Publications

12 Aug 2014
First Look

First Look: August 12

http://hbr.org/product/building-a-high-performance-culture-at-idfc/an/114077-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 514-076 Cycle for Survival (A) Katie Kotkins, director of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's (MSKCC) View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

18 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

Wrap-up: Software, Telecom, and Recovery

"We're waiting for the cycle to return." Is it possible VCs didn't learn anything from the dot-com bubble and subsequent crash? Marc Fogassa, a principal at Axiom Venture Partners, said, "The industry has a herd effect—if... View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild & Martha Lagace; Financial Services; Technology; Communications; Telecommunications

January 2009 (Revised January 2011)
Background Note

The Great Moderation, Dead or Alive?

By: Diego A. Comin

The Great Moderation is a significant decline in the volatility of fluctuations in most macroeconomic variables that the United States and other developed and developing economies have experienced at least since the mid-1980s. This case describes the basic facts,... View Details

Keywords: Volatility; Business Cycles; Macroeconomics; United States

10 Jan 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Operations Management

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions to be answered: Can "lean" productions methods improve service industries? How can a company's order management View Details

1994
Comment

Economic Crises: Necessary for Trade Liberalization and Fiscal Reform?

By: K. A. Froot

Keywords: Business Cycles; Financial Crisis; Trade; Government and Politics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

09 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 9, 2018

observational study included all patients undergoing a head CT between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2014 at a large, urban academic ED with over 100,000 visits per year. The primary study outcome was total cycle time, defined as the elapsed... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 1997 (Revised January 1999)
Case

SureCut Shears, Inc.

By: W. Carl Kester

A bank loan officer must determine whether to waive convenants and extend terms on a line of credit granted to SureCut Shears. At issue is whether the inability of SureCut to pay down its line of credit is due to a temporary cyclical downturn or other long-term... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Finance; Performance; Problems and Challenges

02 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

‘Retail Revolution’ Excerpt: The Scale of the Ecommerce Threat

apart. “If this cycle continues, whole retail chains can quickly become full of zombie stores” Taken all together, lower price points, decreased traffic, and smaller baskets means lower sales and margins for brick-and-mortar stores. Given... View Details

Keywords: Re: Rajiv Lal; Retail

February 2018 (Revised June 2018)
Case

Uruguay: Facing the 21st Century

By: Sophus A. Reinert, Michael Chu and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In the fall of 2017, self-made business leader Edgardo Novick pondered his campaign to be elected President of Uruguay, “the Switzerland of Latin America.” Inspired by populist revolts against the status quo observable worldwide, Novick hoped he could ride popular... View Details

Keywords: Uruguay; Edgardo Novick; Business Cycles; Macroeconomics; Geographic Location; Government and Politics; Wealth and Poverty; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Globalization; Pulp and Paper Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Uruguay

04 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

cycles The crisis demonstrates, painfully, the importance of cash. In his famous essay "The Yield from Money Held,” the economist William Hutt described cash in your pocket or on the balance sheet as “a fire engine when there are no... View Details

Keywords: by Frank V. Cespedes

2022
Working Paper

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups

By: Shai Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu

Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even... View Details

Keywords: Startup Labor Market; Flight To Safety; COVID-19; Recession; Business Startups; Human Capital; Business Cycles; Health Pandemics

SSRN

Read Now

April 1996 (Revised November 1996)
Case

Cleveland Turnaround (A, The: Responding to the Crisis (1978-1988)

By: James E. Austin and Andrea L Strimling

Traces the Cleveland community's efforts to move the city from economic, social, and political crisis in the late 1970s into revitalization and progress in the 1980s and 1990s. Special attention is given to the role of business leaders and the public-private... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Business Cycles; Business and Community Relations; Financial Crisis; Cleveland

06 May 2002
Research & Ideas

A Toolkit for Customer Innovation

corrections. The cycle repeats until a satisfactory solution is reached, often requiring many costly and time-consuming iterations. To appreciate the extent of the difficulty, consider product development at BBA (now International Flavors... View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke & Eric Von Hippel

January 2000 (Revised April 2000)
Case

StarMedia: Launching a Latin American Revolution

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust

By the fall of 1999, StarMedia had sprinted to a sizable lead in the race to acquire Latin American Internet users. Its pan-regional, horizontal portal was the first to target Spanish- and Portuguese-language speakers on the Internet, registering 1.2 billion page views... View Details

Keywords: Private Ownership; History; Risk Management; Business Cycles; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Infrastructure; Media; Emerging Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Web; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

February 2023 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Doing Business in New Delhi, India

By: Vikram S Gandhi and Radhika Kak

The case uses the example of Tata Motors to discuss the opportunities and challenges of doing business in India. View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Development Economics; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Economy; Macroeconomics; Business History; India

March 2014
Article

Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence

By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina

Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Banks and Banking; Bonds; Financial Markets; Financing and Loans; Banking Industry

SSRN

Find at Harvard

17 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Sovereign Risk, Currency Risk, and Corporate Balance Sheets

Keywords: by Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger

18 Oct 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Venture Capital’s Disconnect with Clean Tech

sector. This is a big problem when product development cycles and election cycles don't mesh; government funding may be available with one administration and gone with the next. Consider California's Global... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities; Financial Services

Article

Technology Diffusion and Postwar Growth

By: Diego A. Comin and Bart Hobijn

In the aftermath of World War II, the world's economies exhibited very different rates of economic recovery. We provide evidence that those countries that caught up the most with the U.S. in the postwar period are those that saw an acceleration in the speed of adopting... View Details

Keywords: Hardware; Country; Business Cycles; Globalized Economies and Regions; Economic Growth; Welfare or Wellbeing; War; Technology Industry; United States; Japan; Europe