Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,622)
- Faculty Publications (309)
- 2024
- Working Paper
Appropriate Entrepreneurship? The Rise of China and the Developing World
By: Josh Lerner, Junxi Liu, Jacob Moscona and David Yang
Global innovation and entrepreneurship has traditionally been dominated by a handful
of high-income countries, especially the US. This paper investigates the international
consequences of the rise of a new hub for innovation, focusing on the dramatic
growth of... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Darktrace: Scaling Cybersecurity and AI (A)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Alexis Lefort
In 2023, Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson was contemplating her growth strategy at a leading U.K.-based cybersecurity venture, launched in 2013 by a group of anti-terror cyber specialists, University of Cambridge mathematicians, and artificial intelligence (AI) experts.... View Details
Keywords: Technology; Talent; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Cybersecurity; Leadership; Business Growth and Maturation; Recruitment; Resignation and Termination; AI and Machine Learning; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; Europe; United States
- February 2024
- Case
Vespucci Partners: The New World of Venture Capital in Hungary
By: Paul A. Gompers, Tonia Labruyere and Emilie Billaud
Julia Sohajda was the young, female founding partner of the Hungarian VC firm Vespucci Partners, which focused on investing at seed stage into Hungarian deep tech startups and prepare them for a launch in the U.S market. Vespucci's first fund had largely been comprised... View Details
- 2024
- Article
Half the Firms, Double the Profits: Public Firms' Transformation, 1996–2022
By: Mark J. Roe and Charles C.Y. Wang
The number of public firms in the United States has halved since the beginning of the twenty-first century, causing consternation among corporate and securities law regulators. The dominant explanations, often advanced by Securities and Exchange commissioners when... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
Financing Matillion's Scaleup (A)
By: Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli and Ramana Nanda
In 2019, Matthew Scullion, founder and CEO of U.K. startup Matillion, faced a decision about which term sheet to accept for the lead investor in his company’s $35 million Series C financing round. Would the connections and opportunities offered by Silicon Valley-based... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
Can Families Conquer Private Equity? Pritzker Private Capital
By: Lauren Cohen and Sophia Pan
Anthony (Tony) Pritkzer, Paul Carbone, and the Pritzker Private Capital (PPC) team wondered how to approach the firm’s next phase of growth. PPC was a private equity firm that offered a differentiated approach to the family capital market. Back in 2016, the partners... View Details
Keywords: Family Office; External Financing; Succession; Leadership Transition; Family Business; Private Equity; Investment; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Business Model; Private Sector; Financial Liquidity; Risk Management; Organizational Structure; Competitive Advantage; Venture Capital; Management Succession; Financial Services Industry; Chicago; Illinois; United States
- February 2024
- Case
Nuwa Capital: Investing During Uncertainty
By: Paul A. Gompers and Fares Khrais
Nuwa Capital (Nuwa) was a venture capital firm based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. The business was founded in 2020 by Khaled Talhouni and his partners Sarah Abu Risheh, and Stephanie Nour Prince (they were later joined by Nitin Reen... View Details
- January 2024
- Supplement
Winning Business at Russell Reynolds
By: Ethan Bernstein and Cara Mazzucco
In an effort to make compensation drive collaboration, Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) CEO Clarke Murphy sought to re-engineer the bonus system for his executive search consultants in 2016. As his HR analytics guru, Kelly Smith, points out, that risks upsetting—and... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups
By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein
How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth?
To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS
hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Learning by Investing: Entrepreneurial Spillovers from Venture Capital
By: Josh Lerner, Jinlin Li and Tong Liu
This paper studies how investing in venture capital (VC) affects the entrepreneurial outcomes of individual limited partners (LPs). Using comprehensive administrative data on entrepreneurial activities and VC fundraising and investments in China, we first document that... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
What Do Impact Investors Do Differently?
In recent years, impact investors—private investors who seek to generate simultaneously financial and social returns—have attracted intense interest and controversy. We introduce and analyze a novel, comprehensive data set of impact
and traditional investors to assess... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Ball: EVA Driving the World's Leading Can Manufacturer (A)
By: Jonas Heese and Susan Pinckney
The case describes Ball’s multi decade history of using Economic Value Added to drive decision making and workforce compensation. In 2016, the company acquired Rexam PLC and became the world’s leading metal beverage container company. Consumer demand for varied... View Details
Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Buildings and Facilities; Green Building; Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Satisfaction; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Machinery and Machining; Asset Pricing; Corporate Finance; Capital; Cost; Financial Management; Goods and Commodities; Compensation and Benefits; Executive Compensation; Employee Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Resource Allocation; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Arizona; California; Texas
- October 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Recycle & Re-Match: The Future of Soccer Turfs
By: George Serafeim, Lena Duchene and Carlota Moniz
By August 2023, Re-Match, an artificial turf waste-to-value company, had operations in Denmark and the Netherlands and had recycled over 160,000 tons of waste and plastic fiber. With recent capital injection from the VC firm Verdane and a dual revenue business model,... View Details
Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Carbon Abatement; Sustainability; Recycling; Waste Management; Technology; Entrepreneurial Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Decisions; Energy Conservation; Investment Return; Profit; Technological Innovation; Patents; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Wastes and Waste Processing; Business Strategy; Competition; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Sports; Environmental Sustainability; Entrepreneurship; Green Technology Industry; Service Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Rubber Industry; Sports Industry; Denmark; Netherlands; France; United States; Pennsylvania; Europe
- September 2023 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Honest Jobs: A Path to Redemption
By: Paul A. Gompers and Jeffrey Barkas
Founded by a formerly incarcerated job seeker, Honest Jobs' mission is to be the hub where people with criminal records come to build careers and employers come to find great talent. Honest Jobs faced early challenges as a two-sided platform for justice-involved job... View Details
- August 2023
- Teaching Note
Kunshan, Incorporated: The Making of China’s Richest Town
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 313-103. The case is designed to give the students an understanding of the local Chinese entrepreneurial state and how foreign and Chinese firms have worked with it to create China’s richest small city. The major themes are—local state... View Details
- May 2023
- Technical Note
Venture Capital at a Crossroads
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Venture capital is a cyclical, ever-changing industry, as seen in recent years. The late 2010s and early 2020s witnessed record amounts of capital flowing into the sector, high valuations, and new types of investors entering the market. Innovations in the seed stage,... View Details
Keywords: Venture Capital
- April 2023
- Technical Note
Venture Capital Firms: What Drives Success?
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
With the rapid growth of venture capital (“VC”) in recent decades, we might wonder: who succeeds at VC and why? This is a complicated question, as many factors come into play. VC partnerships are comprised of individual investors with varying backgrounds, experiences,... View Details
- April 2023 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
Fermenting Accounting Problems at Vermont Kombucha Corp.
By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann
Founded in 2005, Vermont Kombucha Corp. (V-Ko) was an early mover in the fledgling U.S. market for kombucha, a drink brewed for its health benefits. Early on, the company captured more than 90% of market share. Under the leadership of its founder and CEO, Joe Williams,... 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
- March 2023 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Wilshire Lane Capital
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Lindsay N. Hyde and Stacy Straaberg
In September 2021, Adam Demuyakor (MBA 2017) was faced with decisions about how to launch his venture capital (VC) investment firm. His previous investment activities were a series of angel investments and special purpose vehicles alongside two part-time general... View Details