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20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

Michael Beer and his coauthors at the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, the executives underscored the importance of higher-ambition goals, including engaging with and developing employee and customer commitment, contributing to the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Career Coach

Mo Fong

Mo Fong (HBS ‘02, Stanford ‘95 ChemE, ‘96 MA Education ) Mo is currently the Executive Director at Stanford Technology Ventures Program in the School of Management and Engineering focusing on entrepreneurship research, programs and... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Education; Government; Social Enterprise; Consumer Finance; Financial Services (All); Commercial Banking; Financial Services (All)

08 Nov 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Managers' Cultural Background and Disclosure Attributes

Keywords: by Francois Brochet, Gregory S. Miller, Patricia Naranjo, and Gwen Yu

John D. Macomber

John Macomber is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance unit at Harvard Business School. His professional background includes leadership of real estate, construction, and information technology businesses. At HBS, Mr. Macomber's work focuses on climate adaptation and the... View Details

Keywords: building materials; construction; energy; green technology; infrastructure industry; real estate; transportation; utilities; waste management; insurance industry

25 Oct 2010
HBS Case

Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market

preselected assortment. Q: The company did a serious amount of homework before entering the United States, including sending 50 British executives to live with California families. But it seems the advance team didn't learn all that it... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Leaders

Entrepreneurs, Managers and Leaders examines the role that business leaders play in shaping industries and how evolving industries shape leaders. This co-evolutionary process of leadership and industry development is told through the dynamic story of the... View Details

05 Feb 2025
Blog Post

Leadership with purpose: Redefining success and impact with Satpal Singh (SELP—India 4, 2019)

career before HBS had been driven by extensive execution and deep functional expertise. I had been fortunate to work in various domains, from strategic sourcing to operations, but I was searching for... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

16 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ‘The Strategist’

executives in Harvard's Entrepreneur, Owner, President (EOP) program. During that time, she realized that many of her students hadn't spent much time thinking about their own companies' strategies. In this excerpt, Montgomery describes a... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia A. Montgomery

29 Oct 2024
HBS Seminar

Lynn Wu, Wharton

Teaching Interest

Finance II (MBA Required Curriculum)

By: Benjamin C. Esty

This course builds on the foundation developed in Finance I, focusing on three sets of managerial decisions:

How to evaluate complex investments.
How to set and execute financial policies within a firm.
How to integrate... View Details

Keywords: Finance

January 1997
Case

Dr. Sergio Ceccuzzi and SMI: Negotiating Cross-Border Acquisitions in Europe (B)

By: James K. Sebenius

Since the 1960s, SMI has quietly executed a series of brilliantly negotiated takeovers throughout Europe, often acquiring companies much larger than itself. Despite formidable obstacles, SMI has managed to acquire state-owned competitors in Italy and France, as well as... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Corporate Governance; International Relations; Negotiation Tactics; Consolidation; Mining Industry; Europe

March 2006
Module Note

Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World

By: Alan D. MacCormack

Describes the second module of the 30-session Harvard Business School elective course Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World. The course helps students understand the challenges that uncertainty implies for innovation and how to overcome these challenges. The course... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Problems and Challenges; Business Processes; Perspective; Opportunities; Risk and Uncertainty; Managerial Roles; Product Design; Business Startups; Organizational Design

2017
Working Paper

The Right Mix: Angels, Venture Capitalists, and the Assembly of Entrepreneurial Resources

By: Benjamin Hallen and Rory McDonald

New ventures rely on external relationships for capital, knowledge, and networks. We examine how ventures assemble these resources—and whether they are all accessible from the same sources—in relationships with two types of investors: venture capital firms and angels.... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship

October 2002 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Hermitage Fund, The: Media and Corporate Governance in Russia

William Browder, the top executive of the Hermitage Fund, the best-performing international equity fund over the last five years, attributed much of his funds' strong returns to its focus on shareholder activism and corporate governance. In 2001, he was putting this... View Details

Keywords: Media; Corporate Governance; Investment Activism; Financial Services Industry; Russia

10 Nov 2015
First Look

November 10, 2015

share prices prior to turnover are not. A corollary is that a firm with poor stock market performance cannot, or will not, raise new capital unless the current CEO is replaced. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2010 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Alibaba Group

By: Julie M. Wulf

Discusses how Alibaba Group successfully managed new business ventures to become a leader in China's online marketplaces. Students follow Alibaba Group's transition from a startup to a multibusiness firm with over 15,000 employees in just over a decade. They analyze... View Details

Keywords: History; Business Subsidiaries; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Strategy; Executive Compensation; Business Headquarters; Cooperation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth and Development Strategy; China

October 2018
Case

Recipe for Success: Growth and Evolution at Cafe Cupcake

By: Anthony Mayo and Heather Beckham

Café Cupcake (CC) is a fast-casual restaurant chain that offers artisan cupcakes and light fare throughout the southeastern United States and Texas. This case chronicles the growth and evolution of Café Cupcake. It also considers the specific human resource challenges... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Human Resources; Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Food and Beverage Industry

25 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

The Powerful Strategic Tool Companies Should Not Try to Control

mind that communities are governed very differently than companies. User communities operate outside the boundaries of the firm even in cases where the community organizes around a firm’s core products––and View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Functional Centralization and the Division of Labor in Management

By: Julie Wulf, Maria Guadalupe and Hongyi Li

This paper shows that the trend towards flatter hierarchies in large US firms since the mid-80's has been accompanied by increased centralization of activities at the top of the organization. In particular, the number of functional managers (e.g., Chief Financial... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Management Teams; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Diversification; Information Technology; United States