Publications

Career Coach

Rebecca Emerick

Rebecca is a Corporate Relations Director in the HBS Career & Professional Development (CPD) office. She has worked in CPD since 2008 and serves as the consulting industry lead for the office. In addition, she manages the recruiting... View Details

Keywords: Consulting

Working Paper

How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?

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

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing, investment selection, valuation, deal structure, post-investment value-added, exits, internal firm organization, and relationships... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Decision Choices and Conditions

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February 2000 (Revised October 2000)
Case

Open Market, Inc.: The E-Commerce Wars

By: James I. Cash Jr., Janis Lee Gogan, Michael Haselkorn and Mani Subramani

Continues the story of Open Market, Inc., a company founded in 1994 to support electronic commerce on the Internet. Despite a very successful initial public offering, the firm had reached a growth plateau, and the management team was considering several strategic... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Product Development; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

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05 Dec 2018
News

6 Ways Traveling Makes You A Better Employee

March 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Ethan Berman at RiskMetrics Group (A)

Ethan Berman, CEO of J.P. Morgan's risk management spinoff, has grown RiskMetrics Group (RMG) from a small team of 30 to a 70-person firm contemplating an IPO. Along the way, the consensus-based decision-making process that he espoused started to prove unwieldy; his... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Style; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Service Industry; Consulting Industry

December 2011 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Aviva Investors

By: George Serafeim

The Aviva Investors case describes the challenge of integrating sustainability considerations into the strategy and business practices of companies and into the decision making process of the investment community. Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at... View Details

Keywords: Investing; Investment Management; Shareholder Activism; Disclosure; Stock Exchanges; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Sustainability Reporting; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Social Impact; Activism; Investment; Management; Business and Shareholder Relations; Environmental Sustainability; United Kingdom

What are the biggest problems companies face in executing their strategies? Robert Simons explains why management teams must ask themselves tough questions, like "What could cause our business to fail?"

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October 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Case

Dove: Evolution of a Brand

By: John A. Deighton

Examines the evolution of Dove from functional brand to a brand with a point of view after Unilever designated it as a masterbrand, and expanded its portfolio to cover entries into a number of sectors beyond the original bath soap category. The development causes the... View Details

Keywords: History; Expansion; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Digital Marketing; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

Mark Roberge is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School. He teaches Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing in the second-year MBA program in the Fall term and The Entrepreneurial Manager and Startup Bootcamp in the... View Details

03 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

NFL Black Monday: How Much Do Coaches Really Matter?

fashion, CxOs and team leaders in the corporate world should be viewed as a source of competitive advantage for firms. Attracting, developing, motivating, and retaining great managers and leaders can also... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg & Abhijit Naik; Sports

Research Summary

Current Research

Professor Gardner’s research investigates two primary research questions, both particularly relevant to the management of professional service firms: (1) How are project teams able to most effectively use their members’ expertise in order... View Details

December 1998 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Tele-Communications, Inc.: Accelerating Digital Deployment

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

The top management team at Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), the largest U.S. cable company, conceived and implemented a dramatic operational turnaround and a radical new technology strategy over an 18-month period beginning in late 1996. View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Value Creation; Operations; Information Management; Business Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

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December 1999 (Revised May 2000)
Case

Morgan Stanley: Becoming a "One-Firm Firm"

By: M. Diane Burton, Thomas J. DeLong and Katherine Lawrence

John Mack, the newly appointed president of Morgan Stanley, feels strongly that the firm needs to change in order to compete in a changing investment banking environment. Mack and his senior team undertake initiatives in order to transform the culture and working style... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Competitive Strategy

October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

FARM Rio: Bringing a Brazilian Fashion Brand to the World

By: Isamar Troncoso and Jill Avery

FARM Rio, a twenty-six year old Brazilian fashion brand, had recently put down roots in the U.S. The brand, known for its bold, colorful, nature-inspired tropical prints, was testing the waters in Europe to assess if and how the brand should further expand globally.... View Details

Keywords: Global Marketing; Go-to-market Strategy; Global Branding; Brand Positioning; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Market Entry and Exit; Distribution Channels; Expansion; Fashion Industry; Brazil; United States; Europe

October 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems?

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Kelly McNamara

As the case opens in 1999, several key leaders at BlackRock, Inc., then a relatively small asset management firm, are trying to convince CEO Larry Fink and others that the firm should begin to offer Aladdin—its proprietary analytics and trading platform—to other asset... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States