Publications
Publications
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(15,560)
- Faculty Publications (4,834)
- June 2025
- Case
From Single Stock to Diversified Portfolio: Mastercard Foundation's $42 Billion Asset Management Launch
By: Luis M. Viceira and Justin Cohen
This case examines the decision of the Mastercard Foundation in 2023 to divest its holdings of Mastercard stock, its only asset since inception in 2006 and worth $42 billion in early 2024, and to invest the proceeds in a newly designed diversified portfolio. To this... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Konko AI: Automating Work with AI Agents
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Liang Wu
In January 2025, Jean Marc Goguikian and Michael Haddad, co-founders of Konko AI, faced a critical strategic decision. After the company’s developer platform for private large language models (LLMs) struggled to gain traction, they had pivoted to building AI sales... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Redefining the Edge: Jahez’s Strategic Pivot in Saudi Arabia’s Food Delivery Battle
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Ahmed Dahawy
Jahez made its mark in Saudi Arabia’s food delivery market by serving customers willing to pay more for reliable, high-quality service—a segment largely overlooked by other platforms. As the company grew, it expanded into the mass market and developed a network of... View Details
- June 2025
- Simulation
Teleko: Managing Customer Retention
By: Eva Ascarza
Supplement to the A Case, No. 523-005. This interactive tool is designed to enhance engagement with the Managing Customer Retention at Teleko case by allowing the student to explore and analyze key data from the experiment run in July (“July... View Details
- Summer 2025
- Article
Does Marriage Have a Future?
By: Debora L. Spar and Aryanna Garber
The article explores how technology is reshaping the institution of marriage, highlighting significant changes in societal norms and personal relationships. It discusses the decline in marriage rates in industrialized nations, particularly Japan and the United States,... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Transforming a Titan (A)
By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene
Dimitri Papalexopoulos, fourth-generation CEO of TITAN Cement, must decide whether to keep leading the 120-year-old, family-controlled firm or hand the reins to new management. Over 26 years he has turned TITAN from a domestic player into an internationally diversified... View Details
Keywords: Digitalization; Digital; Family Firms; Succession Planning; CEO Succession; CEO Role; Decarbonization; Resilience; Innovation; Organizational Transformations; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation; Family Business; Family Ownership; Climate Change; Transformation; Crisis Management; Leadership; Management Succession; Growth Management; Industrial Products Industry; Construction Industry; Greece; Europe; United States
- June 2025
- Supplement
Transforming a Titan (B)
By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene
After a global search the board appoints Marcel Cobuz—ex-LafargeHolcim executive with deep innovation experience—as TITAN’s first non-family CEO. Cobuz co-creates a four-pillar roadmap: sharpen the core cement portfolio, accelerate low-carbon products and aggregates,... View Details
- June 2025
- Supplement
Transforming a Titan (C)
By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene
Three years in his tenure as CEO, Cobuz must decide whether to launch a more than €500 million carbon-capture-and-storage facility. The project—Europe’s largest planned CCS installation—would cut almost 20% of group emissions and unlock a €234 million EU Innovation... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
AI Wars in 2025
By: Andy Wu and Anna Yang
In June 2025, Google leaders in Mountain View, CA convened after its parent company Alphabet shed a quarter-trillion in market capitalization in a matter of months. The immediate spark—the quiet revelation that Google searches had dipped for the first time in 20... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Scale AI Scales Up
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
Scale AI, the data labeling and AI infrastructure company, had grown rapidly since it was founded in 2016; however, as Scale’s generative AI business was taking off, Alexandr Wang, Scale’s founder and CEO, became concerned that Scale was slowing down. Wang and the... View Details
Keywords: Technology And Innovation Management; Entrepreneur; Managing Growth; Hiring; Generative Ai; Data Labeling; Scale; AI and Machine Learning; Entrepreneurship; Talent and Talent Management; Growth Management; Leadership; Organizational Culture; Business Startups; Selection and Staffing; Technology Industry; United States
- June 2025
- Teaching Note
To Found or to Cofound? That Is the Question
By: Christina Wallace and Stacy Straaberg
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 824-034. Entrepreneurs often struggle with the question of whether to found solo or alongside one or more cofounders. This case is comprised of three vignettes detailing common founding scenarios: the first-time technical founder; the... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Accounting for OpenAI at Microsoft
By: Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli, Nicole Zelazko and Michael Norris
In early 2025, Microsoft was evaluating the impact of its $14 billion investment in OpenAI. As OpenAI’s computing needs expanded, Microsoft positioned Azure as the exclusive provider for training and inference of their large language models. Despite the scale of the... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Small Business Innovation Applied to National Needs
By: Kyle Myers, Lauren Lanahan and Evan E. Johnson
Small businesses have long supplied a disproportionate share of major innovations in the United States. We review a centerpiece policy on this topic: the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. We trace its legislative history and summarize program... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
TagHive: Edtech Pricing and Distributor Decisions
By: Isamar Troncoso, Frank V. Cespedes and Stacy Straaberg
Education technology (edtech) company TagHive, founded in 2017, used a direct sales team and third-party distributors to sell its Class Saathi hardware and software solution to 300 clients, mainly primary and secondary schools in India. The product aimed to improve... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Social Marketing; Information Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Adoption; Teaching; Price; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Growth and Development; Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Distribution Channels; Sales; Reputation; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; India; South Korea
- May–June 2025
- Article
Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
Most online sales worldwide take place in marketplaces that connect sellers and buyers. The presence of numerous third-party sellers leads to a proliferation of listings for each product, making it difficult for customers to choose between the available options. Online... View Details
- May–June 2025
- Article
Balancing Digital Safety and Innovation
By: Tomomichi Amano and Tomomi Tanaka
Designers of consumer-facing digital products have tended to focus on novelty and speed (“move fast and break things”). They’ve spent more effort on innovating than on anticipating how customers—and bad actors—might engage with products. But as digital products become... View Details
- 2025
- Chapter
Critical Choices in Designing a Board: An Overview
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Lynn S. Paine
Board design is never one-size-fits-all. It’s a series of critical choices—each with trade-offs—that can define how a board functions, governs, and delivers strategic value.
That’s the premise of "Critical Choices in Designing a Board," a... View Details
Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards
- June 2025
- Article
Ideation with Generative AI—In Consumer Research and Beyond
By: Julian De Freitas, G. Nave and Stefano Puntoni
The use of large language models (LLMs) in consumer research is rapidly evolving, with applications including synthetic data generation, data analysis, and more. However, their role in creative ideation—a cornerstone of consumer research—remains underexplored. Drawing... View Details
- June 2025
- Article
Integral Outside: The Financial Curb Market, the Electric Telegraph, and the Politics of Pricing in Second Empire France
Financial markets in nineteenth-century France were far more complex than an analysis of the official Bourse or its state-authorized brokers would suggest. Most financial transactions occurred on an illegal yet tacitly tolerated curb market called the coulisse, which... View Details
- June 2025
- Article
Unregulated Emotional Risks of AI Wellness Apps
By: Julian De Freitas and Glenn Cohen
We propose that AI-driven wellness apps powered by large language models can foster extreme emotional attachments and dependencies akin to human relationships—posing risks like ambiguous loss and dysfunctional dependence—that challenge current regulatory frameworks and... View Details