Business Failures - Publications - Faculty & Research

April 2015 (Revised April 2022)
Case

Bankruptcy in the City of Detroit

By: Stuart Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Annelena Lobb

The June 2013 bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, Michigan was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Detroit had struggled for years with a weakening tax base, high unemployment, a heavy debt load and increasing retiree costs. These... View Details

Citation

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17 Feb 2021
Research & Ideas

Pandemic Self-Care for CEOs: Rituals, Running, and Cognitive Restructuring

to in July and December. Now, we’ll look at what they have been doing to cope with the circumstances. Forced to stop and rethink every aspect of their businesses from the morning commute to the mission statement, these inspiring CEOs have... View Details

Keywords: by Gamze D. Yucaoglu, Robin Abrahams, and Boris Groysberg

04 Dec 2019
Book

Creating the Experimentation Organization

Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and author of the forthcoming book, Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. Booking isn’t... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Web

Faculty - Private Capital Project

unit. His research examines when firms and entrepreneurs fail to make use of advice, new skills, and market opportunities and how these failures magnify existing inequalities. Nori Gerardo Lietz Senior Lecturer of View Details

13 Mar 2005
Research & Ideas

Reinforcing Values: A Public Dressing Down

achievement. They had limited experience solving business or management problems. In dealing with the chiefs, Levy chose an approach that blended a strong dose of discipline with real-time, public reinforcement. He developed guidelines... View Details

Keywords: by David A. Garvin & Michael A. Roberto

26 Mar 2007
Research & Ideas

Learning from Failed Political Leadership

self-defeating. Q: Your book deals extensively with the complexities of public policy. For business readers, what impact do current conditions of policy have on the future of their companies? What should they understand about how to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

Investors diligently manage financial portfolios to maximize returns on their assets; yet corporate managers who invariably proclaim their business customers to be "valuable assets" rarely manage their relationships with them... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

28 Feb 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, February 28

for success, such as the role of the senior team, and that also have distinct disciplines. Incubation is a frequent point of breakdown for firms that seek to build new businesses inside existing corporations; promising ideas often simply... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Jun 2010
What Do You Think?

How Do You Weigh Strategy, Execution, and Culture in an Organization’s Success?

hope the comments were as helpful and thought-provoking to you as they were to me. Those of you willing to venture to place weights on the determinants of success gave the nod to culture by a wide margin. As Mouaz AlZayyat put it, "Growth plans and articulated... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Katerra (A)

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Construction; Real Estate Industry; Technology Industry; United States

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30 Jun 2016
Blog Post

4 Ways I've Changed at HBS

There are certain things you come to business school expecting to learn and certain ways you expect you’ll change. Over the course of my first year at HBS, I’ve learned how to prepare a balance sheet and negotiate a job offer—but I’ve... View Details

13 Dec 2004
Research & Ideas

How Leaders Create Winning Streaks

and End, regarding the importance of confidence as a driver of business and organizational success. Key Learnings 1. Confidence, or lack of it, is not just a characteristic of individuals, but applies to organizations and their external... View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter & Walter Kiechel

30 Jan 2018
First Look

January 30, 2018

flash sales industry was created using this idea as a cornerstone of its business strategy. In this paper, we identify and investigate a new reason why frequent assortment rotations can be valuable to a retailer, particularly for products... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2023
Case

Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth about $4.4 million at the time) in... View Details

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26 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

The Office of Strategy Management

"Why is there such a persistent gap between ambition and performance?" ask Robert Kaplan and David P. Norton in "The Office of Strategy Management" in the October 2005 Harvard Business Review. "The gap arises, we... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

02 Aug 2020
What Do You Think?

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

would be interesting , he continued, to examine sectors other than technology “for their natural tendencies and what drives such culture and procedural traits.” Joe noted that some of the principles of experiment design provide “a piece of View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

10 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 10, 2009

previously lived outside India rely significantly more on diaspora networks for business leads and financing. This is especially true for entrepreneurs who are based outside software hubs—where getting leads to new View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

29 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

For Entrepreneurs, Blown Deadlines Can Crush Big Ideas

gain experience, they get worse at predicting timelines." Record venture capital investment and a surge of new businesses launched during the COVID-19 pandemic are raising the stakes for entrepreneurs. In a domain that prizes speed, View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

04 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

his new book, The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, Harvard Business School Associate Professor Noam Wasserman tells readers how to anticipate, avoid, and, if necessary, recover from the... View Details

Keywords: by Noam Wasserman

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Bankruptcy in the City of Detroit

Pandemic Self-Care for CEOs: Rituals, Running, and Cognitive Restructuring

Creating the Experimentation Organization

Recommended Reading - Advancing Racial Equity

Faculty - Private Capital Project

Reinforcing Values: A Public Dressing Down

Learning from Failed Political Leadership

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

First Look at New Research, February 28

How Do You Weigh Strategy, Execution, and Culture in an Organization’s Success?

Katerra (A)

4 Ways I've Changed at HBS

How Leaders Create Winning Streaks

January 30, 2018

Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company

The Office of Strategy Management

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

First Look: March 10, 2009

For Entrepreneurs, Blown Deadlines Can Crush Big Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors