Publications

February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

Blue Haven Initiative: The PEGAfrica Investment

By: Vikram S. Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Amram Migdal

This case examines Blue Haven Initiative (BHI), an impact investing fund and family office, and one of its investments, PEGAfrica (PEG). BHI founder Liesel Pritzker Simmons’ motivations for using her family wealth to start a family office focused on impact investing,... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Family Office; Development; International Development; International Development Investing; Development Fund; Sustainability; Solar Energy; Solar; Pay As You Go; PAYG; MFI; Social Venture; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Economics; Development Economics; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Sources; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Assets; Asset Pricing; Capital; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Venture Capital; Cash; Cash Flow; Currency; Currency Exchange Rate; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Stock Shares; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; International Finance; Investment; Investment Return; Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Price; Geography; Geographic Location; Emerging Markets; Ownership; Ownership Stake; Private Ownership; Social Enterprise; Value; Valuation; Value Creation; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Green Technology Industry; Africa; United States

14 Feb 2023
HBS Case

Is Sweden Still 'Sweden'? A Liberal Utopia Grapples with an Identity Crisis

to expand its political platform, linking the migrants to a rising crime rate and other ills. “It’s a problem that’s playing out not just in Europe, but in the US as well,”... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

13 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Do Private Equity Buyouts Get a Bad Rap?

firms often hunt for target companies they see as undervalued. By cutting costs or reorganizing, the acquirer can improve productivity and position the firm for profitable operations or a future sale. In... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Financial Services

January 2000 (Revised April 2000)
Case

StarMedia: Launching a Latin American Revolution

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust

By the fall of 1999, StarMedia had sprinted to a sizable lead in the race to acquire Latin American Internet users. Its pan-regional, horizontal portal was the first to target Spanish- and Portuguese-language speakers on the Internet, registering 1.2 billion page views... View Details

Keywords: Private Ownership; History; Risk Management; Business Cycles; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Infrastructure; Media; Emerging Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Web; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry

01 Jun 2015
News

Leadership on a Global Stage

election, Jefferson was offered the position of Assistant Secretary for the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training (VETS) program. He served for two years as the CEO of VETS, a national... View Details

Keywords: Robert S. Benchley

July 2010
Case

Mekong Capital: Building a Culture of Leadership in Vietnam

By: Christopher Marquis, Vinay Ganti, Kevin Smith and Doug Guthrie

Mekong Capital, a private equity firm specializing in investing in Vietnam, had grown dramatically since its inception in 2002 and faced numerous organizational issues in 2007. There was a shortage of qualified middle managers, an overall lack of leadership, and a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leading Change; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams; Alignment; Financial Services Industry

23 Dec 2002
Research & Ideas

Setting the Stage: A Young Scholar at HBS

Rohit Daniel Wadhwani's research and teaching interests lie in business and financial history and public policy. He received his B.A. with honors from Yale College in 1991. From 1991 to 1995 he worked as a... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard; Financial Services; Financial Services

13 May 2019
Blog Post

The Many Facets of Becoming a Mother at HBS

(the robes hide the belly nicely!). I worked in PE, was sponsored at HBS, and figured that business school would be a great time to have kids given the easier schedule compared to the world of finance. While nothing about having kids... View Details

2023
Book

Deeply Responsible Business.: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership

By: Geoffrey Jones

Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should... View Details

09 Jul 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring Social Performance

Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim & V. Kasturi Rangan

05 May 2003
What Do You Think?

Is This a Golden Era for Marketing Productivity?

equally interesting question of whether it is more important to obtain the thinking of a few potential customers or to focus on dissatisfied current users of a product or service. View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

02 Oct 2017
What Do You Think?

Do Bitcoin and Digital Currency Have a Future?

mathematical puzzles,” receiving Bitcoins as payment for their services. Today, the largest “miner” of Bitcoins is a factory containing 25,000 computers and serviced on View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett; Financial Services

13 Dec 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Metaverse Seoul: How One City Used Citizen Input to Pilot a Government-Run Metaverse

Keywords: Re: Mitchell B. Weiss; Technology; Entertainment & Recreation

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

information, such as by aggregating and analyzing publicly available data. Second, once the platform identifies its different sides, it can offer a service that helps attract... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

July 2018
Case

LIXIL Group Corporation: Building a New Company in an Old Industry

By: Boris Groysberg and Akiko Kanno

In the spring of 2018, Kinya Seto, president and CEO of LIXIL Group Corporation, a major housing and building products and services company, called a meeting at the company’s head office in central Tokyo to discuss how to implement the new three-year strategic plan.... View Details

Keywords: Turnaround; Leadership And Change Management; Consolidation; Change Management; Leadership; Global Strategy; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Japan

May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Airbnb During the Pandemic: Stakeholder Capitalism Faces a Critical Test

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison Ciechanover

As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Leadership; Digital Platforms; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Value Creation; Decision Making; Goals and Objectives; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Service Industry; Service Industry; Service Industry; United States

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

store.” Instead, the sales associates—nicknamed “blue shirts” after Best Buy’s trademark royal-blue collared shirts—brought the injured T. rex to a service counter and performed “surgery” on the toy View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

08 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Recalling My First Cold Call: A Conversation with Second-Year Students

Entrepreneurship Club, and the Women In Investing Club. After graduation she will be joining Amazon as a senior technical product manager in Amazon Web Services (AWS), where... View Details

2015
Working Paper

Are CEOs Born Leaders? Lessons from Traits of a Million Individuals

By: Renée Adams, Matti Keloharju and Samuli Knüpfer

What makes a CEO? We merge data on the traits of more than one million Swedish males, measured at age 18 in a mandatory military enlistment test, with data on their service as a CEO of any Swedish company decades later. CEOs have higher cognitive and non-cognitive... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; Management Teams