Publications

April 2002
Case

Ocular

By: Paul A. Gompers, Gregor M. Andrade and Jonathan Man

Concerns the decision of Ed Kennedy, co-founder of Ocular Networks, as he decides what financing strategy his firm should take. The venture capital and public markets for telecommunications start-ups had dried up and Kennedy must decide whether to cut costs and raise... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Startups; Decisions; Venture Capital; Cost Management; Business Strategy; Telecommunications Industry

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December 2014 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Discovery Limited

By: Michael E. Porter, Mark R. Kramer and Aldo Sesia

Discovery Ltd. is a South Africa-based insurance company. Started in the early 1990s, Discovery used behavioral economics and data collection to innovate in the health care insurance industry. Its founder Adrian Gore believed that the company's products needed to not... View Details

Keywords: Shared Value; Health Care; Financial Services; Strategy; Value Creation; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; South Africa

September 2023 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Honest Jobs: A Path to Redemption

By: Paul A. Gompers and Jeffrey Barkas

Founded by a formerly incarcerated job seeker, Honest Jobs' mission is to be the hub where people with criminal records come to build careers and employers come to find great talent. Honest Jobs faced early challenges as a two-sided platform for justice-involved job... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Venture Capital; Recruitment; Entrepreneurial Finance; Selection and Staffing; Digital Platforms; Job Search; Mission and Purpose; Expansion; Employment Industry; United States; Colorado; Ohio; Texas

01 Jun 2023
HBS Case

A Nike Executive Hid His Criminal Past to Turn His Life Around. What If He Didn't Have To?

imprisoned come from predominantly minority communities. In 2018, Black Americans were incarcerated in state prisons at nearly six times the rate of White Americans, research shows. Many prison reform advocates say long-standing... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Apparel & Accessories

February 2003 (Revised March 2011)
Background Note

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Valuation and Distribution in Private Equity

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Introduces the issues attendant to valuing privately held portfolios and distributing thinly traded stock. Although they have existed since the beginning of the formal venture capital industry, they have received increasing amounts of attention as the money invested in... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Stocks; Investment Portfolio; Valuation; Financial Services Industry

February 15, 2022
Article

How Managers Can Build a Culture of Experimentation

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Neil Hoyne

Testing in business presents qualitatively different challenges than those in clinical trials and most scientific research. There are very few opportunities for randomized control experiments in a changing, competitive market. Yet, change and competition make testing a... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; Management; Decision Making

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12 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

publication outputs also works against tenured professors, who typically spend more time on longer lead-time projects, such as writing books or advising policymakers. The Harvard team looked instead at... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Education

14 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Blockbuster! Why Star Power Works

that actual data on how markets are evolving tell a much different story than what Anderson predicted. As demand shifts from offline retailers with limited shelf space to online channels with much larger assortments, the sales... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Entertainment & Recreation

August 2021
Supplement

Dirk Nowitzki: Changing the Game

By: Boris Groysberg

NBA Superstar Dirk Nowitzki was unsure whether the 2018–2019 season would be his last as an NBA player. He had not faced such uncertainty since 1998, when he had navigated a difficult decision regarding the timing of his move to the NBA. He also did not know what he... View Details

Keywords: Career Decisions; Career Journey; ＂Sports Organizations,; Mentoring; Retirement; Sports; Performance; Training; Personal Development and Career; Decision Making; Talent and Talent Management; Sports Industry; United States

05 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance

Many of us are familiar with the gentle punishment known as "time-out," in which misbehaving children must sit quietly for a few minutes, calm down, and reflect on their actions. New research suggests that grown-ups ought to take routine... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

July 2007
Case

Kristen's Cookie Company (A) (Abridged)

By: Roger E. Bohn and Janice H. Hammond

The student is starting his or her own business, baking make-to-order cookies. Basic times of each operation are laid out and the student is asked to determine the consequences for the operating system. Serves as an exercise and review of concepts such as capacity,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; SWOT Analysis; Operations; Outcome or Result; Performance Capacity

August 2021
Case

Yummy: Delivering Value to Venezuela

By: Ayelet Israeli, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Carla Larangeira

By June 2021, Yummy had become Venezuela’s first and largest food delivery app and last-mile logistics company. In Caracas, the nation’s capital, Yummy held a 55% market share, while operations in other cities had already started to take place, including in three of... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Health Pandemics; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion

2011
Working Paper

What Do CEOs Do?

By: Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun

We develop a methodology to collect and analyze data on CEOs' time use. The idea-sketched out in a simple theoretical set-up-is that CEO time is a scarce resource and its allocation can help us identify the firm's priorities as well as the presence of governance... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Employee Relationship Management; Managerial Roles; Time Management; Performance Productivity; Italy

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15 May 2013
Research & Ideas

From McRibs to Maseratis: The Power of Scarcity Marketing

access to our favorite things will make us keep appreciating them); Buy Time (focusing on time over money yields wiser purchases); Pay Now, Consume Later (delayed consumption... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael I. Norton

23 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings

Putting together the money for everything from a short-term emergency to retirement is hard enough, a challenge that low- and moderate-income families endure every day. Yet as HBS professor Peter Tufano... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

Forthcoming
Book

Blockchain Forensics and Crypto-Related Cybercrimes

By: Lin William Cong, Kim Grauer, Daniel Rabetti and Henry Updegrave

This handbook provides an overview of various criminal activities related to cryptocurrencies, including investment scams, Ponzi schemes, rug pulls, ransomware attacks, money laundering, and darknet markets. We discuss the need for user protection and education,... View Details

Keywords: Cyberattacks; Blockchain; Network; Cryptocurrency; Crime and Corruption; Cybersecurity; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Law Enforcement; Technology Adoption

SSRN

Forthcoming
Article

The Imperfect Intermediation of Money-Like Assets

By: Jeremy C. Stein and Jonathan Wallen

We study supply-and-demand effects in the U.S. Treasury bill market by comparing the returns on T-bills to the administered policy rate on the Federal Reserve’s reverse repurchase (RRP) facility. In spite of the arguably more money-like properties of an investment in... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Demand and Consumers; Price

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28 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

How Workplace Wellness Programs Can Give Employees the Energy Boost They Need

While companies may tout their wellness programs as a way of investing in their employees’ well-being, many are overly focused on reducing healthcare costs, so they tend to offer step challenges and gym discounts that workers don’t have... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson

2021
Article

Leisure Beliefs and the Subjective Well-being of Nations

By: Lucia Macchia and A.V. Whillans

Here, we construct a data set of 79 countries (N = 220,000) and explore whether differences in the prioritization of time (leisure) vs. money (work) explain cross-country differences in happiness. Consistent with our predictions, countries whose citizens value leisure... View Details

Keywords: Leisure; Work; Subjective Well-being; Public Policy; Employment; Happiness; Governance; Policy

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