Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,013)
- Faculty Publications (167)
- October 2018
- Supplement
African Bank Investments Limited (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Less than a year after joining the board of African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), the newest director finds himself in difficult discussions with other directors about removing the struggling company’s CEO. The case is set in South Africa in mid-2014 as shares in... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Learning How to Honnold
By: Eugene F. Soltes, Sara Hess and Dutch Leonard
Alex Honnold is the world’s most accomplished free climber. To many, climbing sheer vertical faces of rock—like the famed El Capitan—without a rope is viewed as not simply risky but reckless. Honnold contrasts this sentiment by presenting his perspective on risk taking... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
BlackBuck (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The case presents the challenges of scaling an asset-heavy company (that relies on its operations). It highlights how decisions on the early team impact a company’s ability to scale, linkage between growth and cash flows, as well the organizational impact of high... View Details
- July 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Project Helios: Harvesting the Sun
By: Mark Egan and E. Scott Mayfield
Aware of the impact that modern society was having on the environment, Ashley Telkes had always tried to be cognizant of her own impact on the environment and to take reasonable steps to mitigate her own effects. Having already implemented a number of passive measures... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Infrastructure in Nigeria: Unlocking Pension Fund Investments
By: John Macomber and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The so-called “infrastructure finance gap” was a problem in Nigeria as in many parts of the world. Infrastructure projects like power plants and dams were very large capital investments that could generate long-term consistent cash flows, but their financing and... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Jaguar Capital S.A.S., Take the Money and Run?
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
In January 2014, Tomas Uribe and Rodrigo Sanchez-Rios of Jaguar Capital S.A.S. (Jaguar or Jaguar Capital), were considering an offer from White Stone, the world’s largest private equity real estate investor. Jaguar Capital needed capital to fund its investment thesis,... View Details
Keywords: Real Estate; Investing; Private Equity Financing; Deal Structuring; Emerging Market; Emerging Economies; Emerging Market Finance; International Entrepreneurship; Finance; Entrepreneurship; Agreements and Arrangements; Emerging Markets; Real Estate Industry; Retail Industry; Financial Services Industry; Colombia; Latin America; United States
- January–February 2018
- Article
The New CEO Activists
By: Aaron K Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
Though corporations have been lobbying the government and making campaign donations for a long time now, in recent years a dramatic new trend has emerged in U.S. politics: CEOs are taking very public stands on thorny political issues that have nothing to do with their... View Details
- December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
- Case
Alltech
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky–based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech... View Details
Keywords: Alltech; United States; Agribusiness; Agriculture; Animal; Animal Agriculture; Animal Feed; Livestock; Family Business; Vertical Integration; Strategy; Growth; Feed Additives; Feed Supplements; Kentucky; Growth Strategy; Family Businesses; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Change Management; Trends; Governance; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Intellectual Property; Leadership; Management; Markets; Organizational Culture; Private Ownership; Science; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Research; Sales; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Kentucky; Brazil; China
- November 7, 2017
- Article
Temporary Sharing Prompts Unrestrained Disclosures That Leave Lasting Negative Impressions
By: Reto Hofstetter, Roland Rüppell and Leslie John
With the advent of social media, the impressions people make on others are based increasingly on their digital disclosures. Yet digital disclosures can come back to haunt, making it challenging for people to manage the impressions they make. In field and online... View Details
- Article
Managing Climate Change: Lessons from the U.S. Navy
By: Forest Reinhardt and Michael W. Toffel
The U.S. Navy operates on the front lines of climate change. It manages tens of billions of dollars in assets on every continent and on every ocean, which take many years to design and build and then have decades of useful life. This means that it needs to understand... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Environment; Military; Disaster Relief; Refugees; Environmental Impact; Environmental Strategy; Sustainability; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Sources; Energy Generation; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Supply Chain; Operations; Logistics; Infrastructure; Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Service Industry
- June 2017
- Article
Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk Taking?
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
Many experiments have found that participants take more investment risk if they see returns less frequently, see portfolio-level returns (rather than each individual asset’s returns), or see long-horizon (rather than one-year) historical return distributions. In... View Details
- 2017
- Book
The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return
By: Mihir Desai
The Wisdom of Finance takes well-known financial concepts and applies them to our most pressing life issues. The book is philosophical in its approach, but Desai's thesis is peppered with real-life examples of how financial types can and should see the world... View Details
- May 2017
- Case
ATH Technologies: Making the Numbers
By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard
An exercise that takes students through five stages of growth in an entrepreneurial start-up in the medical devices industry: 1) founding, 2) growth, 3) push to profitability, 4) relocation process, and 5) takeover by new management. At each stage, students must... View Details
Keywords: Balancing Innovation And Control; Performance Evaluation; Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Risk Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Profit; Geographic Location; Governance Controls; Innovation and Invention; Management Succession; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
- 2017
- Book
Managing Risk in Reinsurance: From City Fires to Global Warming
By: Niels Viggo Hauter and Geoffrey Jones
This is the first book to provide a comprehensive history of the reinsurance industry from the nineteenth century to the present day. Reinsurance developed at the fringe of financial services and, for most of its existence, was largely unnoticed outside the expert... View Details
- November 2016 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
Elon Musk's Big Bets
By: David B. Yoffie, Eric Baldwin and Brandon Kaufmann
Between late 2014 and late 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk undertook several major, and risky, initiatives that would dramatically expand the scale and scope of Tesla’s business. In late 2014, Tesla began construction on a $5 billion “gigafactory” that would manufacture... View Details
Keywords: Electric Vehicles; Batteries; Solar Power; Strategy; Execution; Technology; Space Flight; Tesla; SolarCity; SpaceX; Elon Musk; Information Technology; Risk and Uncertainty; Expansion; Renewable Energy; Investment; Manufacturing Industry; Green Technology Industry; Auto Industry; Aerospace Industry; Battery Industry
- Article
Risk Management—The Revealing Hand
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes
Many believe that the recent emphasis on enterprise risk management function is misguided, especially after the failure of sophisticated quantitative risk models during the global financial crisis. The concern is that top-down risk management will inhibit innovation... View Details
Keywords: Risk Management
- October 2016 (Revised February 2017)
- Teaching Note
Alvogen
By: Daniel Isenberg, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell
Alvogen is an Icelandic pharmaceutical company that makes and sells generic drugs. Founder and CEO Robert Wessman is deciding whether to take on private equity investors willing to buy out all shareholders, merge with a large and publicly-traded US pharmaceutical... View Details
- Article
ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities
By: Sakis Kotsantonis, Christopher Pinney and George Serafeim
The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods.
Myth Number 1:... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Stock Market and Bank Risk-Taking
By: David S. Scharfstein and Antonio Falato
We argue that stock market pressure to generate earnings encourages banks to increase risk. We measure risk using confidential supervisory ratings as well as financial information released in regulatory filings. We document that there is an increase in the risk-taking... View Details
- August 2016 (Revised July 2017)
- Case
Diageo and Mey Icki: Turkish Delight or Turkish Hangover?
By: Dante Roscini and Gamze Yucaoglu
In September 2013, two years after its $2.1 billion acquisition of Mey Icki Sanayi ve Ticaret AS (Mey Icki), the principal spirits company in Turkey specializing in the local beverage, raki, Diageo, the world’s leading premium drinks company, was concerned about new... View Details