Publications

January 1994 (Revised April 1995)
Case

EMC Corporation: Response to Shareholder Litigation (A)

By: Josh Lerner

EMC Corp. is the target of a shareholder class-action lawsuit for the second time. CEO, Richard Egan, must decide whether to settle the case, as is done in 96% of such cases and as EMC itself did previously, or fight the action. View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Lawsuits and Litigation; Going Public; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations; Technology Industry; United States

October 2017 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Snap Inc. Goes Public (A)

By: Lynn Sharp Paine and Will Hurwitz

Snap Inc.’s chairman must decide how to address investor concerns about the company’s unprecedented plans to issue only non-voting shares in its upcoming IPO. The case is set in early 2017 following the public availability of Snap’s IPO filing with the U.S. Securities... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Capital Structure; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Going Public; Business and Shareholder Relations; Leadership; Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; California

01 Mar 2010
News

Light Looks Back on Forty-Year HBS Career

to the institution who have a collective responsibility and ownership for what it is to become. That is how I’ve always thought about it. I saw myself as managing the process by which the senior partners thought about where we wanted to... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

Web

Courses by Faculty Unit - Course Catalog

Course Title Faculty Name Term Quarter Credits Business and Geopolitics Jeremy Friedman Fall 2024 Q1 1.5 Capitalism and the State (CATS) (also listed under General Management) Debora L. Spar Fall 2024 Q1Q2 3.0 Capitalism: Past, Present,... View Details

01 Jun 2010
News

M.I.A. Boards

requirements for equity ownership by directors, and bylaws should require them. The “play money” distributed in the form of stock options and gifts of restricted stock should not be included. Directors should have a meaningful percentage... View Details

Keywords: John Gillespie;David Zweig; Finance

06 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 6

http://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Innovation-Economics-Creative-Organizations/dp/1422143635/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351005820&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Architecture+of+Innovation The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 1994 (Revised April 1995)
Case

Visionary Design Systems: Are Incentives Enough?

By: George P. Baker III and Karin B Monsler

A compensation case about Visionary Design Systems (VDS), a small, high-tech full service systems integration firm based in Silicon Valley with eleven offices throughout the country. All employees, including engineers, administrators, and receptionists, received a... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; San Francisco

February 1997 (Revised July 2004)
Case

Walden Woods

By: William J. Poorvu and Arthur I Segel

In 1984, Mortimer Zuckerman and Ed Linde, through their firm, Boston Properties (BP), acquired land in Concord, MA to build a 147,000-square-foot, first-class suburban office building. BP proceeded to go through the permitting and approval process with the town and was... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Property; Environmental Sustainability; Conflict and Resolution; Real Estate Industry; Massachusetts

July 2007 (Revised July 2008)
Case

The Beijing Dream

By: Arthur I Segel, Voon Siang Lee, Jialei Tian and Ying Laura Wang

The purchase of a single-family home is generally the major investment for most young couples in China. Shows in detail the process that a young couple goes through in late April 2007 to find, finance, and close on an apartment in Beijing within what they believe to be... View Details

Keywords: Property; Investment; Cost; Emerging Markets; Financing and Loans; Acquisition; Activity Based Costing and Management; Internet and the Web; Management Practices and Processes; Real Estate Industry; Beijing; United States

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

inequality typically exhibit less support for government-led redistribution and greater acceptance of wage inequality (e.g., United States versus Western Europe). If individual nations evolve along this pattern, a vicious cycle could form... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

The Widening Rift Between Corporations and Society

processes of production and distribution. This was a massive innovation over the older model of a single owner who tried to oversee everything. Under managerial capitalism, ownership became dispersed, but control remained concentrated in... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Web

Courses by Title - Course Catalog

Capitalism and the State (CATS) Business, Government & the International Economy, General Management Debora L. Spar Fall 2024 Q1Q2 3.0 Capitalism: Past, Present, Future Business, Government & the International Economy Sophus A. Reinert... View Details

December 2010
Compilation

VCPE Strategy Vignettes II

By: Josh Lerner, G. Felda Hardymon, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Ann Leamon and Lisa Strope

These three vignettes present various issues around the strategy and management of venture capital and private equity firms. In one, a senior partner must decide how to manage an over-extended colleague and how to reduce the risk of the firm's portfolio; the second... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Cost vs Benefits; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Investment Portfolio; Ownership; Partners and Partnerships; Risk Management; Stocks; Problems and Challenges; United States

June 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Exchange-Traded Funds at Vanguard (A)

By: Robert C. Pozen and Steven Vickers

Vanguard Group management, led by CEO John Brennan, was considering whether to launch exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in early 2000. ETFs, first created in the early 1990s, combined aspects of traditional mutual funds and closed-end funds. The US ETF industry had reached... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development Strategy; Experience and Expertise; Market Entry and Exit; Network Effects; Profit; Business and Shareholder Relations; Product Launch; Asset Management; Distribution Channels; Ownership; Financial Services Industry; United States

August 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Songy 2011: Restructuring to Survive (or, Surviving to Restructure?)

By: Charles F. Wu

In 2011, Songy Partners, an Atlanta-based real estate developer, was facing three distressed investments within their portfolio each with distinct sets of challenges. Having weathered a myriad of issues during the global financial crisis that included operational... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Distressed Debt; Global Financial Crisis; Foreclosure; Partnership; Partners and Partnerships; Valuation; Global Range; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Property; Financial Crisis; Real Estate Industry; Atlanta

January 1998
Case

Meinhard v. Salmon: Court of Appeals of New York (1928)

By: Henry B. Reiling

Meinhard and Salmon were joint venturers who had a 20-year lease on the Hotel Bristol in New York City. Salmon was the managing party. Four months before the lease was to end, the owner approached Salmon and offered to lease all the property, of which the Bristol was... View Details

Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Joint Ventures; Partners and Partnerships; Decisions; Asset Pricing; Leasing; New York (city, NY)

Find at Harvard

01 Sep 2016
News

The Taxi Wars of Jakarta

on-demand business model. Its success was linked to the proliferation of smartphones in the United States, which made quickly ordering a car to the user’s location possible. A similar trend was emerging in Jakarta. That rapid growth of internet- ready cell phone View Details

Keywords: Jeffrey Hutton; Illustrations by Josh Cochran

November 2020
Supplement

Integrating Beam Suntory (B)

By: David G. Fubini, Rawi Abdelal and David Lane

Supplements (A) case: The spring 2014 acquisition of U.S. alcoholic spirits maker Beam Inc. by Japan’s Suntory Holdings vaulted Suntory from 15th to third-largest international spirits company in the world. Yet Suntory had borrowed nearly the entire $16 billion... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Communication; Borrowing and Debt; Globalization; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Retention; Leadership; Supply Chain; Organizational Structure; Ownership; Relationships; Conflict and Resolution; Integration; Value Creation; Food and Beverage Industry; Japan; United States; Chicago