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19 Apr 2017
News

Chicago Becomes a Hub of Startup Action

Silicon Valley’s name is dominant in the history of entrepreneurship. So where does that leave other cities that want to get in on the action? On April 13 in Spangler Auditorium, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a panel of area business... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Emmanuel

October 2022
Supplement

Framebridge (B): A New Approach

By: Rembrand Koning and Alicia Dadlani

In 2022, after revamping operations and expanding retail stores, Framebridge founder and CEO Susan Tynan is optimistic for the future but realizes changing market dynamics. New competitors are entering the market, and margin pressures remained. This case is part two of... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Business Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Operations; Market Entry and Exit; Consumer Products Industry; United States; District of Columbia; Kentucky

15 Dec 2008
Research & Ideas

The Surprisingly Successful Marriages of Multinationals and Social Brands

What happens when giant multinational corporations acquire relatively small companies that enjoy iconic status as socially progressive brands? According to recent research out of Harvard Business School, such marriages can be good for... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products; Food & Beverage

11 May 2021
Blog Post

IPO or M&A? How Venture Capital Shapes a Startup's Future

company to a larger one. In contrast, startups funded by a VC syndicate with less familiar co-investors are most likely to exit through a potentially splashy IPO that could let founders retain more control, says Harvard View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital / Private Equity

January 2023
Case

Kavnia Coffee

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Kumba Sennaar, Sarah Mehta and Jiyoon Han

Case on a coffee hardware startup where a series of experiments and pivots led founder to conclude that the venture was no longer viable. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business Startups; Failure; Business Exit or Shutdown; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

September 1994
Supplement

Otis Elevator Company: China Joint Venture (E-2)

By: Michael Y. Yoshino

Describes what happened and presents the perspectives of the three executives who played key roles in the process. A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Globalization; Global Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; China

21 Feb 2005
Research & Ideas

The VC Quandary: Too Much Money

It might be hard for the ordinary business owner or consumer to imagine having "too much" money. But that's exactly where the venture capital industry finds itself: with too much money available for the number of emerging... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette; Financial Services

October 2013 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Ilva Steel Taranto: Providing and Polluting (A)

By: Lena G. Goldberg, Vincent Dessain, Ottavia Pesce and Karol Misztal

Nearly 27,000 people depended on Ilva Steel Taranto, the largest steel-making plant in Europe, for their livelihoods, but the plant's pollution fouled the environment and increased the incidence of tumors, respiratory illnesses, and deaths. In July 2012, faced with a... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Pollutants; Business Exit or Shutdown; Health; Decision Making; Steel Industry; Europe

Portrait Project

Nelly-Ange Kontchou

soil for latching onto every crease of my clothing when we got home. It wouldn’t leave me be. Before the start of business school, I step off the plane at Douala International Airport and into the suffocating heat. As I look out the... View Details

Rob Gierkink

Rob (MBA 1991) has founded or co-founded six companies, with combined exits totaling more than $2.25 billion. He is an Executive in Residence at General Catalyst Partners where he principally invests in technology companies that work with... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital;#1;#Advertising;#16;#Consumer Products & Packaged Goods

January 1994 (Revised April 1995)
Case

Judo Economics

The early 1990s saw a new wave of start-ups in the U.S. airline business. One entrant, Kiwi International Air Lines, took to the skies in September 1992 with a strategy of attracting small-business travelers looking to save money but lacking the flexibility to book in... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Competitive Advantage; Business Startups; Air Transportation Industry; Financial Services Industry

01 Jun 2017
News

The Exchange: Venture Forth

and its place in the business ecosystem has changed significantly in the intervening decades. Two recent working papers explore those changes—Gompers’s survey of decision-making at hundreds of VC firms and Professor Ramana Nanda’s study... View Details

Keywords: April White

April 1993 (Revised June 1998)
Case

Time Inc.'s Entry into the Entertainment Industry (A)

Richard Munro, Time Inc.'s chairman and CEO, must respond to a hostile tender offer from Paramount Communications. Paramount conditioned its bid on cancellation of Time's plans to merge with Warner Communications. Several months before the hostile Paramount bid, Time... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Market Entry and Exit; Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

November 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Wallbox

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Max Hancock

Enric Asunción co-founded Wallbox, a private EV charger company, in Spain in 2015. As CEO, Asunción transformed the company from a small start-up, focused on the European market, to a multimillion-dollar enterprise with offices on three continents. In 2021, a private... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Going Public; Acquisition; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Startups; Entrepreneurial Finance; Spain; United States; United Kingdom