Small Companies - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

Creating Leaders for Science-Based Businesses

to know how to get those discoveries into the economy." To achieve that goal, Bowen and others believe that science-based companies require a different kind of leadership. "Since the investment and R&D decisions you make... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Biotechnology; Health

22 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

The COVID-19 Mutiny: When Teams Leave and Take Their Clients

recruiters, interview with companies, and have private conversations with clients and team members (more on that later). Companies monitor productivity and goals, but in a world where COVID-19 has turned many View Details

Keywords: by Robin Abrahams, Boris Groysberg, and Steven L. Manchel

24 Oct 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Startup or Established Company? Which Is Best for You?

Here’s my perspective on the tradeoffs. Putting aside for a moment industry preferences and how you feel about the products the company is building (both of which are very important!), most of the differences between a startup and mature... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

08 Dec 2022
HBS Case

The War in Ukraine and Nestlé’s Moral Dilemma: Stay or Leave Russia?

today’s leaders face when confronted with a moral dilemma. Even though the business in Russia represented a small portion of Nestlé’s worldwide sales, staying in the country could have had an outsized impact on the company’s reputation.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

10 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Amazon Web Services Changed the Way VCs Fund Startups

More entrepreneurs are receiving initial funding from VCs thanks to technologies such as the cloud. Source: PeopleImages As cloud technologies allow startups to build companies faster and cheaper than ever before, venture capitalists are... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Banking; Financial Services; Information Technology

02 Nov 2016
What Do You Think?

Are Employees Becoming Job 'Renters' Instead of 'Owners'?

disposable as a BIC pen. Small wonder they’ll react as owners.” DRE added that job renting is code for job instability. “When you kill the opportunity to own a job, it is only a matter of time before the economic circle shrinks to (the)... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

25 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Planning for Surprises

independently operating silos and the filtering of information as it passes up through the hierarchies. Political vulnerabilities contribute to predictable surprises when a small number of individuals and organizations are able to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

18 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 18, 2007

Bruce Harreld, Charles A. O'Reilly III, and Michael Tushman Periodical:California Management Review 49, no. 4 (summer 2007) Abstract In the past 15 years, the IBM Company has undergone a remarkable transformation from a struggling seller... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Web

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets - Faculty & Research

spent hours, sometimes contacting mymuesli for advice or abandoning the purchase altogether. Bessau wondered if the company could limit customer questions and increase order completion rates and sales by simplifying mymuesli’s customer... View Details

08 May 2006
Research & Ideas

The Cost of Cutting in Line

No one likes to waste time standing in line. So why don't more people try to bribe their way to the front? Should companies allow some customers to move to the front of the line for a hefty fee? Is there a market for time? Felix... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

02 Oct 2000
Research & Ideas

The Dubious Logic of Global Megamergers

ones—lots of growth opportunities. The 1998 merger of BP and Amoco, for example, led to the disposal of 12 oil-storage terminals scattered across North America. The terminals were purchased by the Williams Companies, a small business... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat & Fariborz Ghadar

2012
Teaching Note

ChemChina (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donghong Li, Lei Li and Hong Zhang

ChemChina is China's largest basic chemical manufacturing firm. It was included in Fortune Global 500 in 2011 and 2012, ranked No. 475 and 402. Its sales revenue in 2011 was 179 billion yuan, and profit was 600 million yuan. The year-end total assets were 254.2 billion... View Details

Keywords: Reorganization; Strategy; China; China

Citation

Purchase

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

The Right Connections

assess the quality of the young firm." It was while following a friend's small biotech firm as it went public that Higgins first noticed that pre-IPO discussions consistently homed in on one question: "What View Details

Keywords: by Judith A. Ross

25 Aug 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Agglomeration and Innovation

Keywords: by Gerald A. Carlino & William R. Kerr

30 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Germany’s Pioneering Corporate Managers

Siemens, the Deutsche Bank, Dresdner, Bosch, BASF, and so on, all managed to somehow reconstruct and reinvent themselves after these upheavals. So I intended to write a long-term study about a company or factory with a focus on its... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Disruption: The Art of Framing

used. Separation seemed to help companies untangle the contradictory imperatives of threat and opportunity. Released from obligations to the parent organizations, freestanding ventures were more likely to view the new business as an... View Details

Keywords: by Clark Gilbert & Joseph L. Bower

Web

Impact Investing | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

to its investments in building coffee f... PayJoy: Finance for the Next Billion By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott January 2025 | Faculty Research PayJoy, an impact-driven financial technology company founded in 2015, provides... View Details

24 Oct 2016
Research & Ideas

Bernie Madoff Explains Himself

I couldn’t attain,” Madoff recalls in the recording. The “slippery slope” that enables a small transgression to grow into a bigger one: “I started to go off the tracks, and I was able to convince myself that this was, you know, a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

Web

Faculty & Research - Business & Environment

Mitchell The case opens in March 2023, as Sten van der Ham and Jaap Maljers, CEO and co-founder of eBee, an electric bike (e-bike) company in Africa, are contemplating the different avenues for growth and path to profitability for the... View Details

Web

Entrepreneurship - Faculty & Research

Master it and you will be in a better position to make your company a massive success. But how do you finance a new venture? In this note, I will try to help answer this question by addressing the following topics: Types of funding. The... View Details

Publications