Publications

Teaching Interest

Overview

Lena teaches the required first year MBA course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability, an elective second year MBA course on Law, Management and Entrepreurship, and an elective second year MBA course on Challenges and Opportunities in the Restaurant Industry. View Details

January 2004 (Revised June 2004)
Case

Citigroup 2003: Testing the Limits of Convergence (A)

By: Lynda M. Applegate

Examines Citigroup's strategic transition and highlights issues that its newly announced CEO Charles Prince will face as he assumes leadership of this global financial corporation upon the retirement of its charismatic CEO, Sandy Weill. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Globalized Firms and Management; Management Succession; Transformation; Banks and Banking; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

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November 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Votorantim: Uniting Family and Business Across Generations

By: Christina R. Wing, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo

Over a 105-year span, the Ermírio de Moraes family built Votorantim, one of Latin America’s largest industrial conglomerates, and among Brazil’s topmost businesses, also credited for helping “build” the country over decades. By early 2023, Votorantim included... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Family Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Family and Family Relationships; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Latin America

18 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

When In-House Research Isn’t Enough

For many decades, corporate research and development has been pretty much an "inside job." The road to innovative new products and services began and ended with a company's internal R&D. But... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

2015
Working Paper

Are CEOs Born Leaders? Lessons from Traits of a Million Individuals

By: Renée Adams, Matti Keloharju and Samuli Knüpfer

What makes a CEO? We merge data on the traits of more than one million Swedish males, measured at age 18 in a mandatory military enlistment test, with data on their service as a CEO of any Swedish company decades later. CEOs have higher cognitive and non-cognitive... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Management Teams

SSRN

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07 Jun 2016
First Look

June 7, 2016

frictions. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51088 forthcoming The Accounting Review Institutional Ownership and Corporate Tax Avoidance: New Evidence By: Khan, Mozaffar N., Suraj Srinivasan, and Liang Tan... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2004 (Revised April 2007)
Case

Allianz (A1): An Insurer Acquiring a Bank?

By: Joseph L. Bower, Marc L. Bertoneche, Anders Sjoman and Sonja Ellingson Hout

The deal of the year in 2002, was the acquisition of Dresdner Bank by Allianz. Written from the perspectives of Allianz's CEO, Henning Schulte-Noelle, before and after the deal and a regional manager implementing the concept of a full-line financial service provider.... View Details

Keywords: Management; Corporate Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Acquisition; Financial Institutions; Corporate Finance; Banking Industry; Germany

November 2017
Teaching Note

Tencent

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

Teaching Note for HBS No. 718-426. Tencent had undergone many transformations since it was founded in 1998 as a simple messaging service. In 2017, it was the largest online games provider in China with a wide range of game types, China’s largest social networking... View Details

July 2005
Case

Harvard Business School and the Making of a New Profession

By: Rakesh Khurana, Tarun Khanna and Daniel Penrice

Since its founding in 1908, Harvard Business School's mission has been to perform a much-needed service for American society by turning business management into a profession. One of the most important factors in the founding of HBS and the nation's other new business... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Mission and Purpose; Alignment; Social Issues; Practice

November 2000 (Revised December 2000)
Case

Loewen Group Inc., The

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jose Camacho

A publiclytraded funeral home and cemetery consolidator faces imminent financial distress. The company has aggressively grown through use of debt. Restructuring the debt is potentially very costly to creditors, shareholders, suppliers, and other corporate stakeholders.... View Details

Keywords: International Accounting; Restructuring; Capital Structure; Cost of Capital; Debt Securities; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Crisis Management; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Service Industry

Keywords: Banking, Telecom, Financial Services

Teaching Interest

Digital Marketing Strategy

By: John A. Deighton

When the tools of marketing change, strategies change too. The focus of this course is on firms trying to navigate the transition from offline to online market-making and strategy development. Our concern is primarily with corporations that have products and... View Details

February 1998 (Revised June 1999)
Case

DigitalThink: Startup

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael J. Roberts and Christina L. Darwall

Describes a recent Berkeley MBA's attempts to start a business aimed at corporate training via the Internet. Describes the very early efforts at finding an attorney, accountant, and financing, and the interrelationships among these choices. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Service Industry

Web

Required Curriculum - MBA

transparency, fairness, privacy, and bias. Finance 1 This course examines the role of finance in supporting the functional areas of a firm, and fosters an understanding of how financial decisions themselves can create value. Topics covered include: Basic analytical... View Details

2008
Working Paper

The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns

By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy

This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details

Keywords: Asset Pricing; Investment Portfolio; Governing and Advisory Boards; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Social and Collaborative Networks; Financial Services Industry

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June 2010
Article

The Pathologies of Online Display Advertising Marketplaces

By: Benjamin Edelman

Display advertising marketplaces place "banner" ads on all manner of popular sites. While these services are widely used, they suffer significant challenges, including weak user response and low accountability for both advertisers and web site publishers. I survey a... View Details

Keywords: Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Online Advertising; Cost; Corporate Accountability; Information Publishing; Consumer Behavior; Relationships; Web Sites

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September 2008
Supplement

Mr. Nelson Peltz, Founding Partner, Trian Partners. Interviewed by Professor John Quelch

By: John A. Quelch

Professor John Quelch interviewed Mr. Nelson Peitz, Founding Partner of Trian Partners on events and decisions leading up to the decision to acquire the Snapple brand and the results of that corporate decision. View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; Private Equity; Investment; Brands and Branding; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry