Publications

October 2000 (Revised November 2000)
Case

New Economy Ethics: YouKnowIt.com

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Kim Slack

Entrepreneur Janice Schwartz is hoping to grow her start-up company by creating a technical advisory board and compensating members with discounted company stock. Schwartz is considering six candidates that can help her online education company in a variety of ways: as... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Crime and Corruption; Customers; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Governing and Advisory Boards; Media; Networks; Internet

April 2007 (Revised June 2007)
Case

Aid, Debt Relief, and Trade: An Agenda for Fighting World Poverty (A)

By: Laura Alfaro, Eric D. Werker and Renee Kim

At the 2005 Group of Eight summit, world leaders agreed to relieve the world's poorest countries' debt burdens and double aid to Africa by 2010. The announcement raised questions whether debt relief would really help the poor. By examining past aid trends and policies... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Borrowing and Debt; Capital; International Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Poverty; Welfare; Africa

14 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 14, 2010

decisions taken and financial results through the end of fiscal year 2010. Purchase this supplement:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/411027-PDF-ENG Cypress Sharpridge: Raising Capital in a Time of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2010
Supplement

AdMob (B)

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and David Chen

CEO is deciding between international expansion and increasing the number of publishers to strengthen the company's advantage in the mobile advertising industry. AdMob displayed advertising on global devices, and powered 6,000 websites and 1,000 applications, and... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Capital; Global Strategy; Resource Allocation; Product Positioning; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Mobile Technology; Advertising Industry; Telecommunications Industry

January 2019
Article

Pay Now or Pay Later? The Economics within the Private Equity Partnership

By: Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner

The economics of partnerships have been of enduring interest to economists, but many issues regarding intergenerational conflicts and their impact on the continuity of these organizations remain unclear. We examine 717 private equity partnerships and show that (a) the... View Details

Keywords: Partnerships; Leveraged Buyout; Partners and Partnerships; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Leveraged Buyouts

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15 Apr 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Consequences of Entrepreneurial Finance: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis

Keywords: by William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar

June 2025
Case

Accounting for OpenAI at Microsoft

By: Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli, Nicole Zelazko and Michael Norris

In early 2025, Microsoft was evaluating the impact of its $14 billion investment in OpenAI. As OpenAI’s computing needs expanded, Microsoft positioned Azure as the exclusive provider for training and inference of their large language models. Despite the scale of the... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Reporting; Revenue Recognition; Corporate Finance; Capital; Investment; Revenue; AI and Machine Learning; Valuation; Governance; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

February 2007
Case

Orientation for Viewing "Startup.com"

By: Noam T. Wasserman

Introduces founders Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman as they start and grow govWorks.com. The movie "Startup.com" documents the challenges that these founders face in building their company while dealing with tensions within the founding team and managing a demanding... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Corporate Governance; Management Teams; Relationships; Familiarity

12 Sep 2006
First Look

First Look: September 12, 2006

requires upfront capital investments. The more developed the local financial markets, the easier it is for credit constrained entrepreneurs to start their own firms. The increase in the number of varieties of intermediate goods leads to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Robert J. Dolan

Robert J. Dolan is the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and began his academic career in 1976 as a faculty member at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. He joined... View Details

16 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas and Research, May 16

promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards shareholders as owners of the corporation—but View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

February 2009 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Big Spaceship: Ready to Go Big?

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

Big Spaceship, a digital marketing agency, faced a rather big challenge: How to scale the distinctive culture that was essential to its competitive strategy? Renowned for the cutting-edge websites that it developed to market major Hollywood movies and leading consumer... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Human Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation

Web

Live from Klarman Hall - Alumni

climate change leadership challenges and opportunities. Leading with AI: Exploring Business and Technology Frontiers—Tuesday, May 7, 2024 As leaders, how do you navigate the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities arising within... View Details

December 2022
Case

To Feed the Planet: Juan Luciano at ADM

By: Joshua D. Margolis, David E. Bell, Damien McLoughlin, Stacy Straaberg and James Weber

In December 2022, Juan Luciano, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness and nutrition giant ADM, considered the next phase of the historic company’s future. Beginning in 2011 when he joined as COO and moving into his tenure as CEO in 2015, Luciano led a transformation of ADM... View Details

August 2016 (Revised August 2017)
Case

AnswerDash (Abridged)

By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman

It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry

June 2016 (Revised August 2017)
Case

AnswerDash

By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman

It is 2014, and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry

2017
Working Paper

Business History, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence

By: Geoffrey Jones

This working paper provides a business history perspective on debates about the Great Divergence, the rise of the income gap between the West and the Rest, and the more recent Great Convergence, which has seen a narrowing of that gap. The literature on the timing and... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Economics; History; Wealth and Poverty; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth

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June 2008
Case

From xiaonei to hainei: The Quest for the Social Networking Service Market in China

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong

Wang Xing, the founder of Hainei.com, one of the fastest growing social networking service (SNS) providers in China, was preparing to raise funds from venture capitalists. Since late 2003, Wang had established several Internet startups in China. Xiaonei.com, which he... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Internet; China