Publications

January 1999
Case

Prague Post, The

By: Paul A. Gompers

Lisa Frankenberg, co-founder of the Prague Post, is faced with several business and professional decisions. The English-language paper she founded is under pressure from competition and a Czech Republic recession. She must decide how to return the paper to... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Decisions; Decision Choices and Conditions; Profit; Competition; Financial Crisis; Personal Development and Career; Publishing Industry; Czech Republic

Derrick studies how teams accomplish complex work in novel contexts. His dissertation advances the idea of disciplined flexibility: a strategy teams use to navigate uncertainty... View Details

24 Sep 2018
Blog Post

Working to Keep Pirates At-Bay: My Summer in Cyber Security

After spending three years working in consulting before coming to HBS, I knew I wanted to use my summer to expand beyond the world of Board of Directors advisory and multi-national company strategic planning and try something completely... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship

14 May 2013
Blog Post

Scratching the surface

It’s amazing to think that already a month has passed since the school year started. Things have finally reached a solid level of familiarity, even as other things (notably internship recruiting) are only now warming up. Prior to HBS, I worked in management View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship

01 Oct 2012
News

Anchored to mobiles

January 2005
Case

Building Career Foundations: Humphrey Chen (A)

Follows the career decision making of a second-year MBA student who is engaged and must negotiate both cross-cultural and dual-career issues. Humphrey Chen must decide between a consulting firm and running his own start-up company (pre-Internet boom). He confronts... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Development and Career; Family and Family Relationships; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

07 Aug 2017
News

Could this be the real reason your boss emails you outside business hours?

20 Jun 2017
News

How Obama Won The French Election

Video

Ansel Adams takes a Polaroid. From Ansel Adams, Photographer

Benjamin C. Esty

Benjamin Esty is the Roy and Elizabeth Simmons Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Over the years, he has taught a variety of courses ranging from advanced corporate finance and project finance to competitive strategy and leadership. He... View Details

Keywords: banking; asset management; investment banking industry; consumer products; shipping; wine; financial services

May 2004 (Revised December 2004)
Case

Slingshot Technology, Inc. (B)

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins

Slingshot Technology Inc. (STI) is a privately held software start-up founded in 1995 focused on identifying emerging spaces in the IT services industry and partnering with vendors selling promising but unproven technologies in those spaces. The vendors used STI to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Private Ownership; Opportunities; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Intellectual Property; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry

August 2003 (Revised September 2008)
Background Note

Note on Financing of the U.S. Health Care Sector

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Jeff Grahling

This course describes the public and private sources of financing of the U.S. health-care sector,and identifies the characteristics of insurance policies, their costs, the structure of the insurance industry, and the role of consultants and brokers. The insurance... View Details

Keywords: Economic Sectors; Financing and Loans; Insurance; Industry Structures; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; United States

September 1983 (Revised October 1984)
Case

Syntex Laboratories (A)

A consulting project involving a mathematical model of the sales force indicates that Syntex Labs should nearly double the size of their sales force and drastically alter their allocation of sales effort to the product line and physician specialties. The questions are... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Salesforce Management; Pharmaceutical Industry

11 Jun 2015
News

Capitalizing on America's New Energy Advantage

15 Jul 2019
Blog Post

Exploring the World of Electric Adventure Vehicles

As a former consultant at EY-Parthenon, part of Chicago native and Northwestern University graduate Tayler Danziger’s (MBA 2020) job included travelling all over the U.S. and Europe, advising clients on growth strategy. Little did she... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; Consumer Products / Retail

March 2007
Supplement

Bain & Company, Inc.

In late 2001, the consultancy Bain must decide whether to launch information technology as a practice area within the firm. The senior executives who are Bain's clients have been asking more and more IT-related questions of the firm's partners, who find themselves... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology; Market Entry and Exit; Consulting Industry; Consulting Industry