Publications

April 2010 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Tremblant Capital Group

By: Robin Greenwood

Brett Barakett, CEO and founder of Tremblant Capital Group, a New York–based hedge fund, must decide what to do with his fund's position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which has dropped in value by more than 40% in recent months. Tremblant is a hedge fund that... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Behavioral Finance; Stocks; Investment Funds; Consumer Behavior; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry; New York (city, NY)

June 2016
Teaching Note

HubSpot: Lower Churn through Greater CHI

By: Jill Avery, Asis Martinez Jerez and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, a web marketing startup selling inbound marketing software to small- and medium-sized businesses, is under pressure from its venture capital partners to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. The B2B SaaS company is in the... View Details

Keywords: CRM; Customer Acquisition; Customer Retention; Churn Management; SaaS Business Models; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Startup; Software; Monitoring And Control; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Accounting; Technology Industry; United States

20 Sep 2004
Research & Ideas

How Consumers Value Global Brands

In 2002, we carried out a two-stage research project in partnership with the market research company Research International/USA to find out how consumers in different countries value global brands. First, we conducted a qualitative study... View Details

Keywords: by Douglas B. Holt, John A. Quelch & Earl L. Taylor

August 2023
Case

Floward

By: Krishna Palepu and Namrata Arora

In 2022, Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani, CEO and co-founder of Floward, an online flower and gifting company established in Kuwait in 2017, contemplated the firm's growth trajectory. Floward, an e-commerce enterprise that offered fresh-cut flowers sourced directly from... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Information Technology Industry; Middle East; North Africa; Saudi Arabia; Kuwait; United Arab Emirates; Jordan

August 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Latam Airlines and COVID-19: Seeking Bankruptcy Protection in the United States

By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Larrain, Carlos Vilches and Sarah Jeong

On May 26, 2020, Latam Airlines became the largest airline in the world to be driven to bankruptcy by COVID-19. With a complex debt structure and international investor composition, the company decided to file for bankruptcy protection in the United States, which... View Details

Keywords: Airlines; Pandemic; Coronavirus Pandemic; Health Pandemics; Air Transportation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Capital Markets; Strategy; Latin America; Chile; United States

2016
Working Paper

Options-Pricing Formula with Disaster Risk

By: Robert J. Barro and Gordon Y. Liao

A new options-pricing formula applies to far-out-of-the money put options on the overall stock market when disaster risk is the dominant force, the size distribution of disasters follows a power law, and the economy has a representative agent with Epstein-Zin utility.... View Details

Keywords: Option Pricing; Rare Disaster; Price; Stock Options; Financial Crisis

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January 2023 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Veeva Systems and the Transformation to a Public Benefit Corporation

By: Ranjay Gulati and Allison M. Ciechanover

Peter Gassner, the co-founder and CEO of Veeva Systems, steered the company through rapid scaling from its launch in 2007 to 2022. Year after year, the company had exceeded expectations, with its market capitalization reaching $50 billion at its peak. By 2022, the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Corporate Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California

21 Jul 2016
Cold Call Podcast

How Small Investors Can Bet Big on Brands They Love

Keywords: Re: Luis M. Viceira; Financial Services

March 2001 (Revised April 2003)
Case

Chase's Strategy for Syndicating the Hong Kong Disneyland Loan (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Michael Kane

In late 1999, the Walt Disney Co. and the Hong Kong government agreed to develop Hong Kong Disneyland, a HK$28 (U.S.$3.6) billion theme park and resort complex planned to open in late 2005. As part of the total financing package, the sponsors decided to raise HK$3.3... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Project Finance; Relationships; Financing and Loans; Financial Strategy; Tourism Industry; Hong Kong

December 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

i2 Technologies, Inc.

By: Ananth Raman and Jasjit Singh

Describes the emergence and growth of i2 Technologies and the supply chain planning software industry. In December 1998, i2's market capitalization was in excess of $2 billion; the supply chain planning software industry had annual sales of approximately $1 billion and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Applications and Software; Supply Chain Management; Production; Forecasting and Prediction; Information Technology Industry

December 2007
Article

Fair (and Not So Fair) Division

By: John W. Pratt

Drawbacks of existing procedures are illustrated and a method of efficient fair division is proposed that avoids them. Given additive participants' utilities, each item is priced at the geometric mean (or some other function) of its two highest valuations. The... View Details

Keywords: Price; Management Practices and Processes; Valuation

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October 1999 (Revised January 2000)
Case

W. R. Hambrecht & Co: OpenIPO

By: Andre F. Perold and Gunjan D. Bhow

OpenIPO is a new mechanism for pricing and distributing initial public offerings. The system, which is based on a Dutch auction, represents an attempt by the investment bank W.R. Hambrecht + Co. to change the manner in which IPOs are underwritten. The case provides a... View Details

Keywords: Investment Banking; Debt Securities; Stocks; Initial Public Offering; Price; Information; Auctions; Agreements and Arrangements; Distribution; Internet; Netherlands

Erik Stafford joined the faculty at HBS in July 1999, where he has taught finance in the required and elective curricula of the MBA Program and in the CFA Investment Management Workshop.

Erik's research efforts focus on investment management, capital... View Details

Keywords: financial services

05 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors

consumer needs and preferences. The issue is whether they do so as well as they could by using the most appropriate or insight-bearing tools and techniques. The high failure rate of new offerings and the failure of existing offerings to achieve View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products

22 Jul 2016
News

Verizon Still an Ad Laggard to Google, Facebook After Yahoo Deal

November 2018 (Revised August 2020)
Case

The Reinvention of Kodak

By: Ryan Raffaelli and Christine Snively

The Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) was a name familiar to most Americans. The company had dominated the film and photography industry through most of the 20th Century and was known for making affordable cameras (and the “Kodak Moment”) and supplying the movie industry... View Details

Keywords: CEO; Leadership; Asset Management; Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy

2007
Working Paper

Fair (and Not So Fair) Division

By: John W. Pratt

Drawbacks of existing procedures are illustrated and a method of efficient fair division is proposed that avoids them. Given additive participants' utilities, each item is priced at the geometric mean (or some other function) of its two highest valuations. The... View Details

Keywords: Fairness; Price