Publications

19 Mar 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

8 Ways To Be An Environmentally Conscious Manager

iPhoto In an interview about his recent book Profits and Sustainability, which portrays the iconoclastic entrepreneurs who built green startups in the 19th century, Harvard Business School historian Geoffrey Jones notes that being a business-environmentalist can be... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Energy

Article

How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions

By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev

For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they’ve backed—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and more—are constantly in the headlines, very little is known about what VCs actually... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making

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2018
Working Paper

The State of Open Source Server Software

By: Shane Greenstein and Klaus Ackermann

The study assembles new data to construct a census of worldwide web server use across the globe. We document a large concentration of investment in the United States, and a wide dispersion across scores of countries. We find tens of billions of dollars of unmeasured... View Details

Keywords: Internet; Open Source; Internet and the Web; Policy; Open Source Distribution; Internet and the Web; Global Range

December 1998 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Knot, The

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael J. Roberts and Matthew C. Lieb

An online wedding resource company is seeking an equity investment to grow the business. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Venture Capital; Value Creation; Internet and the Web; Finance; Expansion; Strategic Planning; Service Industry; Consulting Industry

20 Sep 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Historical Origins of Environmental Sustainability in the German Chemical Industry, 1950s-1980s

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones & Christina Lubinski; Chemical

January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

SIN Capital and the Fullerton Health IPO

By: Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

In early 2016, David Sin, founder of the Singapore-based private equity group SIN Capital and chairman of its primary holding, Fullerton Health, was deeply involved in preparations for taking Fullerton public on the Singapore stock exchange. Three years after SIN... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Asia; IPO; Financing; Singapore; Growth; Health Care and Treatment; Private Equity; Initial Public Offering; Financing and Loans; Strategy; Value Creation; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Singapore

TeachingInterests

Strategy and Technology (Elective Curriculum)

By: David B. Yoffie

This course explores the unique aspects of creating effective management and investment strategies for technology-intensive businesses. What strategies can win in markets with strong network effects? How can firms leverage technology to build multi-sided platforms?... View Details

February 2017 (Revised June 2017)
Case

ExxonMobil: Business as Usual? (A)

By: George Serafeim, Shiva Rajgopal and David Freiberg

Climate change was becoming an important societal and business issue as more governments were introducing climate change related regulations and investors became increasibly worried about stranded assets within oil and gas firms. In September 2016, the U.S. Securities... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Oil Prices; Oil Companies; Asset Impairment; Predictive Analytics; Sustainability; Environmental Impact; Innovation; Disclosure; Accounting; Valuation; Climate Change; Renewable Energy; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Reporting; Energy Industry

Carl Kester is a Baker Foundation Professor and the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Finance Unit. He served as Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs (2006-2010), Chairman of the... View Details

Keywords: investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry; investment banking industry

05 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 5, 2007

Harvard Business School Case 406-033 In 2005, Tad Piper reflects on the successful spin-off from US Bancorp of Piper Jaffray, the investment bank founded by his grandfather. Profiles the development of Piper Jaffray from a Midwestern... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 2021
Case

Glass-Shattering Leaders: Ana Paula Pessoa

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Ana Paula Pessoa built a career at the largest media conglomerate in Latin America, combining a passion for digital transformation with a commitment to doing work that had a positive impact on society. Having grown up during a dictatorial military regime in Brazil, the... View Details

Keywords: Glass Ceiling; Leadership; Gender; Power and Influence

24 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Be an Angel Investor

over 100 early-stage deals, we believe that an investment opportunity has four essential elements, that, when brought together in the right form, represent a high-potential opportunity to make money. If only one of the elements is out of... View Details

Keywords: by David Amis & Howard Stevenson

2009
Working Paper

Can a Continuously-Liquidating Tontine (or Mutual Inheritance Fund) Succeed where Immediate Annuities Have Floundered?

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

A new instrument (the Mutual Inheritance Fund or MIF) is proposed whose purpose is to help people carry their savings forward from the moment they retire into their old age. Like annuities, this instrument requires an up-front payment before people receive any benefits... View Details

Keywords: Age; Annuities; Investment Return; Investment Funds; Saving; Retirement

2020
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 5 Ecosystems and Complementarities

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce two new building blocks to the theory of how technology shapes organizations. The first is a new layer of organization structure: a business “ecosystem.” The second is the economic concept of “complementarity.” Ecosystems are... View Details

Keywords: Business Ecosystems; Complementarity; Modularity; Information Technology; Organizations

SSRN

September 21, 2013
Other Article

Redefining Global Health-care Delivery

By: Jim Yong Kim, Paul E. Farmer and Michael E. Porter

Initiatives to address the unmet needs of those facing both poverty and serious illness have expanded significantly over the past decade. But many of them are designed in an ad-hoc manner to address one health problem among many; they are too rarely assessed; best... View Details

Keywords: Health

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1999
Other Unpublished Work

Executive Ownership and Control in Newly Public Firms: The Role of Venture Capitalists

By: Malcolm Baker and Paul Gompers

We study the implications of CEO equity ownership for incentives and control in a sample of 1,011 newly public firms. Before an initial public offering, equity investments by venture capitalists reduce CEO ownership by about half, from an average of 35 percent to 19... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Ownership; Motivation and Incentives; Initial Public Offering; Investment; Venture Capital; Managerial Roles; Cost Management; Governance Controls; Executive Compensation

October 2020
Supplement

TowerBrook: ESG in Action (B)

By: Victoria Ivashina, Brian Trelstad and Meaghan Conway

This case is the second of a two-part series that follows Ramez Sousou and his team at TowerBrook Capital Partners as they face a challenging investment decision in February of 2013. It is intended to be distributed at the end of the discussion of “TowerBrook: ESG in... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Finance; Private Equity; Corporate Governance; Value Creation

June 2006 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Creditor Activism in Sovereign Debt: 'Vulture' Tactics or Market Backbone

By: Laura Alfaro and Ingrid Vogel

The role of distressed debt funds, also known as "vulture funds," in sovereign debt restructuring was a hotly debated topic, especially after the success of Elliot Associates in converting an $11 million investment in Peruvian bonds worth $21 million into a $58 million... View Details

Keywords: Vulture Funds; Borrowing and Debt; Bonds; Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Sovereign Finance; Government and Politics; Contracts; Business and Government Relations; Peru

January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Case

TPG Rise Climate: Deploying 'Climate Capital'

By: Vikram S. Gandhi, David Allen, Sarah Mehta and Shannon Roche

This case is about TPG Rise Climate, a $7.3 billion climate impact fund launched in 2021 by alternative asset manager TPG. Climate investing is a complex, capital-intensive endeavor; entering it has forced TPG to think and act differently. Relative to other funds, Rise... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Environmental Management; Ownership; Science; Value; Asset Management; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Financial Markets; Financial Services Industry; California; San Francisco; New York (city, NY)