Publications

January 2005 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Gobi Partners: October 2004

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon

The general partners of Gobi Partners, a venture fund located in Shanghai, are trying to decide the best way to raise money for their first fund. Their strategy of investing in early-stage digital media companies in China was well-received by strategic investors--IBM... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Investment; Goals and Objectives; Emerging Markets; Problems and Challenges; Conflict Management; Shanghai

2003
Working Paper

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Managerial Roles; Jobs and Positions; United States

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November 2006
Article

The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies

By: Raghuram G. Rajan and Julie Wulf

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Change; Business Ventures; Compensation and Benefits; Rank and Position; Wages; Motivation and Incentives; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Jobs and Positions; United States

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December 1997
Case

American Cyanamid (A) & (B) (Combined)

American Home Products' (AHP) $9 billion hostile takeover of American Cyanamid (Cyanamid) was the largest merger-and-acquistion transaction in 1994, and made AHP the fourth largest pharmaceutical firm in the United States. At the time of AHP's offer, Cyanamid had... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Conflict and Resolution; Pharmaceutical Industry

June 1994 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Commercializing Technology: Imaginative Understanding of User Needs

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

The transformation of technology into commercially successful products is a process fraught with risk and uncertainty, and increasing pressure on time to market is exacerbating the difficulties. This note first describes a study conducted by Hewlett-Packard to improve... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Communication Strategy; Customers; Design; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Product Development; Research; Risk and Uncertainty; Commercialization; Technology Adoption

26 Oct 2016
News

Case Study: How Much Should a New CEO Shake Things Up?

31 Jul 2024
Video

Ed Freeman: Can capitalism adapt to serve a changing world?

12 Feb 2018
Research & Ideas

Customers at the Back of the Line Are Anxious—Can You Keep Them from Leaving?

customers, and how operational choices affect customer behaviors and firm performance. We all spend a surprising amount of time waiting our turn; by one estimate, Americans wait in line 37 billion hours a year—118 hours for every person.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service

16 Feb 2023
HBS Case

ESG Activists Met the Moment at ExxonMobil, But Did They Succeed?

The impact-investment hedge fund Engine No. 1 made a big splash in May 2021 when it managed to get three nominees elected to the ExxonMobil board of directors. It was an open effort to prod the oil giant toward renewable energy and test whether activist investing could... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Financial Services

25 Aug 2014
HBS Case

Starbucks Reinvented

Administration. "As a brand, leadership, and entrepreneurship scholar, I've been dogging Starbucks for a long time." On a 1995 trip to Seattle, Koehn visited a Starbucks store for the first time and was struck by what she saw... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Food & Beverage

Profile

Harshini Chengareddty

only child, but the time I got to spend running around exploring with my friends, making s’mores by the campfire, and staying up late telling stories was a highlight of my childhood. What is the best thing about your home town? All the... View Details

20 Aug 2015
Blog Post

AVICII: REFLECTIONS ON MANAGING THE BRAND OF A GLOBAL SUPERSTAR

When I began reflecting on my summer working for At Night Management / PRMD Music, I was reminded of the “10 Pictures” exercise I completed during the first month of my time at HBS. In the exercise, we were instructed to bring ten... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment / Media / Sports

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

[This is the sixth installment in a monthly series on management issues in the time of COVID-19.] We recently asked 600 CEOs: What is keeping you awake at night during this global pandemic? A major and multifaceted concern that emerged is... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

What Would It Take to Unlock Microfinance's Full Potential?

timing of repayment obligations. The standard microfinance contract has very little discretion in terms of when you repay your loan, so Natalia and her collaborators did one of the earliest studies to look at what happens if we relax that... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint; Financial Services

06 Feb 2008
Working Paper Summaries

On Best-Response Bidding in GSP Auctions

Keywords: by Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Benjamin G. Edelman, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna R. Karlin, Claire Mathieu & Michael Schwarz; Technology

TeachingInterests

Field Global Immersion

By: Archie L. Jones

The FIELD Global Immersion (FGI) is a semester-long first-year (RC) MBA course. The course is a capstone of sorts, and it requires students to build on learnings from their first-year courses and apply them to real-world business problems. At the beginning of... View Details

Research Summary

My broad research interests include leadership, leader development, leading change, and organizational failures. However, my current focus for the past several years has been around LEADER DEVELOPMENT: How do leaders develop? How can we assist in the development of... View Details

March 2022
Case

GrowSari (A): Design for the Last Mile Customer

By: Brian Trelstad, Cam Carag and Michi Ferreol

Reymund (ER) Rollan and Shivapratim (Shiv) Choudhury, founders of the digital technology platform GrowSari, were at a crossroads. The feedback from their initial product roll-out were not what they had expected, and they needed to decide how to proceed. The pair,... View Details

Keywords: Fast Moving Consumer Goods; Product Launch; Information Technology; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Platforms; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Philippines

April 2021
Case

Glass-Shattering Leaders: Ilene H. Lang

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Ilene Lang started her career in technology at a time when the tech sector was new and women had only recently entered the workplace in large numbers. Over the next thirty years, she built a career spanning large and small tech companies, leading global teams and... View Details

Keywords: Glass Ceiling; Leadership; Gender; Power and Influence