Publications

November 2013 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Valuing Yahoo! in 2013

By: Luis M. Viceira and Atul Khosla

In late July 2013, Danielle Engle, Managing Director of Clairemont Capital, was contemplating what to do about a large investment her fund had in the stock of Yahoo! Inc. In mid-2012, Clairemont had invested nearly $75M in Yahoo! after the tech company settled a highly... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Decision Making; Investment Activism; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Valuation

May 2022 (Revised June 2024)
Case

LOOP: Driving Change in Auto Insurance Pricing

By: Elie Ofek and Alicia Dadlani

John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Insurance Industry; Financial Services Industry

Web

Alumni

interactive HBS alumni networking workshop. We will discuss the benefits of applying the scientific method to networking. This framework when applied to gathering market information and navigating professional decision points - removes... View Details

08 Dec 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Are There Too Many Safe Securities? Securitization and the Incentives for Information Production

Keywords: by Samuel G. Hanson & Adi Sunderam; Financial Services

20 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 20

energy came in the factor markets (for land, labor capital, and knowledge), and it required the abandonment of feudalism. Unlike trade, capitalism spreads by political decisions and by political units such as states. As a consequence,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Overview

When information is digitized, it can be aggregated and shared nearly instantly. I am interested in how this acceleration in the aggregation and availability of information, via digitization, affects firms and firm strategy. Platforms have emerged as marketplaces for... View Details

April 2025
Case

Breezm: Innovative 3D-Printed Eyewear (A)

By: Juan Alcácer, Brian Mao Fu and Adina Wong

In 2023, Breezm, a South Korean startup, faced a strategic decision about how to grow its innovative 3D-printed, custom-fit eyewear business. Co-founded in 2017 by Zenma Park and Wooseok Sung, Breezm combined facial scanning, AI, and in-house production to solve the... View Details

Keywords: 3D Printing; Eyeyewear; Growth; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Expansion; South Korea

January 2025
Case

Untapped Global: Financing Africa's Missing Middle

By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli

In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details

October 2018
Case

Fairview Capital

By: Steven Rogers and Derrick Collins

JoAnn Price and Dr. Larry Morse were the first African-Americans to launch a fund of funds in the private equity industry. Their fund, Fairview capital, was created in response to the dearth of capital invested in private equity funds managed by black and other... View Details

Keywords: Alternative Assets; Fund Of Funds; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Decision Making; Strategy; United States

25 Jul 2019
Blog Post

Advancing a More Sustainable World with an MBA/MPA-ID

change was a reality we lived with every day – experienced in wildly fluctuating rains that flooded my house, turbulent storms that eroded roads, and increases in sea levels that caused thousands of Maldivians to migrate to my city. This reality drove my View Details

December 2011
Article

CEO and Board Chair Roles: To Split or Not to Split?

By: Aiyesha Dey, Ellen Engel and Xiaohui Liu

We examine the performance and compensation implications of firms' decisions to combine the roles of CEO and board chairman (duality). We document that firms that split the CEO and chairman positions due to investor pressure have significantly lower announcement... View Details

Keywords: CEO Duality; Board Chairman; Firm Performance; Pay-performance Sensitivity; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leadership; Performance Efficiency

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29 Apr 2015
Lessons from the Classroom

Use Personal Experience to Pick Winning Stocks

investing clubs can be incredibly valuable," he says, recommending that investors find a group of 10 to 15 people who can share information and provide feedback on their trades. "The group decision... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

Forthcoming
Article

Catching Outliers: Committee Voting and the Limits of Consensus When Financing Innovation

By: Andrey Malenko, Ramana Nanda, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Savitar Sundaresan

We document that investment committees of major VCs use a voting rule where one partner `championing' an early-stage investment is sufficient to invest. Their stated reason for this rule is to `catch outliers'. The same VCs use a more conventional `majority' rule for... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Voting Rules; Innovation and Invention; Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making; Voting

SSRN

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November – December 2011
Article

Most Likely to Succeed: Leadership in the Industry

By: Robert C. Pozen and Theresa Hamacher

What is the critical factor for success in the U.S. mutual fund industry? Is it top-ranked investment performance, innovative products, or pervasive distribution? In our view, it is none of these factors, despite their obvious importance. Instead, the best predictors... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Success; Investment Funds; Rank and Position; Performance; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Product; Distribution; Forecasting and Prediction; Asset Management; Governance Controls; United States

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February 2013 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Agero: Enhancing Capabilities for Customers

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates the importance of choosing a primary customer as the basis for organization design. Cross Country Group managers adjusted resource allocation, organization design and performance measures over time to transform Cross Country Group from an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurial Gap; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; Insurance; Performance Management; Performance Measurement; Performance Measures; Performance Pressure; Decisions; Family Business; Resource Allocation; Organizational Design; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Evaluation; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry

January 2021
Case

Rio Tinto Aluminum: Can Purpose Lead to Profit?

By: David Fubini and Agastya Muthanna

This case describes the tradeoffs Rio Tinto faces as it considers investments to ensure environmentally friendly, sustainability produced aluminum with the potential risks of competitive pricing and profit loses. View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Investment; Price; Competition; Profit; Cost vs Benefits; Mining Industry

Research Summary

Optimal Portfolios with Housing Derivatives

Households that contemplate moving to different cities or trading up or down in the fu-ture are exposed to substantial housing risk. In order to mitigate this risk, I derive the op-timal portfolios using housing futures. In addition to the optimum growth portfolio,... View Details

October 2023
Case

Driving Sustainability at AB InBev

By: Ethan Rouen and Antonio Manuel Oftelie

It was the height of the summer in 2022, and Michel Doukeris, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), and Peter Kraemer, the company’s Chief Supply Officer, gazed across the vast desert surrounding Zacatecas, Mexico. They were visiting their Grupo Modelo Brewery,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Transformation; Decisions; Environmental Sustainability; Leading Change; Growth Management; Business Model; Food and Beverage Industry; Mexico