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Publications
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(11,604)
- Faculty Publications (3,126)
- April 2025
- Case
Lisa Su and AMD (A)
By: Joshua D. Margolis, Matthew Preble and Dave Habeeb
This multimedia case study focuses on CEO Lisa Su’s turnaround and subsequent transformation of the technology company Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD). When Su accepted the top position in 2014, AMD was on the verge of collapse. Su focused on the company’s culture,... View Details
Keywords: Turnaround; Change Management; Transformation; Decision Making; Globalized Markets and Industries; Government and Politics; AI and Machine Learning; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Innovation Leadership; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management; Product Design; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Strategic Planning; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Research and Development; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Semiconductor Industry; Computer Industry; United States; California; Texas
- April 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Background Note
Customer Acquisition and the Cash Flow Trap
By: E. Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
Startups as well as existing firms recognize the need to invest in order to acquire customers for their new ventures. And as each customer is expected at some point to have generated sufficient gross margins to cover their CAC, management expects that, soon enough, the... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
Japan Industrial Partners Powers the Leveraged Buyout of Toshiba
By: Brian K. Baik, Joseph Pacelli and James Barnett
The case explores Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) $14 billion takeover of Toshiba Corporation (Toshiba). JIP was a private equity firm that took over the troubled electronics corporation in late 2023. The deal, which had been labeled one of the largest leveraged... View Details
Keywords: International Accounting; Borrowing and Debt; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Ownership; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy; Valuation; Leveraged Buyouts; Restructuring; Capital Structure; Cost of Capital; Private Equity; Bids and Bidding; Accounting Industry; Electronics Industry; Energy Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Asia; Japan
- April 2025 (Revised June 2025)
- Case
Governing Sustainability in a Shifting Context (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
In early 2025, boards of directors had to rethink corporate responsibility and sustainability efforts amid rapidly-shifting social, legal, regulatory, and economic forces. While just a few years earlier, calls to address racial justice and climate change reached into... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Corporate Governance; Diversity; Leadership; Business or Company Management; Mission and Purpose; Social Media; Race; Environmental Sustainability; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Lawfulness; Lawsuits and Litigation; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Shareholder Relations; Social Issues; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- April 2025
- Teaching Note
Tabby: Winning Customers' Digital Wallets
By: Eva Ascarza
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 524-056. Tabby, a Saudi-based fintech founded in 2019, rapidly became one of the MENA region’s first unicorns by offering buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services with a unique twist: instead of charging end consumers, it partnered with... View Details
- 2025
- Report
High Stakes: A Framework for Geopolitical Risk Management
By: Meg Rithmire and David Fagan
This report provides a data-based assessment of how U.S. companies perceive geopolitical risk and articulates a recommended decision-making process and framework to manage such risk. The research reflected in the report indicates that various concerns related to China... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif
By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman
Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations
By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
Will Vickers, a seventh-generation (G7) member of the Vickers Family, grappled with a pressing challenge: how to re-integrate family members into the firm to recover lost talent. His father, Peter Vickers, was the lone leader of the Vickers Oils—despite having stepped... View Details
Keywords: Shareholder; Involvement; Family Office; Family Firms; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Experience and Expertise; Retention; Leadership Development; Business or Company Management; Management Succession; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Diversification; Conflict and Resolution; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom
- April 2025
- Case
Breezm: Innovative 3D-Printed Eyewear (A)
By: Juan Alcácer, Brian Mao Fu and Adina Wong
In 2023, Breezm, a South Korean startup, faced a strategic decision about how to grow its innovative 3D-printed, custom-fit eyewear business. Co-founded in 2017 by Zenma Park and Wooseok Sung, Breezm combined facial scanning, AI, and in-house production to solve the... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Allison Ciechanover and George Gonzalez
In early 2025, Salesforce was a global leader in cloud-based enterprise software, best known for pioneering customer relationship management (CRM) delivered as a service. Over the past two decades, the company had expanded into marketing, customer service, analytics,... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Hurtigruten: Sea Zero
By: Christian Kaps and Michael W. Toffel
Hurtigruten was deciding whether the next ship they built should be fully electric. But such a vessel's battery, the size of electric cars, needed to be charged on the ship's multi-day voyage along the Norwegian coast. Before making such a $250 million investment, the... View Details
Keywords: Energy Sources; Alternative Energy; Ship Transportation; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Management; Green Technology; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Shipping Industry; Tourism Industry; Transportation Industry; Travel Industry; Battery Industry; Norway; Europe
- March 2025 (Revised June 2025)
- Case
Designing the Future of Work: Atlassian’s Distributed Work Practices
By: Ashley Whillans and Gabriel Rondón Ichikawa
In early 2020, the software company Atlassian made a bold commitment: employees could work from anywhere—forever. While many tech peers reversed course on remote work, Atlassian worked to optimize their fully distributed model across 13 countries. This case follows... View Details
- March 27, 2025
- Article
How One Company Used AI to Broaden Its Customer Base
By: Sunil Gupta and Frank V. Cespedes
The software company SAP successfully leveraged AI tools to begin selling to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) market, which had previously been uneconomical for its in-person sales approach. By mapping the customer journey and deploying over 40 AI tools, SAP... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Private Equity and Workers: Modeling and Measuring Monopsony, Implicit Contracts, and Efficient Reallocation
By: Kyle Herkenhoff, Josh Lerner, Gordon M. Phillips, Francisca Rebelo and Benjamin Sampson
We measure the real effects of private equity buyouts on worker outcomes by building a new
database that links transactions to matched employer-employee data in the United States. To
guide our empirical analysis, we derive testable implications from three theories in... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Perplexity: Redefining Search
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak
By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Taylor Guitars: Making Employee Ownership Work the Taylor Way
By: Dennis Campbell, Petros Kusmu and Stacy Straaberg
In 2013, guitar manufacturer Taylor Guitars’ co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug were considering several exit options including selling to a competitor or to a private equity firm. The co-founders decided, instead, to embark on a seven-year process to transfer 100%... View Details
Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Communication Strategy; Announcements; Decisions; Music Entertainment; Values and Beliefs; Borrowing and Debt; Geographic Location; Global Range; Governance; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Management Style; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Private Ownership; Business Strategy; Management Succession; Transition; Employee Ownership; Performance; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States; California; San Diego; Mexico; Netherlands
- March 2025
- Case
Stagwell: AI and the Future of Marketing
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Radhika Kak
In early 2025, Mark Penn, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Stagwell, a global marketing company with a network of over 70+ agencies that served over 4000 blue-chip customers across 40 countries, was looking at ways that marketers should navigate the disruption emanating... View Details
- March 10, 2025
- Article
How Gen AI Could Change the Value of Expertise
By: Joseph Fuller, Matt Sigelman and Michael Fenlon
In the near future, gen AI is likely to affect some 50 million jobs, automating away elements of some jobs and augmenting workers’ abilities in others. The extent of those changes will compel companies to reshape their organizational structures and rethink their talent... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Good for the Seller, Good for the Buyer and Good for Society: Sampo-yoshi, Sustainability and Trust at ITOCHU
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Bethelehem Y Araya
In 2024, ITOCHU CEO Masahiro Okafuji was at a crossroads. As the thirteenth CEO since ITOCHU’s founding in 1858, he had fueled the company’s growth since 2011 by bringing ITOCHU’s founding philosophy of Sampo-yoshi (good for the seller, good for the buyer and... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Harvey: AI for Lawyers
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Charles Krumholz and Radhika Kak
In early 2025, Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra, co-founders of Harvey AI, reflected on the company’s meteoric rise as a pioneer in AI-powered legal technology. Since its founding in 2022, Harvey had transformed how lawyers approached research, drafting, and document... View Details