Publications

July 2009 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Blue Ocean or Stormy Waters? Buying Nix Check Cashing

By: Peter Tufano

Kinecta Federal Credit Union has the opportunity to purchase Nix Check Cashing as part of their "blue ocean" strategy to reach the financially underserved and increase credit union membership and deposits. But they face financial as well as reputational risk. Check... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Credit; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Strategic Planning; Partners and Partnerships; Reputation; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry

Career Coach

Juan Leung Li

Juan draws on his own career journey and his experience supporting tech entrepreneurs and executives to coach students. Most career paths look like a straight line in hindsight -- those cases are rare. In... View Details

Keywords: Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All); Financial Services (All)

31 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Checking Your Ethics: Would You Speak Up in These 3 Sticky Situations?

‘professional’ client services firm,” he says. “The client and the values of the firm are of utmost importance.” The case of the abusive VP: During work with a client, you witness abusive behavior by a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consulting

October 2017
Case

Still Leading (B1): Hon. Bob McDonald – Profiting from Purpose

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Marcus Millen

Robert (Bob) A. McDonald just completed his service as the 8th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), successfully leading the beginnings of a transformation for one of the nation’s most scrutinized departments. Reflecting back, McDonald looked to the... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Transition

May 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Case

The Crisis at Tyco - A Director's Perspective

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Aldo Sesia

In 2002, Wendy Lane had been a member of the board of directors at Tyco International a little more than a year when the company's CEO Dennis Kozlowski and other top executives were accused of fraud, which ultimately led to resignations, imprisonments, lawsuits, and... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Reputation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Crisis Management; Accounting Audits; Problems and Challenges; Risk Management; Finance; Managerial Roles; Lawsuits and Litigation; Service Industry; United States

March 2016
Case

Residency Select or J3Personica?

By: William Kerr and Kathryn S. Roloff

Residency Select, LLC provides psychometric assessments for matching medical students to residency programs. After a series of successful pilots, founder Alan Friedman is considering whether to continue developing his offerings in this area, or whether to expand into... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Matching; Expansion; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry

08 Jul 2021
Blog Post

Catching the Entrepreneurship Bug at HBS

ultimate team player and not at all as the type of person who would strike out on their own. I love getting dropped into new situations and diverse teams to solve new problems... View Details

September 2013 (Revised November 2013)
Case

AngelList

By: Ramana Nanda and Liz Kind

In early 2010, Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi posted a list of angel investors on the Venture Hacks blog as a resource for founders looking for funding prior to seeking venture capital. The list quickly evolved into AngelList, a separate matchmaking platform for... View Details

Keywords: Angel Investors; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurial Finance; Finance; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Financial Services Industry; United States

21 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The New Math of Customer Relationships

It's the E=MC2 of customer loyalty. Deeply satisfied employee = deeply satisfied customer = lifelong profit. Harvard Business School professor emeritus Jim Heskett and professor Earl Sasser have pursued this seemingly simple equation in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

April 1999 (Revised November 1999)
Case

Columbia Capital Corporation: Summer 1998

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Justin D. Wasik

In August 1998, the partners of Columbia Capital in Arlington, Va. made a decision about whether or not to raise an outside fund for venture capital investing. Columbia had begun in 1988 as a boutique investment bank focused on the telecommunications industry, but had... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Partners and Partnerships; Investment Funds; Banks and Banking; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

25 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University

Editor's note: It has been more than a decade since the publication of The Innovator's Dilemma, in which Clayton M. Christensen introduced the idea of disruptive technologies—those unexpected products and View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen & Henry J. Eyring; Education

14 Nov 2018
HBS Seminar

Lindsey Cameron, University of Michigan Ross School of Business

2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry

SSRN

12 Jan 2016
First Look

January 12, 2016

target super fans with high priced, exclusive and/or personalized offers from artists. At a time when tensions are high between streaming services and artists who believe that... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

November 2017
Teaching Note

Amazon.com, 2016

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

Teaching Note for HBS No. 716-402. On January 28, 2016, Amazon announced record 2015 operating profits of $2.2 billion on $107 billion of sales, and the markets responded with cautious optimism. For years, founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos had prioritized growth and... View Details