Publications
Publications
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(6,223)
- Faculty Publications (1,556)
- December 2024
- Supplement
Northvolt: Building Batteries to Fight Climate Change (B)
The (B) case explores Northvolt’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on November 21, 2024, highlighting the company’s
struggles to scale operations amid a global EV market slowdown and internal production challenges. While the (A) case detailed
Northvolt’s ambitious... View Details
Keywords: Batteries; Electric Vehicles; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Energy; Green Technology; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Investment; Technological Innovation; Risk Management; Failure; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Transportation; Green Technology Industry; Europe; Sweden
- December 2024
- Case
AC Milan
By: Anita Elberse
In April 2024, Giorgio Furlani is nearing the end of his first full season as chief executive officer of Italian soccer club AC Milan. A Harvard Business School Class of 2007 graduate with a finance background, Furlani was appointed by RedBird Capital Partners’ founder... View Details
- December 2024
- Case
Core Innovation Capital: Investing in Fintech for Good
In 2017, Arjan Schütte, founder of Core Innovation Capital, faced a decision on whether to invest in Hugo Insurance, an auto insurance startup. Core, an early-stage social impact VC firm, focused on “fintech for good,” by investing in financial services for low- to... View Details
- December 2024
- Article
Coordinating the Energy Transition: Electrifying Transportation in California and Germany
By: Nicholas Goedeking and Jonas Meckling
California and Germany share ambitious emission reduction targets. Yet California is ahead of Germany in electrifying transportation by several metrics, including the number of public charging stations. We show that variation in the politics of coordination in... View Details
- 2024
- Book
The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal ... And What to Do About It
What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? In this book, I address how we can rekindle the fading light of democratic capitalism as an... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Fyffes International SA
By: David E. Bell, Damien McLoughlin and Tonia Labruyère
Helge Sparsoe, CEO of Fyffes since 2020, had taken the tropical produce importer and distributor back to a path of stable level of profitability since he joined in 2020. He was now thinking about next steps for the business, which mainly traded in bananas. He was... View Details
Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Change Management; Environmental Sustainability; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain; Competition; Price; Value Creation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Switzerland; United Kingdom; Republic of Ireland; Colombia; Guatemala; Costa Rica; Ecuador
- 2024
- Contribution
Work
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Julie L. Rose
This chapter has two aims. First, in light of the continued dominance of market capitalism, one aim of the chapter is to examine contemporary approaches to traditional concerns about the impact of market capitalism on the manner in which work is carried out. By the... View Details
- November 2024
- Teaching Note
Mercado Bitcoin: M&A, IPO, or Series B?
By: Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli and Sabrina Howell
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 825-047. In April 2021, Brazilian cryptocurrency platform Mercado Bitcoin, had to decide how to scale: go public, M&A with a bank, or take a VC big check. In a highly volatile market, Roberto Dagnoni, chairman of the board, viewed the... View Details
Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Decision Making; Going Public; Ownership Stake; Strategic Planning; Venture Capital; Problems and Challenges; Business Cycles; Digital Platforms; Emerging Markets; Market Timing; Expansion; Diversification; Valuation; Value Creation; Investment Funds; Initial Public Offering; Price; Price Bubble; Negotiation Offer; Information Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; Brazil; Latin America
- 2024
- Working Paper
Hidden Risk
By: Daniel Barth, Phillip Monin, Emil Siriwardane and Adi Sunderam
Since 2013, large U.S. hedge fund advisers have been required to report risk exposures in their regulatory filings. Using these data, we first establish that managers’ perceptions of risk contain useful information that is not embedded in fund returns. Investor flows... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Catalysts for Climate Solutions: Corporate Responses to Venture Capital Financing of Climate-tech Startups
By: Shirley Lu, George Serafeim and Simon Xu
We study whether incumbent firms increase their product focus on climate solutions in response to venture capital (VC) financing of climate-tech startups. Using large language models to measure a firm's focus on climate solutions, we find that incumbents in similar... View Details
- November 2024
- Article
Preference Externality Estimators: A Comparison of Border Approaches and IVs
By: Xi Ling, Wesley R. Hartmann and Tomomichi Amano
This paper compares two estimators—the Border Approach and an Instrumental Variable (IV) estimator—using a unified framework where identifying variation arises from “preference externalities,” following the intuition in Waldfogel (2003). We highlight two dimensions in... View Details
- October 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Kering Eyewear
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Dante Roscini and Elena Corsi
In June 2024, Roberto Vedovotto, CEO of Kering Eyewear, prepared to discuss the future of the recently acquired brands LINDBERG, a Danish optical eyewear brand, and Maui Jim, an American sunglasses brand. Vedovotto founded Kering Eyewear in 2014, convincing... View Details
- October 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Lanco Medical Group: Fostering Happiness for Growth
By: Susanna Gallani, Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago and Katherine Sonnefeldt
This case describes how Lanco Medical Group, a fast-growing pharmaceutical distributor serving Latin America, approached the design of their employee benefits and incentives program. After learning about gaps between what leadership believed motivated employees and... View Details
- October 2024
- Module Note
Purpose of the Firm
By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau
Purpose of the Firm (PoF) is a short module designed to explore how, and under what circumstances, business leaders can harness the power of capitalism and markets to “make a difference in the world”—that is, to address a significant societal problem as a commercial... View Details
- 2024
- Other Unpublished Work
A Proposal for the IMF: A New Instrument of International Liquidity Provision for Emerging Markets and Developing Economies
By: Laura Alfaro, Guillermo Calvo, José de Gregorio, Augusto de la Torre, Pablo Guidotti, Enrique Mendoza, Ernesto Talvi, Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Andrés Velasco
This paper addresses a critical flaw in the international financial system: the failure to address the inherent asymmetry between countries that issue reserve currencies and those that do not, leaving the latter vulnerable during systemic liquidity crises. We propose... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Bank Capital and the Growth of Private Credit
By: Sergey Chernenko, Robert Ialenti and David Scharfstein
We show that business development companies (BDCs)—closed-end funds that provide a
significant share of nonbank loans to middle market firms—are very well capitalized according
to bank capital frameworks. They have median risk-based capital ratios of about 36%... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Leadership for Stretch Goals: Inspiring Employees to Achieve the Impossible at Charter Next Generation
By: Ethan Rouen and Elisabeth Powell
In 2023, Kathy Bolhous, CEO of Charter Next Generation (CNG), set out to achieve an ambitious "Moonshot"—increasing profits by $100 million within three years, purely through internal innovations and efficiency gains, without layoffs or new revenue streams. After years... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners: Leading the Energy Transition
By: John Macomber and Maxwell Nii Laryea
A leading global infrastructure fund debates whether and when to become engaged in the electrolysis and distribution of hydrogen, as part of the hydrogen economy and the global transtion to a net zero energy world. The proposed billion dollar project consists of ... View Details
Keywords: Energy; Infrastructure; Energy Generation; Renewable Energy; Project Finance; Energy Industry; Spain
- September 2024
- Case
InfraCredit and the Project Inception Facility
By: John Macomber, Namrata Arora and Maagatha Kalavadakken
Around the world, large infrastructure projects are frequently stymied by the high cost and high uncertainty of the project inception phase: the research and engineering and planning prior to financial close and start of construction. Could there be a new kind of... View Details
Keywords: Infrastructure; Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Cost; Cash Flow; Capital; Assets; Financial Markets; Financial Strategy; Insurance; Energy; Product Development; Risk and Uncertainty; Business Strategy; Credit; Financial Services Industry; Energy Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Nigeria
- 2024
- Working Paper
Fire Sales of Safe Assets
By: Gabor Pinter, Emil Siriwardane and Danny Walker
We use trade-level data to study price pressure effects in the UK gilt market from September to October 2022. During this period, forced sales by liability-driven investment funds (LDIs) led to price discounts on the order of 10%, accounting for roughly half the total... View Details