Publications

November 2010 (Revised October 2012)
Background Note

Farmland Investing: A Technical Note

By: Ray Goldberg, Arthur I Segel, Gustavo Herrero and Andrew Terris

This note seeks to provide an overview of farmland investing, the investment thesis behind investing in agriculture, how and why investors would choose farmland, and the general risks and return characteristics of this asset class. In recent years, a growing number of... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Investment; Investment Return; Risk Management; Property; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; Asia; United States; South America

June 2014
Case

Going Social: Durex in China

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Aaron Smith

When Reckitt Benckiser (RB), a leading consumer goods company, first entered China, it encountered significant challenges. RB's strategy relied on selling high margin products supported by cost-effective advertising and distribution, but the highly competitive Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Multinational Firms and Management; Internet and the Web; Marketing Communications; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; China

October 2009
Article

Influence and Inefficiency in the Internal Capital Market

By: Julie Wulf

I model inefficient resource allocations in M-form organizations due to influence activities by division managers that skew capital budgets in their favor. Corporate headquarters receives two types of signals about investment opportunities: private signals that can be... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Resource Allocation; Business Processes; Capital Budgeting; Business Headquarters; Investment; Opportunities; Cost; Value; Motivation and Incentives; Equity

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Read Now

17 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

The Price of Capital: Evidence from Trade Data

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro & Faisal Z. Ahmed

25 Oct 2010
HBS Case

Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market

makes ideal Harvard Business School case material for teaching everything from multinational strategy to on-the-ground logistics. Marketing professor John A. Quelch recently introduced Tesco PLC: Fresh & Easy in the United States, developed from View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

05 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

How Hormones Foretell Whether People Will Cheat

of whether someone will behave unethically. Two, among those who do cheat, cheating reduces levels of the hormone associated with psychological stress. In other words, people may use cheating as a means of relieving stress. The good news... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

December 2009
Case

Milliway Capital & Martin Smith: November 2008

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Ann Leamon

Martin Smith, a recent MBA graduate, has just joined a top-tier venture capital firm in the difficult environment of late 2008. One of his first assignments is to review three companies in a partner's portfolio and recommend strategies for managing them. In addition,... View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Financial Management; Private Equity; Business Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Venture Capital; Business or Company Management

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November 2012
Teaching Note

Groupon (TN)

By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Yien Hao Lock

On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details

Keywords: Social Networking; Media; Technology; Strategy; Business Growth and Maturation; Marketing Strategy; Marketing; Internet and the Web; Social Media; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States

March 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Case

Groupon

By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Dharmishta Rood

On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Customers; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Marketing Channels; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

01 Sep 2022
What Do You Think?

Is It Time to Consider Lifting Tariffs on Chinese Imports?

controversies, trade continues. It’s perhaps evidence that sanity still prevails in the business world. But it raises the question of whether it’s time for the US to send a message, however small, of positive intent toward China by prioritizing negotiations that would... View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

June 2018 (Revised April 2021)
Supplement

Valuing Snap After the IPO Quiet Period

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Marco Di Maggio and Greg Saldutte

June 2018
Supplement

Valuing Snap After the IPO Quiet Period (B)

By: Marco Di Maggio and Benjamin C. Esty

Analyzes Snap’s value and analyst recommendations following the events described in the (A) case. View Details

February 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Case

New Constructs: Disrupting Fundamental Analysis with Robo-Analysts

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Kyle Thomas

This case highlights the business challenges associated with a financial technology firm, New Constructs, that created a technology that can quickly parse complicated public firm financials to paint a clearer economic picture of firms, remove accounting distortions,... View Details

Keywords: Fundamental Analysis; Machine Learning; Robo-analysts; Financial Statements; Financial Reporting; Analysis; Information Technology; Accounting Industry; Financial Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; North America; Tennessee

16 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 16, 2018

January–February 2018 Harvard Business Review More Than a Paycheck: How to Create Good Blue-Collar Jobs in the Knowledge Economy By: Campbell, Dennis, John Case, and Bill Fotsch Abstract—Fifty years ago a View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

The "New" Corporate Communications

By: Stephen A. Greyser

Stephen A. Greyser continues to explore the issues and problems organizations face as they attempt to communicate effectively with a variety of constituencies. Greyser's work and the course to which it contributes are structured around the business-media-publics... View Details

March 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

The Blackstone Group's IPO

By: Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Steven Schwarzman, Chairman of the Blackstone Group, has just learned that an investment group associated with the government of China wants to buy the majority of Blackstone's leveraged IPO. As he considers how to respond to this offer, Schwarzman reviews the firm's... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Financial Liquidity; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Ownership Stake; Business and Stakeholder Relations

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

Pauline Brown joined the HBS faculty following a tenure as Chairman of North America at the French luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. (Photo credit: Albert Cheung) To future CEOs who want to succeed in the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Auto; Tourism

October 1997 (Revised April 1998)
Case

C-Car

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Marie Bell

C-Car was the first automobile retailer in the United States to go public. Subsequently the owner, Mr. Gilliland, must decide how to invest the capital raised from the public ownership. This case describes in detail C-Car's highly profitable strategy of managing its... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Cost vs Benefits; Management Practices and Processes; Profit; Acquisition; Business Strategy; Public Ownership; Auto Industry; Retail Industry