Publications

January 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

Fortress Investment Group

By: Malcolm Baker, Carlos M. Galvez and James Quinn

CEO Wesley Edens and the five Fortress principals are contemplating a move unprecedented in the industry: becoming the first hedge fund and private equity firm to complete an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This case examines potential reasons for a leading... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Public Equity; Initial Public Offering; Investment Funds; Going Public; Valuation; Financial Services Industry

December 2011 (Revised April 2012)
Case

Transforming Verizon: A Platform for Change

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Matthew Bird

A new CEO steps into the shoes of his long-time predecessor who had created the U.S. telecommunications giant via a series of acquisitions and, before departing, had initiated the company's strategic repositioning. The new CEO reflected on Verizon's recent successes,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Globalized Firms and Management; Groups and Teams; Telecommunications Industry

March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Innovation at Moog Inc.

By: Brian J. Hall, Ashley V. Whillans, Davis Heniford, Dominika Randle and Caroline Witten

This case focuses on the challenges of incentivizing innovation within Moog, an engineering company based in New York state that designs and builds guidance systems for space, air, and land-based travel. The case enables students to grapple with the challenges of using... View Details

Research Summary

The NYSE Trading Floor and Spatial Dependence in Stock Returns

The floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is organized by physical posts. Each post has at most thirty panels, and each panel tracks up to thirty stocks. I demonstrate that there is spatial dependence in return correlations. Specifically, returns for... View Details

June 2013 (Revised July 2013)
Case

Blackstone Alternative Asset Management

By: Robin Greenwood, Luis M. Viceira and Jared Dourdeville

This case explores reasons for Blackstone Alternative Asset Management's (BAAM's) growth from 2007-2013, a time when the overall fund of hedge funds industry contracted substantially. Additionally, the case analyzes evolving business models and value propositions... View Details

Keywords: Hedge Fund; Fund Of Hedge Funds; Hedge Fund Industry Growth; Fund Of Hedge Funds Industry Growth; Evolving Business Models; Value Propositions In The Fund Of Hege Funds Industry; Business Model; Investment Funds; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States

Research Summary

Overview

I am a doctoral candidate in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School. My main areas of interest are organizational economics, public policy, and technology. My research is published at PNAS and forthcoming at the Journal of Financial Economics. My work has been... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Communication Technology; Wages; Policy; Brazil

October 2008 (Revised March 2011)
Case

Curled Metal Inc.—Engineered Products Division

By: Benson P. Shapiro and Frank V. Cespedes

Curled Metal Incorporated has declining sales but has developed a new product (curled metal pile driver pads) that, in field tests, deliver customer benefits that are many times CMI's manufacturing costs. Joseph Fernandez and Rajiv Sanwal of CMI's Engineered Products... View Details

Keywords: Price; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Strategy

27 Jul 2020
Book

Reflection: The Pause That Brings Peace and Productivity

Many of us feel time-pressured, tethered to our smartphones so we can stay on top of work and home responsibilities. It can be tough to step off the daily merry-go-round, put our phones, laptops, and to-do lists aside, and find decent chunks of quiet View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

February 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Boston.com

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust

How aggressively should an incumbent move when developing an online business that threatens its core product? With Internet competitors taking direct aim at the traditional print newspaper business model, the Boston Globe fought back with its own web initiative,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Change Management; Internet and the Web; Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Publishing Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

April 2022
Case

Marsha Simms: Trailblazer in Corporate Law

By: Robin Ely, Boris Groysberg, Colleen Ammerman and Olivia Hull

Follows the journey of lawyer Marsha Simms from her childhood in racially-segregated St. Louis to the upper echelons of the New York legal community. Describes her education, career choices, accomplishments, and setbacks. Highlights significant moments such as her... View Details

winter 2009
Article

Creativity, Improvisation, and Organizations

By: Colin M. Fisher and Teresa M. Amabile

'Improvisational creativity' involves simultaneously identifying new challenges and generating responses, with little or no time to prepare. View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Organizational Culture; Creativity; Theory; Performance

16 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ‘The Strategist’

strategy from the top of the organization to a specialist function." Montgomery maintains that it's time for CEOs to reclaim strategy, a point she argues fervently in her new book, The Strategist: Be the... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia A. Montgomery

26 Mar 2024
Cold Call Podcast

How Do Great Leaders Overcome Adversity?

Keywords: Re: Anthony Mayo

October 2020 (Revised April 2022)
Case

When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s

By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin

During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting... View Details

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

the road.” “That’s what I remember from growing up, this constant conflict and fight over hours,” recounts Stavros, a partner at private equity firm KKR, in a new series of Harvard Business School case studies that detail his radical... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

September 1998 (Revised November 1998)
Case

STRIVE

STRIVE provides employment training and placement to chronically unemployed inner-city minority youth and young adults. This case describes STRIVE's creation as a community-based, single-site nonprofit in Harlem in 1984; the development of its service model (short,... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Growth Management; Employment; Training; Employment Industry

January 2022 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Leonard Bernstein: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case traces the rise of Leonard Bernstein from a middle-class family in Boston to the conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The case describes how he studied music intensely as a young man and developed mentors to open doors for him. As his fame grew,... View Details

Keywords: Impact; Personal Development and Career; Music Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry