Publications

July 2014
Case

Venture Capital at the Harvard Management Company in Historical Perspective

By: Felda Hardymon, Tom Nicholas and Vasiliki Fouka

The compromise between capital preservation and growth has always been central to the performance of the Harvard endowment. Setting an institutional structure for effectively governing this compromise became especially important when the Harvard Management Company... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Financial Management; Asset Management; Higher Education; Investment; Financial Services Industry; Education Industry; Cambridge

02 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Flattening Firm and Product Market Competition: The Effect of Trade Liberalization

Keywords: by Maria Guadalupe & Julie M. Wulf

April 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Willy Jacobsohn and Beiersdorf: Managing Expropriation and Anti-Semitism

By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Christina Lubinski

This case examines the management of home and host country risk by Beiersdorf during the interwar years. It can be used both in business history courses and more generally to teach political risk management by multinational corporations. Beiersdorf, a German personal... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; War; Business History; Multinational Firms and Management; Global Strategy; Ownership; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations; Consumer Products Industry; Germany

01 Jun 2000
News

Flexibility Is Key to Product Development in Internet Time

approached as a series of experiments. You don't know what tasks are needed to complete the product, but you can still plan which sequence of trials to run. Developing products in a turbulent setting requires a process that does not avoid... View Details

Keywords: Judith A. Ross

24 Mar 2022
News

Product Innovation: What Business Leaders Need to Know

Article

Fly-by-Night Firms and the Market for Product Reviews

By: Gerald R. Faulhaber and Dennis A. Yao

This paper presents a model that permits third-party information provision in a market characterized by information asymmetries and reputation formation. The model is used to examine how the market for information provision affects prices and supply in the primary... View Details

Keywords: Markets; Reputation; SWOT Analysis; Mathematical Methods; Price Bubble; Inflation and Deflation; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Cost; Information; Quality; Price; Competitive Advantage; Information Industry

28 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

Meeting China’s Need for Management Education

practices in management education. "Overall, we were delighted to see the impact that PCMPCL is having in the area and on these leading schools of business," Wheelwright says. Report: Q: What general advice would you give our... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Education

01 Mar 2023
News

The Exchange: Micro Management

Image by John Ritter In the 50 years since modern microfinance was introduced as a tool to fight poverty, institutions have distributed hundreds of millions of loans to people in developing countries. Such loans are repaid at rates often as high as 98 percent. Those... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Funds, Trusts, and Other Financial Vehicles; Finance

May 2010
Case

Clayton Industries, Inc.: Peter Arnell, Country Manager for Italy

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Benjamin H. Barlow

Clayton Industries, a sixty-year-old U.S.-based firm in the HVAC industry (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), with nearly $1 billion in revenues, has gradually built a presence in a number of countries, including several in Europe. Peter Arnell, previously... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Conflict and Resolution; Sales; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Wisconsin; Italy; United Kingdom

July 2012
Case

Performance Management at Vitality Health Enterprises, Inc.

By: John Bingham and Michael Beer

Vitality Health Enterprises, a medium-sized firm that manufactures health and personal care products, has experienced six straight quarters of strong revenue growth. James Hoffman, the new Senior Vice President of Human Resources, fears that the chain of success is... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Talent and Talent Management; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

June 2023
Article

Regulatory Limits to Risk Management

By: Ishita Sen

Variable annuities, the largest liability of U.S. life insurers, are investment products containing long-dated minimum return guarantees. I show that guarantees with similar economic risks are treated differently by regulation and these differences impact insurers’... View Details

Keywords: Interest Rate Risk; Variable Annuities; Capital Regulation; Reinsurance; Derivatives; Risk Management; Interest Rates; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

SSRN

2014
Working Paper

The New Empirical Economics of Management

By: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur and John Van Reenen

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance Productivity; Microeconomics

03 Oct 2019
HBS Seminar

Christopher Tang, UCLA Anderson School of Management

July 1997
Supplement

Allentown Materials Corporation: The Electronic Products Division (C)

By: Michael Beer

Supplements the (A) and (B) cases. Designed as an in-class handout. A rewritten version of an earlier supplement. View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Electronics Industry; United States

Research Summary

Management Control Systems in Multiunit Companies

By: Tatiana Sandino

Professor Sandino conducts research on early-stage multiunit companies that introduce management control systems to help maintain operations, as well as company culture, as they grow, but also to enable adaptation to the different markets that they serve. Building... View Details

March 1998 (Revised October 2001)
Case

Teradyne: Corporate Management of Disruptive Change

By: Joseph L. Bower

Two cases deal with the introduction of a new product to Teradyne's line of semiconductor test equipment. This case deals with the problems facing the head of a start-up division responsible for developing and bringing to market a new product based on technology deemed... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Product; Problems and Challenges; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Technology

05 Mar 2008
What Do You Think?

Where Will Management Innovation Take Us?

Summing Up Will management innovation be "pushed" or "pulled"? Competitive organizations in the future will be managed differently. This will require new roles for managers. But according... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

February 2018
Case

Vodafone: Managing Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence

By: William R. Kerr and Emer Moloney

Vodafone was operating in the fast-moving telecommunications market where innovation and scale were key. Faced with an onslaught of technological advances—big data, automation, and artificial intelligence—CEO Vittorio Colao reflected on how he should change the... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Opportunities; Telecommunications Industry