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October 2011 (Revised November 2011)
Case

Verengo Solar Plus!

By: William A. Sahlman, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Liz Kind

In the three years since Bishop and Button purchased Verengo in a leveraged buyout (LBO), the company had gone through dramatic changes. Initially a residential windows and insulation firm, after the economic recession of 2008 the company switched gears and began... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Growth Management; Restructuring; Renewable Energy; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Corporate Finance; Product Development; Energy Industry; California

September 2020
Case

An Introduction to Money Laundering: 'The Hunter'

By: Eugene Soltes, Guilhem Ros and Grace Liu

Money laundering schemes disguise the criminal origins of an estimated 2% to 5% of the world’s gross domestic product. Money laundering not only enables criminals to escape detection, but may also be used to finance further criminal operations including terrorism. This... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Accounting Audits; Financial Reporting; Financial Institutions; Banks and Banking; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Governance Controls; International Relations; National Security; Ethics; Accounting Industry; Banking Industry; United States; Europe

October 24, 2018
Article

End the Corporate Health Care Tax

By: Mark R. Kramer and John Pontillo

Imagine if a single piece of legislation could effectively eliminate all U.S. corporate taxes, subsidize hundreds of millions of dollars in new corporate investment, increase the take-home pay of most U.S. employees, ease state and local budgets, and reduce the U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Taxation; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Taxation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; United States

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2010
Working Paper

Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen

We examine in this paper the differential response of establishments to the global financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in determining micro economic performance. Using a new worldwide dataset that reports the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; International Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Local Range; Multinational Firms and Management; Production; Performance Evaluation; Networks

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March 2010 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Public Education in New Orleans: Pursuing Systemic Change through Entrepreneurship

By: Stacey M. Childress and James Weber

After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August 2005, the state had taken over 102 of the 118 public schools in New Orleans and shifted the management structure from a “single school system to a system of schools.” Entrepreneurs from the region and around the... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Governance; Natural Disasters; Education; Entrepreneurship; Education Industry; New Orleans

03 Nov 2016
HBS Seminar

Thomas Fujiwara, Princeton University

January 2013 (Revised May 2013)
Case

Kunshan, Incorporated: The Making of China's Richest Town

By: William C. Kirby, Nora Bynum, Tracy Yuen Manty and Erica M. Zendell

In 1980, the city of Kunshan was mere countryside, registering neither on the Chinese government's nor the international business community's radar. By 2010, Kunshan had become the richest city per capita in China and a global technology powerhouse, home to companies... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Investment; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Emerging Markets; FDI; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Innovation Leadership; Technology Industry; China; Taiwan Strait

November 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Supplement

Accounting Outages at Plug Power? (C)

By: Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli and James Barnett

Set in June 2023, the C case explores Plug Power’s recovery from its financial restatements, how it benefited from government subsidies, and new strategic alliances. View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Financial Reporting; Ethics; Finance; Management; Social Enterprise; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States; Europe

21 May 2015
Blog Post

3 Ways to Fund Your HBS MBA

Trying to figure out how you’re going to afford your Harvard MBA can feel very scary – I definitely remember the sticker shock I felt when I read the expected student budget for the first time. Luckily, there are a lot of ways for you to get support as you decide how... View Details

October 2021
Case

Financial Reporting at Mattel

By: Aiyesha Dey, Trung Nguyen, Marshal Herrmann and Julia Kelley

In September 2020, Diana Ferguson was nearing her first Audit Committee meeting as the newly appointed Audit Committee chair of Mattel, Inc. Mattel was just recovering from an accounting scandal which had revealed the company’s poor internal controls and weak board... View Details

Sonoma County, Calif., can enhance its ability to withstand and recover from wildfires by re-envisioning its land use, energy, and housing policies through a cooperative... View Details

April 2011 (Revised May 2013)
Case

South Africa (A): Stuck in the Middle?

By: Richard H. K. Vietor and Diego Comin

Fifteen years after ending apartheid, formal unemployment in South Africa was still at 24%. While the country had grown at 4 to 5% annually during the 2000s, the financial crisis set it back by 1 million more unemployed. Moreover, it seemed as if the nation were stuck... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Inflation and Deflation; Policy; Employment; Wages; Competition; South Africa

06 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Buy Local? The Geography of Successful and Unsuccessful Venture Capital Expansion

Keywords: by Henry Chen, Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner & Josh Lerner

April 2010
Article

Managed Globalization: Doctrine, Practice, and Promise

By: Rawi Abdelal and Sophie Meunier

Two alternate visions for shaping and explaining the governance of economic globalization have been in competition for the past 20 years: an ad hoc, laissez-faire vision promoted by the United States versus a managed vision relying on multilateral rules and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Trade; Globalized Economies and Regions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competition; European Union; United States

Research Summary

Overview

Dr. Sheth's research focuses on Indian political economy and social history from the sixteenth century to the contemporary, concentrating on the relationship between business households, financial capital, landed rights, and the dissolution and formation of states.... View Details

18 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

No More General Tso's? A Threat to 'Knowledge Recombination'

have unlocked new technologies in countries where they’ve migrated. When French Huguenots fled religious persecution in the 18th century, they came to Brandenburg-Prussia, where they brought secrets of cloth dyeing and silk production that transformed the View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health; Food & Beverage; Accounting

William R. Kerr

William Kerr is the D’Arbeloff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Bill is Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research, co-director of Harvard’s Managing the Future of Work initiative, and faculty chair of the... View Details

Keywords: communications; computer; consulting; high technology; information technology industry; management consulting; manufacturing; telecommunications; venture capital industry

03 Jan 2022
News

A Green Light for Corruption

May 1999 (Revised November 2000)
Case

AES Global Values

By: Lynn S. Paine

Members of the development team for the AES Corp.'s power plant project in India must decide what plant technology to specify in their application for techno-economic clearance from the government of India's Central Electric Authority. Their choice is between more... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Generation; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; India; United States