Publications

February 2002 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Battery Ventures

By: Josh Lerner, G. Felda Hardymon, Ann Leamon, Nitin Gupta and Sameer Bharadwaj

Todd Dagres, general partner of Battery Ventures, reflects on his firm's organization and its effectiveness in one particular deal. One of the perennial challenges of venture capital is the scaling of the firm. Usually regarded as a craft industry, venture firms tend... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Effectiveness; Organizational Structure; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Experience and description-based decision making.

Prof. Barron and his co-authors study the effect of the economic environment on decision making. One example involves the effect of rare (low probability) events. People behave as if they overweight these events in some settings (e.g., when buying insurance and... View Details

15 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 15, 2008

advertising agency's decision to unbundle its services as a tradeoff between the fixed cost to the advertiser of establishing and maintaining a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Fast Answer

Patent search: license agreement

How to find patent license agreement data in the US? Since a patent license agreement is not a patent "assignment" or a patent... View Details

May 2020
Article

Scalable Holistic Linear Regression

By: Dimitris Bertsimas and Michael Lingzhi Li

We propose a new scalable algorithm for holistic linear regression building on Bertsimas & King (2016). Specifically, we develop new theory to model significance and multicollinearity as lazy constraints rather than checking the conditions iteratively. The resulting... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

Read Now

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

Andrei Hagiu is on the vanguard of a new field of business research that explores the dynamics of multi-sided markets. Although these markets have been around a long time, they have not really been... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

05 Jul 2021
What Do You Think?

Do Companies Really Need Chief Experience Officers to Know Their Customers?

(Image credit: iStockphoto/skynesher) I will always remember November 11, 1977 as the day I drove a Ford Pinto into the employee parking lot of the General Motors Technical Center in Detroit. My vehicle was... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

May 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Exercise

Endeca Negotiation, The: Charlie Yie

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Students play the role of Charlie Yie, a venture capitalist considering an investment in a venture-backed enterprise software company. In the challenging financing climate of the Fall of 2001, he is trying to decide what terms to offer the company as an outside... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Process; Negotiation Offer; Management Teams; Venture Capital; Valuation; Software; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry

Web

Becoming an Entrepreneur - Alumni

choose your path For many HBS MBA candidates, entrepreneurship rivals general management, consulting, and financial services as a meaningful career path. But by definition,... View Details

20 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 20

than commonly believed. Using a battery of performance tests, we find that loans securitized before 2005 performed no worse than comparable unsecuritized loans originated by the same bank. Even loans originated by the bank that acts View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Sep 2023
News

Made in Italy

boundaries of the classroom. The idea stretches back to 2006, when, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a group of MBA students organized a service trip to New Orleans to... View Details

Keywords: April White

05 Sep 2008
What Do You Think?

Is Case Method Instruction Due for an Overhaul?

But as Shahid Sheikh put it, "in foresight ... there never are right (or perfect) answers ...." Seconding that notion in practice (vs. theory), Kim Allen suggested that "Case studies would be View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Education

November 2011 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Natura Cosméticos, S.A.

Rodolfo Guttilla, Director of Corporate Affairs for Natura Cosméticos S.A. (Natura), prepared for a meeting with key stakeholders to discuss the future of integrated reporting at Natura. A cosmetics company with a strong brand, robust growth in international and... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Decision Making; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Brazil

December 2010
Background Note

Risk and Reward in Venture Capital

By: William A. Sahlman

This note describes the payoff structure of investment in individual venture capital–backed companies and in venture capital portfolios. Venture Capital investments are characterized by high failure rate (0ver 50%) and a small number of given successes (greater than... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Venture Capital; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Analytics and Data Science; Failure; Performance; Information Technology