Publications

November 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

SBC Foundation, The

By: Diana Barrett, Sarah Aaron and Cassandra Hanley

Examines the role of the corporation as it makes philanthropic donations. Questions raised include the connection between corporate strategy and giving, the degree to which grant making should be decentralized, and the size and focus of grants. View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

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January 2022
Supplement

Kornit Digital: The Amazon Warrants (C)

By: Benjamin C. Esty, E. Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher

As of 12/31/21, Amazon held $22 billion of equity and warrants in related companies. In fact, it often requests a free grant of warrants when it enters into a new commercial agreement with a supplier. Over the past 20 years, Amazon has gotten warrants almost 20... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Value Creation; Consumer Behavior; Negotiation; Distribution; Ownership; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Equity; Distribution Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

1998
Case

Nucor Corporation (A)

By: Vijay Govindarajan

Under the leadership of CEO Ken Iverson, Nucor thrived. Nucor's structure was decentralized, with only four management layers. Only 22 employees worked at the corporate headquarters; plants were located in rural areas across the U.S. and the general manager of each... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy

09 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Stock Options Are Not All Created Equal

Most of the companies I've studied don't pay a whole lot of attention to the way they grant options. Their directors and executives assume that the important thing is just to have a plan in place; the details are trivial. As a result,... View Details

Keywords: by Brian Hall

April 2017
Case

The Future of Patent Examination at the USPTO

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Sarah Mehta

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the federal government agency responsible for evaluating and granting patents and trademarks. In 2015, the USPTO employed approximately 8,000 patent examiners who granted nearly 300,000 patents to inventors. As of April... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Telework; Collaborating With Unions; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Trademarks; Knowledge Sharing; Technology Adoption; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; District of Columbia

Research Summary

Overview

Grant uses a combination of laboratory and field experiments to harness consumers' cognitive and affective resources to increase their well-being. Consumers make countless daily decisions in the pursuit of happiness -- whether and how to spend or save their money, what... View Details

Keywords: Well-being; Judgment And Decision Making; Health; Prosocial Behavior

Article

Why Schumpeter Was Right: Innovation, Market Power and Creative Destruction in 1920s America

By: Tom Nicholas

Are firms with strong market positions powerful engines of technological progress? Joseph Schumpeter thought so, but his hypothesis has proved difficult to verify empirically. This article highlights Schumpeterian market-power and creative-destruction effects in a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Power and Influence; Emerging Markets; Rank and Position; Status and Position; Capital Markets; Capital Structure; Information Technology; Patents; Creativity; Economic Systems; Development Economics; United States

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February 2015
Case

Credem: Banking on Cheese

By: Nikolaos Trichakis, Gerry Tsoukalas and Emer Moloney

Credem, an Italian regional bank, grants loans to Parmigiano Reggiano producers and holds the cheese as collateral in its own warehouse during the maturation process, essentially replacing part of the operations for the cheese producers and gaining deep operations... View Details

Keywords: Banks And Banking; Assets; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Operations; Financing and Loans; Commercial Banking; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Italy

03 May 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Can a Social Entrepreneur End Homelessness in the US?

Keywords: Re: Brian L. Trelstad

2015
Working Paper

Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules

By: Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Danielle Li and Bhaven N. Sampat

We quantify the impact of scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on patenting by pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Our paper makes two contributions. First, we use newly constructed bibliometric data to develop a method for flexibly... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of Science; Patenting; Academic Reserach; NIH; Knowledge Spillovers; Patents; Research; Government and Politics

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20 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Misgovernance at the World Bank

Keywords: by Ashwin Kaja & Eric Werker

24 Oct 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How the United States Air Force Accelerated AI Adoption

Keywords: Re: Maria P. Roche

2009
Report

Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement

By: Mark R. Kramer, Marcie Parkhurst and Lalitha Vaidyanathan

The traditional approach to measuring each individual grant and nonprofit initiative separately prevents learning and improvement, because no 2 efforts can be compared on a consistent basis. This research highlights 20 social enterprises that developed innovative... View Details

Keywords: Impact Evaluation; Impact Measurement; Social Enterprise; Organizations; Performance Effectiveness; Measurement and Metrics

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October 2011 (Revised December 2011)
Case

Vignette: Alternative Liquidity Options

By: Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

The growth of companies that facilitate the sales of unregistered stock, such as that granted to employees of successful but long-private companies, has raised a number of questions among regulators, investors, and company founders. This brief vignette sketches out... View Details

Keywords: Financial Liquidity; Private Equity; Stocks; Business Growth and Maturation; Sales

16 Jan 2024
Cold Call Podcast

How SolarWinds Responded to the 2020 SUNBURST Cyberattack

Keywords: Re: Frank Nagle; Information Technology

March 1997 (Revised January 1999)
Case

SureCut Shears, Inc.

By: W. Carl Kester

A bank loan officer must determine whether to waive convenants and extend terms on a line of credit granted to SureCut Shears. At issue is whether the inability of SureCut to pay down its line of credit is due to a temporary cyclical downturn or other long-term... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Finance; Performance; Problems and Challenges

March 1999 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Cross Country Group, The: A Piece of the Rock (A)

By: Robert L. Simons and Indra Reinbergs

A new MBA graduate joins a privately held family business and sets ambitious growth goals for the next five years. To enhance motivation, he proposes a new incentive plan that will grant him a share of the wealth he creates. However, the family owners have a more... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Decisions; Motivation and Incentives; Business Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Risk and Uncertainty; Growth and Development; Planning; Accounting Industry; Employment Industry

October, 2023
Article

Cleaning Up the Great Lakes: Housing Market Impacts of Removing Legacy Pollutants

By: Alecia Cassidy, Robyn C. Meeks and Michale R. Moore

The Great Lakes and their tributaries make up the largest freshwater system on the planet, providing drinking water and recreational value to millions of people. Yet manufacturing plants left a legacy of toxic pollutants in the region, tarnishing it as part of the... View Details

Keywords: Valuation Of Environmental Effects; Housing Demand; Water Pollution; Water Quality; Infrastructure; Pollution; Consumer Behavior

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March 2023 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Accelerating AI Adoption in the U.S. Air Force

By: Maria P. Roche and Alexander Farrow

In August 2022, the Pentagon tasked U.S. Air Force Captain Victor Lopez to launch a new office for AFWERX, an Air Force innovation unit that leveraged commercial developers and military talent to acquire advanced technologies. This task was particularly arduous because... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Organizational Design; AI and Machine Learning; Adoption; Technology Adoption; United States