Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,193)
- Faculty Publications (136)
- September 2021
- Case
Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance
By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
The two vignettes within “Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance” (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms (“PSFs”). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to... View Details
Keywords: Consulting Firms; Professional Services; Board Of Directors; Professional Service; Global Firm; Executive Leadership; Globalized Firms and Management; Private Equity; Governing and Advisory Boards; Global Strategy; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Leadership Development; Leading Change; Emerging Markets; Strategic Planning; Partners and Partnerships; Service Industry; United States; India
- September 2021 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Serving Bud Moore (A)
By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti
In only his third year at a Leading Strategy Consulting Firm (LSC), Gregory Davis has been assigned to a select group tasked with advising General Motors (GM), one of the largest companies in the world by revenue, on how to reorganize their entire North American... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised June 2023)
- Supplement
Serving Bud Moore (B)
By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti
In only his third year at a Leading Strategy Consulting firm (LSC), Gregory Davis has been assigned to a select group tasked with advising General Motors (GM), one of the largest companies in the world by revenue, on how to reorganize their entire North American... View Details
- 2021
- Book
Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael Tushman
Why do successful firms find it so difficult to adapt in the face of change—to innovate? In the past ten years, the importance of this question has increased as more industries and firms confront disruptive change. The pandemic has accelerated this crisis, collapsing... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
ALDDN: Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria
By: Meg Rithmire and Debora L. Spar
In 2020, Ndidi Nwuneli, founder and CEO of Sahel Consulting in Nigeria, faced a thorny set of problems. Her firm partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a large project to develop the local dairy industry as a way to facilitate equitable growth and... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Riverstone
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
In 2020, Luke Minion and the leadership team at Riverstone, a hog producer founded in 2013 in Shandong, China, were evaluating Riverstone’s strategy as it rebounded from outbreaks of African Swine Fever (ASF) in two of its three farm complexes. Riverstone was a joint... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Hannah Riley-Bowles and Michael Norris
In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, faced the decision of the best path forward to grow her small company. Should she build more and better... View Details
- March–April 2020
- Article
What's Really Holding Women Back? It's Not What Most People Think
By: R. Ely and Irene Padavic
Ask people to explain why women remain so dramatically underrepresented in the senior ranks of most companies, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women's devotion to family... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay
By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Fixing Facebook: Fake News, Privacy, and Platform Governance
By: David Yoffie and Daniel Fisher
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook based on the idea that connecting people was a fundamentally good thing—and a way to turn a handsome profit. But from the beginning, Facebook received criticism both for how it handled user privacy and how it curated user-generated... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
rTSR: Properties, Determinants, and Consequences of Benchmark Choice
By: Paul Ma, Jee-Eun Shin and Charles C.Y. Wang
We develop a measurement-error framework for assessing the quality of relative-performance metrics designed to filter out the systematic component of performance and analyze relative total shareholder return (rTSR)—the predominant metric market participants use to... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
CrossBoundary Energy
By: John Macomber
Almost 500 million people are without electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Governments and public utilities are challenged to bring generation and distribution to most of them. Considerable promise exists in “off-grid” or “mini-grid” technologies, notably using renewable... View Details
Keywords: Energy Investing; Economic Development; Renewable Energy; Business Growth and Maturation; Developing Countries and Economies; Project Finance; Emerging Markets; Industry Structures; Infrastructure; Segmentation; Private Equity; Decision Choices and Conditions; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Africa; Tanzania; Ghana
- October 2018
- Case
Recipe for Success: Growth and Evolution at Cafe Cupcake
By: Anthony Mayo and Heather Beckham
Café Cupcake (CC) is a fast-casual restaurant chain that offers artisan cupcakes and light fare throughout the southeastern United States and Texas. This case chronicles the growth and evolution of Café Cupcake. It also considers the specific human resource challenges... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds
By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb
After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details
- September 2018
- Case
Verisk: Trailblazing in the Big Data Jungle
By: Andrew Wasynczuk, Francesca Gino and Karim Sameh
This case revolves around Verisk Analytics' initiatives to drive innovation throughout the firm's many business verticals. Verisk, originally named ISO, started life as an insurance rating agency in the early 1970s, acting as an intermediary between insurance companies... View Details
Keywords: Verisk; Argus; Wood Mackenzie; Insurance; Energy; Analytics; Data; Big Data; Acquisitions; Acquisition Strategy; Innovation; Organic Growth; Innovation Strategy; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Analytics and Data Science; Consulting Industry; Consulting Industry; Consulting Industry; United States; United Kingdom; New York (state, US); England
- August 2018
- Case
Performance Improvement Consulting and Hi-R-Me: Making Sales Calls
By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Mattson
This case study focuses on a professional services firm (“Performance Improvement Consulting”) and its sales calls on Hi-R-Me, a potential client. The case is supplemented by videos showing the initial contact call, a follow-up discovery call, and a face-to-face... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised October 2020)
- Supplement
La Ribera Health Department (B): Epilogue
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Emer Moloney and Daniela Beyersdorfer
The La Ribera case studies depict an innovative low cost/high quality privately financed hospital model struggling to achieve alignment with the Six Factors. It is reimbursed by the public sector in a Spanish environment whose Consumers, Structure, and Public Policy... View Details
- February 2018
- Teaching Note
Advika Consulting Services: Challenges and Opportunities in Managing Human Capital
By: Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino, Julia J. Lee, Bradley R. Staats, Andrew Wasynczuk and John Beshears
Teaching Note for HBS No. 916-033. View Details
Keywords: Consulting Firms
- 2019
- Working Paper
Compensation Consultants and the Level, Composition, and Complexity of CEO Pay
By: Kevin J. Murphy and Tatiana Sandino
We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this... View Details
- August 2017 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Ryan Greene at Rainier Wearables
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Christopher Payton
This case provides a platform for discussing mental health and depression in entrepreneurship. Why do entrepreneurs have more mental health issues than other professions? What can an entrepreneur do if they face a situation where their mental well-being is being... View Details