Publications
Publications
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(6,716)
- Faculty Publications (1,386)
- January 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Ajeej Capital: Investing in Emerging Markets
By: Luis M. Viceira and Eren Kuzucu
In October 2007, Tarek Sakka and Fouad Dajani launched Ajeej Capital, the first independent investment advisory in the MENA region. Fittingly named ajeej, an Arabic word that translates to “growth and propagation in a chaotic setting,” the firm’s AUM grew from $20... View Details
- January 2019
- Case
First Aid Beauty
By: Karen Mills and Annie Dang
In 2008, Lilli Gordon, an experienced financial and skincare entrepreneur, founded First Aid Beauty (FAB). She had discovered a white space in the prestige beauty market: high-end skin solutions that were suitable for sensitive skin. After initial success through... View Details
- January–February 2019
- Article
Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance
By: George Serafeim
We construct a measure of corporate purpose within a sample of U.S. companies based on approximately 500,000 survey responses of worker perceptions about their employers. We find that this measure of purpose is not related to financial performance. However, high... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
The Reinvention of Kodak
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Christine Snively
The Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) was a name familiar to most Americans. The company had dominated the film and photography industry through most of the 20th Century and was known for making affordable cameras (and the “Kodak Moment”) and supplying the movie industry... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised June 2022)
- Teaching Note
AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Nathaniel Schwalb
Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-097. In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Rebuilding Puerto Rico
By: Laura Alfaro, Laura Phillips Sawyer and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria swept over Puerto Rico, devastating the island’s infrastructure and agriculture. The natural disaster was layered atop years of mounting financial distress. Before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had accumulated $74 billion in debt and... View Details
- November 2018
- Case
David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics
By: Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia
In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Zenefits Board of Directors (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Leadership; Risk Management; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; California
- October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data
By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton
On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details
Keywords: Citizen Science; Creative Commons; Open Data; Open Architecture; Volunteer-based Organization; Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility; 311; Nuclear; Radiation; Crowdsourcing; Bgeigie; Geiger Counters; Kickstarter; Sustainability; Sustainable Business And Innovation; Design; Energy Generation; Social Entrepreneurship; Human Capital; Innovation and Invention; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Information Technology; Business Model; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; Japan; North and Central America; Europe
- October 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
Social Finance, Inc.
By: Shawn Cole and Fanele Mashwama
This case begins in February 2019 as Tracy Palandjian, co-founder and CEO of Social Finance Inc., prepares for a board meeting that will determine the future strategy of the social enterprise. Social Finance is a non-profit in the impact investment space founded in... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Accomplice: Scaling Early Stage Finance
By: Ramana Nanda, Raffaella Sadun and Olivia Hull
Accomplice, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, is raising its second fund in November 2017. Since 2009, the firm has followed a seed-led investment model, investing in tech companies at the earliest stages, often when products and business models are... View Details
Keywords: Early Stage Finance; Seed Finance; Scouts; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Networks; Adaptation; Corporate Strategy; Technology; Financial Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston; Cambridge; United States
- October 2018 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
Stock-Based Compensation at Twitter
By: Jonas Heese, Zeya Yang and Mike Young
Olivia Nash, an analyst at leading hedge fund BlueShark Capital Management, had just finished listening to the hour-long earnings call for Twitter’s Q4 2017 results. Was Twitter doing well? That depended on which numbers she chose to believe. According to Generally... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
Gemini Investors
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS No. 211-066. Gemini Investors was a private equity firm that targeted equity investments of between $4 million to $6 million per firm. In the period from 2000 to 2015, Gemini had successfully deployed four funds, all licensed as Small Business... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised August 2021)
- Teaching Note
Blackstone at Age 30 and Blackstone at 35
By: Josh Lerner
This teaching note is meant to guide in the instruction of HBS No. 316-013 "Blackstone at 30" case. It examines the process of institutionalization and scaling in private equity and alternative investments more generally, looking specifically at how Blackstone's size... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds
By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb
After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Oaktree: Pierre Foods Investment
By: Victoria Ivashina and Mike Harmon
This case is a setting to discuss “loan to own” investment strategy that is often pursued by distressed investors. The aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis left many companies with poor liquidity and limited ability to obtain credit. One of these companies was Pierre... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
Christine Lagarde (B): Being a Public Servant
By: Julie Battilana and Carin-Isabel Knoop
This case covers the career of Christine Lagarde from 2005 to 2011 after she joins the French Government. After serving several grueling years as Finance Minister during the financial crisis that started in 2007/2008, she is being considered as the next Managing... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
Tapping Growth at Lord Hobo Brewing Company
By: Ethan Rouen and Susanna Gallani
Lord Hobo Brewing Company accounts for its inventory process as it prepares to create its first set of professional financial statements for investors. View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Sustainability and Green Business in Latin America During Globalization Waves
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper examines the impact of modern business enterprise on the natural environment of Latin America during the globalization waves between the 19th century and the present day. It argues that although global capitalism created much wealth for the region,... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
BlackBuck (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The case presents the challenges of scaling an asset-heavy company (that relies on its operations). It highlights how decisions on the early team impact a company’s ability to scale, linkage between growth and cash flows, as well the organizational impact of high... View Details