Publications

November 2012 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Talking Strategy at Greighton Partners

By: Boris Groysberg and Kerry Herman

Since its inception, London-based private equity firm Greighton Partners had managed over $15 billion in investor capital. The firm employed about 150 professionals around the globe and had completed over 175 company acquisitions since its founding. Started with a... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Asia; Europe

Every new firm selects a legal form. Organizing as a corporation, a limited company, or a partnership shapes the firm’s access to capital markets, its governance arrangements and tax liabilities, and its treatment in bankruptcy. We use multinomial choice models... View Details

April–June 2012
Article

Hybrid Organizations: The Next Chapter in Sustainable Business

By: Nardia Haigh and Andrew J. Hoffman

In this article, we describe how hybrid organizations are developing business models that are competitive and create positive social and environmental change. We discuss the distinctive characteristics of the hybrid business model, both conceptually and in practice. We... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Mission and Purpose; Environmental Management; Social Enterprise

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September 2010
Case

Quanta Research Institute: Rainforest or Hothouse?

By: Willy C. Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Ho Howard Yu

Barry Lam, the CEO and founder of Quanta Computer (the largest notebook computer manufacturer worldwide), has recognized for many years that he had to transform the company to decrease its dependence on producing commodity hardware for other global brands and move the... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Research and Development; Computer Industry; Taiwan

February 2018
Case

Qualtrics (A)

By: Doug J. Chung and James M. Lattin

Qualtrics was an online survey research platform and since the beginning, the company had relied entirely on an inside sales model—sales done remotely without face-to-face contact with clients. The low-cost inside sales model, along with an emphasis on a strong sales... View Details

Keywords: Sales Strategy; Inside Sales Model; Sales; Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation

2018
Chapter

The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin

Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Learning; Safety; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency

October 2010 (Revised November 2010)
Supplement

DLA Piper and Christie's International (B)

By: Robert G. Eccles and Dilyana Karadzhova

Nigel Knowles, joint CEO and Managing Partner of international law firm DLA Piper, responds to Christie's complaint that the relationship between the two organizations has major shortcomings and needs to be improved or will otherwise be terminated. A number of actions... View Details

Keywords: Law; Leadership Style; Organizations; Relationships; Trust; Attorney and Client Relationships; Legal Services Industry

2010
Working Paper

Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages

By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao

This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multi-location firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Industry Clusters; Research and Development; Competitive Advantage; Semiconductor Industry

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06 Oct 2016
HBS Seminar

John Van Reenen, MIT Sloan School of Management

13 Aug 2020
Blog Post

The U.S. Job Search for International Students

given student’s unique career vision, they are going to utilize different approaches to the job search, and a lot of this revolves around timing. Some companies, typically the large MBA employers – such as large consulting, financial services, and tech View Details

Research Summary

Institutions and Innovation

Henry Chesbrough's research interests lie at the intersection of organizations and innovation. His research to date falls into two tracks.

The first track examines the effect of the firm's institutional environment upon its ability to respond to innovation... View Details

04 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Need to Solve a Problem? Take a Break From Collaborating

firms do that already. "These results seem to make a lot of sense to organizations like The Boston Consulting Group or McKinsey & Company, which deliberately use very different structures for... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Video Game; Web Services

2008
Chapter

Business Archives and Overcoming Survivor Bias

By: G. Jones

Among the most longstanding criticisms of business history as an academic discipline is the bias caused towards studying successful firms rather than failures, and the related use of longevity as a major criterion for success. The grand narratives of business history... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business History; Archives; Failure; Success

June 1996
Case

Black Magic and the America's Cup: The Victory

Chronicles New Zealand's participation in successive America's Cup regattas, culminating in its decisive 1995 victory. Allows for discussion of how an organization from a small nation can beat the world's best in a technologically, organizationally, and managerially... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Sports; Business and Government Relations; Sports Industry; New Zealand

January 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

National Logistics Management: Founder Decisions

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins

Scott Taylor, CEO & founder of NLM, is a serial entrepreneur faced with an important decision. As his industry consolidates, he knows that his company must grow quickly, yet he believes he has reached the limit of what organic growth can achieve. Should he accept the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Supply and Industry; Supply Chain

Research Summary

Using IT to Leverage Human Resources in Services

Discussion of the Internet and IT to date concentrates on how they will replace, rather than support, human service providers. While this approach is appropriate for a few firms, it is inadequate for many. The Internet and other information technology... View Details

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

regulation. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55884 April 2019 Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence By: Blasco,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Bridging Present Capabilities and Future Success: Organizational Ambidexterity

IESE presentation - 21 September 2014 - Madrid

Large, incumbent firms are often handicapped by their inability to explore new opportunities. Great firms, on the other hand, are able to overcome the tension between present and future success by exploiting and... View Details

Article

Specialization and Success: Evidence from Venture Capital

By: Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner and Josh Lerner

This paper examines how organizational structure affects behavior and outcomes, studying the performance of different types of venture capital organizations. We find a strong positive relationship between the degree of specialization by individual venture capitalists... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Venture Capital; Organizational Structure; Outcome or Result; Performance Effectiveness; Behavior; Financial Services Industry