Publications

March 2003 (Revised November 2005)
Case

Bertelsmann AG

By: Bharat N. Anand, Michael G. Rukstad and Christoph Kostring

On July 28, 2002, Bertelsmann announced the firing of its CEO, Thomas Middelhoff, in a move that surprised industry observers, analysts, and many employees. Bertelsmann, a privately held company headquartered in Germany, was one of the largest global media... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Corporate Strategy; Entertainment; Media; Change Management; Integration; Resignation and Termination; Private Ownership; Initial Public Offering; Business Units; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Publishing Industry; Music Industry; Germany

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January 2003 (Revised June 2003)
Case

Adams Capital Management: March 2002

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

In March 2002, the five partners of Adams Capital Management (ACM), a venture capital firm investing in information technology telecommunications with $700 million under management, gathered to discuss whether they should change their strategy in view of the prolonged... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Venture Capital; Investment Portfolio; Business or Company Management; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry

Educators

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15 Apr 2024
Book

Struggling With a Big Management Decision? Start by Asking What Really Matters

book Your True Moral Compass: Defining Reality, Responsibility, and Practicality in Your Leadership Moments. In the following excerpt from the book, Badaracco, the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics, explains why it’s important for leaders to ask themselves four... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

23 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 23, 2008

Psychology. Vol. 40, edited by Mark P. Zanna, 61-149, 2008 Abstract The stereotype content model (SCM) defines two fundamental dimensions of social perception, warmth and competence, predicted respectively by perceived competition and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Research Summary

Winning Coalitions

By: James K. Sebenius

James K. Sebenius is examining the most effective ways to generate and sustain cooperation among a corporations many stakeholders. As the number of stakeholders grows, and management actions more often involve players outside the traditional chain of command and... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Ponzi Funds

By: Philippe van der Beck, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Dario Villamaina

Many active funds hold concentrated portfolios. Flow-driven trading causes price pressure, which pushes up the funds’ existing positions resulting in realized returns. We decompose fund returns into a price pressure (self-inflated) and a fundamental component and... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return; Price Bubble; Financial Reporting; Financial Liquidity

SSRN

Article

Decarbonization Factors

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington and Hui (Stacie) Wang

In the face of accelerating climate change, investors are making capital allocations seeking to decarbonize portfolios by reducing the carbon emissions of their holdings. To understand the performance of portfolio decarbonization strategies and investor behavior... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Investment Management; Factor Investing; Investor Behavior; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Investment; Management

SSRN

January 20, 2020
Article

Larry Fink Isn't Going to Read Your Sustainability Report

By: Mark R. Kramer

In his recent annual letter to CEOs, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink makes the stunning claim that climate change has brought us to “the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance” and “in the near future … a significant reallocation of capital.” BlackRock has committed to... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Business Model; Investment

Register to Read

September 2015
Article

Banks as Patient Fixed-Income Investors

By: Samuel G. Hanson, Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy C. Stein and Robert W. Vishny

We examine the business model of traditional commercial banks when they compete with shadow banks. While both types of intermediaries create safe "money-like" claims, they go about this in different ways. Traditional banks create money-like claims by holding illiquid... View Details

Keywords: Shadow Banking; Safe Money-like Claims; Commercial Banking

19 Oct 2021
HBS Seminar

Cynthia Rudin, Duke University

Web

Unique Value Proposition - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

demand side of the business. Strategy is fundamentally integrative, bringing the demand and supply sides together. Defining the Value Proposition: Three Essential Questions Which customers are you going to serve? Within an industry, there... View Details

30 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

All Eyes on Slovakia’s Flat Tax

percent in 2006—a record high. However, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the flat tax from that of the other reforms. Clearly, a lesson to be learned from Slovakia is that such a drastic change to fundamental tax habits needs... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Sep 2023
HBS Case

How Will the Tech Titans Behind ChatGPT, Bard, and LLaMA Make Money?

ChatGPT, Bard, and other AI chatbots—as well as the dueling tech titans behind them—and probe the strategic dilemmas ahead for innovators and users. The public's fascination with the human-like aspects of chatbots may be overshadowing more View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

31 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Observation Bias: The Impact of Demand Censoring on Newsvendor Level and Adjustment Behavior

Keywords: by David F. Drake

March 2025
Article

Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions

By: Alison Wood Brooks and Michael Yeomans

Humans spend much of their lives in conversation, where they tend to hold many simultaneous motives. We examine two fundamental desires: to be responsive to a partner and to disclose about oneself. We introduce one pervasive way people attempt to reconcile these... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Motivation and Incentives; Perception; Behavior

2011
Chapter

Prospective Codes Fufilled: A Potential Neural Mechanism of Will

By: Thalia Wheatley and Christine E. Looser

One of my few shortcomings is that I can’t predict the future.
Lars Ulrich, Metallica.

Lars Ulrich was right and wrong. He was right in the way we most often think about the future—as a long stretch of time during which multiply... View Details

Keywords: Free Will; Neuroscience; Responsibility; Prospection; Forecasting and Prediction; Science; Cognition and Thinking

10 Jul 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Communicating Frames in Negotiations

Keywords: by Kathleen L. McGinn & Markus Nöth

Article

How NFTs Create Value

By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers

How much could a cluster of pixels possibly be worth? More pointedly, why is it worth anything at all? The explosion of NFTs and their accompanying marketplaces have left many baffled, incredulous, and deeply skeptical. But while NFTs may be fetching eye-popping,... View Details

Keywords: Technological And Scientific Innovation; Crypto Economy; Blockchain; Technological Innovation; Currency; Technology Adoption; Digital Transformation

November–December 2019
Article

Pivoting Isn't Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures

By: Rory McDonald and Cheng Gao

New ventures often experience deviations from their plans that oblige them to reorient in pursuit of better fit between their evolving products and their target customers. Yet research is largely silent on how managers explain such changes and justify their ventures in... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Reorientation; Technology Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Product Development Processes; Organizational Adaptation; Qualitative Methods (General); Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Communication Strategy