experienced under communism, developed a philosophy idealizing free will and personal... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Hotwire.com: Navigating Through Turbulence
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Manny de Zarraga and Eric Levine
On September 10, 2001, after speaking at an industry conference at New York’s World Trade Center, Hotwire co-founder Spencer Rascoff boarded a flight from Newark to San Francisco. After returning home, Rascoff awoke the next morning to a phone call informing him that... View Details
Keywords: September 11; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Disruption; Decisions; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Growth Management; Digital Platforms; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Expansion; Internet and the Web; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Air Transportation Industry; Tourism Industry; San Francisco
- March 2021
- Case
Humana (A)
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ashley Ifeadike
To implement a bold new strategy, Humana needed to decide how to prioritize the pillars; where to own and where to partner; how much risk is acceptable; and how to continue to deliver strong operational performance while implementing a new strategy. Had the firm made... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Supplement
Wendell Weeks at Corning Inc. (B): Valor Glass and the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Aldo Sesia
The (B) case offers a detailed account of Wendell Weeks’s innovation strategy at Corning, and how his approach played a critical role in the COVID-19 pandemic. It illustrates the company’s philosophy of making long-term investments in promising new technologies and... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised February 2025)
- Teaching Note
Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma
By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-086. In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online... View Details
Keywords: Omnichannel Retail; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Organization; For-Profit Firms; Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; Global Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Development; Supply Chain Management; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Networks; Network Effects; Internet and the Web; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Australia
- March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and... View Details
Keywords: SaaS; Customer Journey; Business Model; Business Organization; Change Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; United States
- March 2021
- Case
VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory
By: Karim R. Lakhani and Amy Klopfenstein
Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup that used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. A process for quickly building and iterating on new... View Details
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge
- March 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Apax Partners and Duck Creek Technologies
By: Josh Lerner, Terrence Shu and Alys Ferragamo
This case follows Jason Wright and Umang Kajaria at Apax Partners as they consider an investment in Duck Creek Technologies, a technology provider for property & casualty insurance companies. The deal required a complex carve-out from Accenture, Duck Creek’s parent... View Details
- March 2021
- Case
Founders Factory
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and James Barnett
In January 2020, Founders Factory (FF) Executive Chairman Brent Hoberman and CEO Henry Lane Fox were considering FF’s expansion strategy. FF operated as a venture capital (VC) fund built around an accelerator and incubator, and organized around sectors within... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Markets; Planning; Expansion; Global Range; Business Model; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Industry; Africa; South Africa; Johannesburg; Europe; France; Paris; United Kingdom; England; London; United States; New York (city, NY)
- Mar 2021
- Conference Presentation
Descent-to-Delete: Gradient-Based Methods for Machine Unlearning
By: Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Saeed Sharifi-Malvajerdi
We study the data deletion problem for convex models. By leveraging techniques from convex optimization and reservoir sampling, we give the first data deletion algorithms that are able to handle an arbitrarily long sequence of adversarial updates while promising both... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Collab Capital
Founded in 2020 by Jewel Burks Solomon and her partners, Barry Givens and Justin Dawkins, Collab Capital was a new investment firm built on two pillars: first, it would identify and support ventures founded by Black entrepreneurs, a group underrepresented in... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Shopify: The Conquest for Chinese E-Commerce
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Avani Patel, Samantha Lin and Ariel Yang
In mid-2020, Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, faced a critical decision on how to time potential expansion into the China market. Over the prior 15 years, his Canadian software-as-a-service company had grown from a small e-commerce solutions provider to a full service... View Details
Keywords: Timing; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Service Operations; Business Model; Organizational Design; Change Management; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Health Pandemics; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Digital Platforms; Alliances; Partners and Partnerships; Opportunities; Internet and the Web; E-commerce; United States; Canada; China
- February 2021 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
World of Dreams Entertainment Group: Building a Resilient Business
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Sarah Endline and Michael Norris
In 2021, Ron DeShay, former American Idol producer, is launching his new business venture: World of Dreams Entertainment Group. World of Dreams rethought the existing TV production model, giving audiences more power to directly influence the creation of shows through a... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jamie Merkrebs
AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120 billion furniture market, despite its... View Details
Keywords: E-Commerce Strategy; Mobile; Word-of-Mouth; Word-of-mouth Marketing; Word Of Mouth; Internet Marketing; Growth Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Two Sided Markets; Two-sided Market; Two-sided Marketplace; Two-Sided Markets; Two-sided Network; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; African Americans; Circular; Peer-to-peer Markets; Furniture Industry; Furniture; Growth Hacking; Monetization Strategy; African-American Protagonist; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; North America; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)