Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,654)
- Faculty Publications (501)
- September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
RightHand Robotics: Choosing the First Market
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Stacy Straaberg
In early 2015, RightHand Robotics’s (RHR) leadership faced several decisions in commercializing the startup’s robotic picking solution. RHR’s central product was the RightPick integrated robotic picking system which featured a robotic arm, a three-fingered robotic hand... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
DexAI
By: Jo Tango and Christina Wallace
During a challenging fundraising environment, the DexAI founders received two term sheets with nearly identical economic terms but very different legal ones. The entrepreneurs had to navigate: representations and warranties (their personal guarantees that the company's... View Details
- July 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Raymond Jefferson: Trial by Fire
By: Anthony Mayo and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In the spring of 2021, Raymond (Ray) Jefferson applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations were used to force him to resign from his prior U.S. government position as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans’... View Details
- June 2023
- Technical Note
Enhancing Your Contribution to Group Learning in Marketing
By: Jill Avery
How to enhance your contribution to group learning in RC Marketing. Includes information on the learning contract in a case class and the respective roles of instructor and students, how to analyze a marketing case, how to participate in a marketing case discussion,... View Details
Keywords: Marketing
- June 12, 2023
- Article
The Limits of Capacity Building for Investment Contract Negotiations
By: Karl P. Sauvant, Vanessa Sze Wai Tsang and Louis T. Wells
Developing countries must negotiate the best possible investment contracts with foreign investors at the outset. Donor organizations regularly push for “capacity building” to create technical expertise for negotiations within host country governments. But building and... View Details
- April 2023
- Case
Drive Capital: A New Road for Venture
By: Paul A. Gompers and Alicia Dadlani
Founded by two former Sequoia Capital partners, Columbus-Ohio-based Drive Capital’s mission was to build a world-class venture capital firm in the middle of the U.S., an area historically overlooked by VCs. Drive faced early challenges of attracting investors, sourcing... View Details
- Spring 2023
- Article
Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field
By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin
This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Akamai Technologies: Expanding the Talent Pipeline
By: Christopher Stanton, Lynda M. Applegate, Allison Ciechanover, Emily Grandjean and Sophie Beck
In 2022, senior executives of Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technologies met to consider whether and how to scale a successful technical training program. The program, Akamai Technical Academy (ATA), was launched in 2016 to address a key challenge at Akamai and in the... View Details
- January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
OhmConnect: Energizing the Future
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details
Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe
- December 2022
- Article
Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market
By: Yanhui Wu and Feng Zhu
A growing number of people today are participating in the gig economy, working as independent contractors on short-term projects. We study the effects of competition on gig workers' effort and creativity on a Chinese novel-writing platform. Authors produce and sell... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans
By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim
Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details
- October 2022
- Case
Sustainable Finance at Itau BBA
By: George Serafeim, Maria Loumioti and Benjamin Maletta
As of August 2022, the Itau BBA had structured dozens of sustainability linked bonds, which made future interest payments a function of the borrower meeting a target for a sustainability metric, and had solidified its reputation as a pioneer of sustainable finance in... View Details
Keywords: Sustainable Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Environmental Sustainability; Growth Strategy; Debt Contracting; Performance Metrics; Risk Assessment; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Financial Instruments; Risk Management; Debt Securities; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Latin America
- October 2022
- Case
Colette Phillips and GetKonnected!: Creating Inclusive Ecosystems
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Amy Chiu and Joyce Kim
Colette Phillips’ marketing firm had just won the City of Boston’s 2nd largest contract in history to a Black-owned company. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Get Konnected!, the networking organization for people of color that she founded 15 years earlier and led to... View Details
Keywords: Diversity; Ecosystem; Inclusion; People Of Color; Network; Racial Bias; Gender Bias; Entrepreneurial Ecosystem; Entrepreneur; Change; Change Barriers; Change Leadership; Community; Innovation; Pandemic; Impact; Systemic Racism; Minority-owned Businesses; Social and Collaborative Networks; Equity; Race; Small Business; Prejudice and Bias; Boston
- 2022
- Other Unpublished Work
Got 'Critical Minerals'? Hooray! But Be Careful
By: Louis T. Wells
When a country has “critical minerals,” certain issues require special attention in the country’s mining legislation or while negotiating contracts with potential mining investors. As well, to obtain maximum benefit the government should prepare for negotiations with... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Plan
Pacesetters
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 322-019. City Sealcoating CEO Keith Chaney had just publicly called out the Boston Chamber of Commerce for their slow progress on their supplier diversity program, Pacesetters. Established in 2018 by regional business leaders,... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Can Goodr Fight Food Insecurity at Scale?
By: Daniel Isenberg and William R. Kerr
Jasmine Crowe founded Goodr to redirect food waste to people in need. Now a profitable enterprise, she’s searching for Series A funding and encountering pushback. Scaling and contract concerns are also at the forefront of her mind, but so are her values. Feeding... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Sunōmi Switchel: Time to Switch?
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Shani Carter McKinney and Alexandra Horvitz
Nicole Blank has bootstrapped her functional beverage company, Sunōmi Switchel, to contracts with leading grocery retailers. She is now faced with a series of choices for if and how to continue to grow the business. View Details
- March 2022 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Moksha Data: Delivering Insights for Public Service
By: Ashish Nanda and Zack Kurtovich
Moksha Data, a boutique consulting firm specializing in public sector work, started in January 2017 with a handshake between friends and a shared commitment to the principles of egalitarianism, ownership, and collaboration. The Houston-based firm had built momentum... View Details
Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Professional Service Firm; Strategy Formulation; Data; Data As A Service; Government Contracting; Consulting; Consulting Firms; Consulting Services; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Analytics and Data Science; Growth and Development; Strategy; Consulting Industry; Texas
- Article
Policies to Influence Perceptions about COVID-19 Risk: The Case of Maps
By: Claudia Engel, Jonathan Rodden and Marco Tabellini
Choropleth disease maps have become an important tool for informing the public about the risks posed by COVID-19. In a survey conducted in the U.S. state of Georgia in June 2020, we randomly assigned respondents to view either of two maps. The first one reported... View Details
- January 2022
- Case
Somatus: Value-Based Kidney Care (A)
By: Ariel D. Stern, Robert S. Huckman and Sarah Mehta
When Dr. Ikenna Okezie founded Somatus, a value-based kidney care provider, his goal had been nothing short of transforming kidney care delivery in the United States. Rather than relying on dialysis, a costly and intensive treatment for late-stage kidney disease, the... View Details