Publications

Research Summary

Competing Platforms

This paper focuses on platform-intermediated markets where there are a small number of firms on one side and analyzes the strategic competition among platforms to get the oligopolistic side on-board. Due to the prevalence of both same and cross-side externalities,... View Details

February 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

International Steel Group

By: Paul W. Marshall and Todd H Thedinga

Profiles veteran investor Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.'s plan to turn around the aging steel assets of LTV, formerly America's second largest integrated steel producer. Purchasing several key assets from LTV under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code, Ross is able to acquire the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Strategic Planning; Lawfulness; Labor Unions; Organizational Culture; Agreements and Arrangements; Global Strategy; Assets; Steel Industry; United States

Monique Burns Thompson is an accomplished social entrepreneur who returns to HBS (class of 1993) and brings her twenty years of successful start-up and organizational leadership experience to her research and teaching at HBS. She has led as a co-founder, President,... View Details

October 2016 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Carrum Health: Scaling Bundled Payments

By: Robert S. Huckman and Sarah Mehta

Founded in 2014, Carrum Health helped self-insured employers located in three markets (San Diego, California; Seattle, Washington; and San Francisco, California) save money on their employees’ planned surgeries. It did so by contracting directly with top-quality... View Details

Keywords: Health Financing; Health Insurance; Value-based Healthcare Reimbursements; Bundled Payments; Innovation; Scale; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Industry; California; San Francisco; San Diego; Seattle

February 2011 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Product Development at OPOWER

By: Thomas Eisenmann and Rob Go

OPOWER, a software startup that helps utilities engage their customers in ways that reduce energy consumption, is scaling rapidly. The company's new head of product management has designed a system to address a point of constant tension: whether to build custom... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Customer Relationship Management; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Product Development; Sales; Customization and Personalization; Energy Conservation; Environmental Sustainability; Information Technology Industry; Utilities Industry

Web

PhD Programs - Doctoral

PhD Programs The start of your PhD program launches your journey to a career in business academia. Students in our PhD programs are encouraged from day one to think of this experience as their first job in business academia—a training... View Details

January 2014 (Revised February 2014)
Teaching Note

Rana Plaza: Workplace Safety In Bangladesh (A) and (B)

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

On April 24, 2013 the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Over 1,100 people were killed in the worst industrial accident since the Union Carbide plant gas leak in Bhopal, India. Most of the victims worked for garment factories,... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Multinational Firms and Management; Labor Unions; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Working Conditions; Corporate Accountability; Crisis Management; Manufacturing Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Bangladesh

July 2002 (Revised August 2002)
Case

SIG Beverages (A)

SIG Beverages, a leading supplier of bottling and packaging systems for the beverage industry, has recognized an opportunity in providing services for its product end users. Management's challenge is to develop a service portfolio to address end users' needs, while... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Production; Service Delivery; Manufacturing Industry; Italy

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June 2022
Teaching Plan

Pacesetters

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 322-019. City Sealcoating CEO Keith Chaney had just publicly called out the Boston Chamber of Commerce for their slow progress on their supplier diversity program, Pacesetters. Established in 2018 by regional business leaders,... View Details

Keywords: Minority-owned Businesses; Procurement; Racial Wealth Gap; Diversity; Small Business; Restructuring; Contracts; Goals and Objectives; Performance Improvement; Performance Evaluation; United States; Massachusetts

30 Mar 2020
News

How Building Wellness Certifications are Adapting to COVID-19

File

Internet Appendix

January 2018
Supplement

Interview with Case Protagonist Wen Li

By: Willy C. Shih

In today's global economy, what are the factors that go into production location choice? This case is set in the world's largest automotive glass producer as it expands from China into the United States. To meet a very aggressive cost target, management is faced with... View Details

Keywords: Globalization Of Supply Chain; Production Management; Production; Globalization; Global Strategy; Auto Industry; China; United States

Web

Bibliography - Option Pricing in Theory & Practice: The Nobel Prize Research of Robert C. Merton - Exhibits - Historical Collections

Robert C. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection Under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time Case." Review of Economics and Statistics 51, no. 3 (August 1969): 247-257. ** Merton, Robert C. "A Model of Contract Guarantees... View Details

February 2003 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Mobile Energy Services Company

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Aldo Sesia

When Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap became CEO of the Scott Paper Co., the company owned a large, vertically integrated production facility in Mobile, Alabama. Dunlap sold part of the production facility, a cogeneration power plant (later known as Mobile Energy Services Co.), to... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Risk and Uncertainty; Contracts; Agreements and Arrangements; Investment; Projects; Vertical Integration; Energy Sources; Bonds; Ownership; Restructuring; Energy Industry; Alabama

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August 2011 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Albert 'Jack' Stanley in Nigeria (A)

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Chad M. Carr

The international joint venture that successfully bid for $6 billion in contracts to build LNG trains on Nigeria's Bonny Island became entangled in a widening bribery and corruption probe triggered by an unrelated accusation against an employee of one of the JV... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Globalization; Governance Compliance; Energy Industry; Nigeria; Europe; United States

October 2020
Article

Collusion in Markets with Syndication

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Richard Lowery and Jordan M. Barry

Markets for IPOs and debt issuances are syndicated, in the sense that a bidder who wins a contract may invite losing bidders to join a syndicate that together fulfills the contract. We show that in markets with syndication, standard intuitions from industrial... View Details

Keywords: Collusion; Antitrust; IPO Underwriting; Syndication; ＂Repeated Games＂; Markets; Game Theory

SSRN

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2016
Working Paper

Collusion in Markets with Syndication

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Kominers and Richard Lowery

Markets for IPOs and debt issuances are syndicated, in the sense that a bidder who wins a contract may invite losing bidders to join a syndicate that together fulfills the contract. We show that in markets with syndication, standard intuitions from... View Details

Keywords: Collusion; Antitrust; IPO Underwriting; Syndication; ＂Repeated Games＂

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26 May 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation

Keywords: by Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth & M. Utku Unver

October 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Social Finance, Inc.

By: Shawn Cole and Fanele Mashwama

This case begins in February 2019 as Tracy Palandjian, co-founder and CEO of Social Finance Inc., prepares for a board meeting that will determine the future strategy of the social enterprise. Social Finance is a non-profit in the impact investment space founded in... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions