Publications

22 Aug 2020
News

Bluemercury’s Marla Beck on How Covid-19 Is Changing the Beauty Business

“We’ve taken so many good things from them,” Beck tells the podcast. “They have technology infrastructure that we don’t have. They have incredible financial infrastructure. We’ve piggybacked onto some of their relationships with digital... View Details

07 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 7

underlying your strategy and analyze how it's implemented through your business processes and structures. Drawing on decades of research into performance management systems and organization design, Seven Strategy Questions is a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

07 Sep 2021
News

Immelt in the Hot Seat: Episode 2

Illustration by Ket-le / iStock; photo courtesy of Jeff Immelt Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982) Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982) Dan Morrell: In 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, with... View Details

March 2005
Article

Sovereign Debt As a Contingent Claim: A Quantitative Approach

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

We construct a dynamic equilibrium model with contingent service and adverse selection to quantitatively study sovereign debt. In the model, benefits of defaulting are tempered by higher future interest rates. For a wide set of parameters, the only equilibrium is one... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Interest Rates; Balance and Stability; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Mathematical Methods; Management Style; Segmentation; Debt Securities; Banking Industry

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April 2011
Case

Hermitage's Russian Quandary (A)

By: Eric Werker, Ray Fisman and Lauren Weber

In June 2007, the offices of Russian hedge fund Hermitage Capital were raided by Moscow police; in the months that followed, Hermitage founder Bill Browder found himself banned from Russia and fending off efforts to expropriate the fund's Russian assets. This case... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Private Equity; Investment; Law Enforcement; Laws and Statutes; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Business and Government Relations; Financial Services Industry; Moscow

August 2016 (Revised August 2017)
Case

AnswerDash (Abridged)

By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman

It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry

June 2016 (Revised August 2017)
Case

AnswerDash

By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman

It is 2014, and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry

January 2014
Case

Entrepreneurial Finance Lab: Scaling an Innovative Start-up Financing Venture

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

EFL provides credit-scoring services in developing countries using psychometric assessment, but the potential loss of a large customer makes them reconsider their scaling narrative. View Details

Keywords: Finance; Developing Countries; Lending; Psychometrics; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Credit; Developing Countries and Economies; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Africa; Latin America

03 Nov 2003
What Do You Think?

Can Investors Have Too Much Accounting Transparency?

Summing Up Basic conclusions that can be drawn from responses to this month's column are that it may or may not be useful to try to legislate accounting transparency. But such efforts address symptoms, not causes, of behaviors leading to purposely misleading View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Sep 2010
News

Letters to the Editor

graduating MBAs to engage in and influence the key strategic priorities of leading social sector organizations. Although the article cited the generous financial support that HBS and its donor base provides to fellows, it’s also worth... View Details

Keywords: Securities, Commodities, and Other Financial Investments; Securities, Commodities, and Other Financial Investments

01 Mar 2009
News

Buddy, Can You Spare a Trillion

Beijing is America’s largest foreign creditor. But how long will the Chinese continue to finance U.S. deficit spending? Illustration by Stuart Bradford In his new book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, HBS professor... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

29 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 29, 2008

potential: (1) project complexity, (2) cross-functionality, (3) temporary membership, (4) fluid team boundaries and (5) embeddedness in organizational structures. We argue that effective management of these five attributes allows not only... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 1999 (Revised June 2006)
Case

DLJdirect: "Putting Our Reputation Online"

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Gillian Morris

Online broker DLJdirect faced two decisions during the fall of 1999: what customer segments should it target and how much should it spend on marketing? Unlike its competitors, who focused either on day traders or more mainstream investors, DLJdirect differentiated its... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Competitive Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Cost Management; Business Plan; Research and Development; Customers; Budgets and Budgeting; Online Advertising; Internet; Financial Services Industry