Publications

June 2020
Case

MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe? (Abridged)

By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble

This is an abridged version of “MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?” HBS Case No. 416-004. Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Service Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

May 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Case

Prudential Securities

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Amanda Cowen

Prudential Insurance Co. attempted to diversify into financial services by building an investment banking franchise. Prudential's initial foray into the industry was its acquisition of The Bache Group in 1982. In 2000, the company decided to exit investment banking.... View Details

Keywords: Investment Banking; Corporate Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Diversification; Mergers and Acquisitions; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry

2024
Working Paper

Public Debt and Investment Under Political Competition: Evidence from Toxic Loans

By: Julien Sauvagnat and Boris Vallée

We examine how political considerations shape local government responses to a substantial rise in indebtedness. We use the delayed yet sharp deterioration of “toxic” loans held by French municipalities as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically investigate such... View Details

Keywords: Public Debt; Public Investments; Political Contestation; Toxic Loans; Borrowing and Debt; Investment; Public Sector; Government and Politics; Local Range; Financing and Loans

Read Now

April 2009 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Sanctuary Soft: International Expansion Strategies

By: Boris Groysberg, Geoff Marietta, Tim Marshall and Adam Hartley

Sanctuary Soft CEO Elizabeth Smalley faced increasing pressure from her primary investor to expand operations internationally. If successful, the expansion could enlarge Sanctuary’s customer base and enable the firm to better serve existing clients’ overseas offices.... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Labor; Laws and Statutes; Market Entry and Exit; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; Banking Industry; China; India; Germany; United Kingdom; United States

January 2025 (Revised February 2025)
Technical Note

Skills-First Talent Management Onboarding, Development, and Performance Management

By: Boris Groysberg, James Barnett, Robin Abrahams and Katherine Connolly Baden

The second in a series of notes on how organizations manage skills-first talent-management chains, covering onboarding, development, and performance management. Onboarding included the practices, programs, and policies used by an organization to facilitate new employee... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employee Relationship Management; Management Systems; Performance; Personal Development and Career

March 2011
Article

The New Path to the C-Suite

By: Boris Groysberg, L. Kevin Kelly and Bryan MacDonald

Job requirements at the top of corporations have changed. Companies have come to expect much more from their C-level executives, who need new and different skills to deal with today's business realities. Exactly what abilities do firms want in their leaders—now and in... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Leadership; Management Skills; Personal Development and Career

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August 2017
Article

Catering to Investors Through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity

By: Claire Célérier and Boris Vallée

This paper investigates the rationale for issuing complex securities to retail investors. We focus on a large market of investment products targeted exclusively at households: retail-structured products in Europe. We hypothesize that banks strategically use product... View Details

Keywords: Financial Complexity; Catering; Shrouding; Reaching For Yield; Investment

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01 Sep 2010
News

Faculty Books

Talent and the Portability of Performance by Boris Groysberg (Princeton University Press) Many firms try to buy star performers by luring them... View Details

Keywords: Retail Trade; Water Transportation; Transportation

2016
Working Paper

What Factors Drive Director Perceptions of Their Board's Effectiveness?

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Richard Ellis Crum

We use a survey of directors to collect data on their ratings of board effectiveness as well as board internal dynamics and key processes. Controlling for many of the governance metrics examined by prior research, we find that directors’ ratings of their boards’... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Corporate Governance; Performance Effectiveness; Perception; Risk Management

SSRN

06 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: February 6, 2018

workers; and the production of knowledge, including the idea of the economy, among other topics. Together, the essays suggest emerging themes in the field: a fascination with capitalism as it is made by political authority, how it is... View Details

May – June 2011
Article

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How High Status Individuals Decrease Group Effectiveness

By: Boris Groysberg, Jeffrey T. Polzer and Hillary Anger Elfenbein

Can groups become effective simply by assembling high status individual performers? Though an affirmative answer may seem straightforward on the surface, this answer becomes more complicated when group members benefit from collaborating on interdependent tasks.... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Equity; Theory; Human Resources; Integration; Body of Literature; Performance Effectiveness; Status and Position; Experience and Expertise

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