Failed Startup - Publications - Faculty & Research

18 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

How Eliminating Non-Competes Could Reshape Tech

curtailing the use of such agreements. Andy Wu, an assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, is an entrepreneur and startup advisor who now researches how technology firms organize and mobilize resources to grow... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Technology

16 May 2023
In Practice

After Silicon Valley Bank's Flameout, What's Next for Entrepreneurs?

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March left the startup world reeling. The biggest lender to fail since the 2008 financial crisis, SVB had become the preferred funder of the startup, tech, and... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Technology; Financial Services

Research Summary

Research

The founding and expansion of new firms is central to innovation and economic growth, but the determinants of a new idea’s success are difficult to ascertain. The decision to form a new firm and its ultimate outcome are impacted by ownership structure, financing... View Details

11 Mar 2019
Research & Ideas

Branding Sells Cereal, Handbags, and Vacations. Can It Sell a Country?

complicated history still dominate public consciousness. Memories of failed peace talks tend to loom larger than Israel’s image as a startup nation. Thousands of Instagram posts from Tel Aviv’s gay pride... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Tourism

10 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Time to Move On? Career Advice for Entrepreneurs Preparing for the Next Stage

partner to be your listening guide as you talk them through; be sure to encourage them just to listen and be curious about insights versus helping you try to solve things. The prompts below are very career-centric, geared towards startup... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

18 Sep 2019
Op-Ed

WeWork—The IPO That Shouldn’t?

No IPO in recent memory has received as much negative pre-public publicity as WeWork, which provides shared workspaces and services for startups and other enterprises. The outpouring of criticism has focused on a number of items including... View Details

Keywords: by Nori Gerardo Lietz; Financial Services; Real Estate

30 Apr 2013
First Look

First Look: April 30

fail to spend sufficient time learning to understand ourselves and creating our own definition of success? The truth is, it can seem so natural and so much easier to just do what everyone else is doing-for now-leaving it for later to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

04 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

Editor's note: Seasoned entrepreneurs know that a great idea for a new company is no guarantee of a successful exit. Startups fail more often than not, largely due to hubris-fueled mistakes by an... View Details

Keywords: by Noam Wasserman

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

fail to meet their projected targets and 75 percent of new products fail.” McDonald and co-author Christopher Bingham explore eight central tensions in the new book, Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation’s Toughest... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

to scale simply because they did not have big-company DNA or because the company did not ensure they were in roles in which they could continue to thrive. Think about who on your team has real startup DNA–do they thrive with ambiguity and... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

27 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

IPO or M&A? How Venture Capital Shapes a Startup's Future

Entrepreneurs rarely consider who will ultimately own their startups—and what that means for founders—when they court venture capitalists. New research suggests they should. A startup funded by VCs who tend to work with the same group of... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

10 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 10

absent from the largest retail markets. Moreover, every retailer that has ventured overseas has failed as often as it has succeeded. On average, the extent of internationalization doesn't have a significant effect on either retailers'... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

28 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Coronavirus Could Create a 'Bankruptcy Pandemic'

capital structure, as permitted under the Bankruptcy Code. In general, this is how Chapter 11 gives new lenders the incentive to lend to a financially distressed business; even if the company ultimately fails and is liquidated, the senior... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Financial Services; Banking

13 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

Science: The Unlikely Frontier for New Business Ideas

R&D also come with more investment risk. While science-based patents are more likely to have higher values, they are also more likely to be total flops. In efforts to commercialize novel science, R&D teams often fail to replicate... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

30 Jun 2021
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2021

enjoying my colleague Tom Eisenmann's latest book, Why Startups Fail. This book is a well-crafted collection of case examples of how startups fail. Eisenmann offers a means for both entrepreneurs and their... View Details

Keywords: by Kathryn Haviland

13 Jun 2011
HBS Case

Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

we need.” The Harvard Business School case study Mobile Banking for the Unbanked explores two very different examples of mobile financial service models: WIZZIT, a third-party startup that teamed with a major bank to provide standard... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Communications; Telecommunications

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Your Company Wants to be a 'Cognitive Referent' (Hint: SpaceX)

When Rory M. McDonald was working on his PhD at Stanford University in 2007, it was the heyday of the lean startup in Silicon Valley. “It seemed like pretty much every week there was some new market category being touted as the next big... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Aerospace; Food & Beverage; Retail

22 Feb 2021
Book

Reaching Today's Omnichannel Customer Takes a New Sales Strategy

other business function. But the ROI is disappointing because much of the training misunderstands how salespeople learn, is classroom-centric, and fails to take advantage of new tools that stimulate peer learning and enable the use of... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

01 Nov 2019
What Do You Think?

Should Non-Compete Clauses Be Abolished?

thought—a non-compete clause is not enforceable unless the employee continues to be paid by the employer—say 2/3 of salary plus benefits—until the employee finds new work with a non-competitor If the employee fails to find work at a... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

15 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Black Swans and Big Trends Can Ruin Anyone's Internet Prediction

how we thought about online opportunities one year after the dot-com bubble burst. In retrospect, many of my thoughts about the internet’s future evolution missed the mark. If you think history repeats itself, then these forecasting errors might be germane, since View Details

Keywords: by Thomas R. Eisenmann; Technology

Publications