Publications

Web

Podcast - Business & Environment

series on adaptation, and features Jay Koh who co-founded the Lightsmith Group, the first growth private equity firm focused on climate adaptation. Jay discusses the firm’s investment strategy, the sectors... View Details

August 2024 (Revised July 2025)
Case

agilon health

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Nicholas Samonas

agilon health is part of the Module 1 of the Innovating Healthcare course: How to Evaluate Innovative Health Ventures. agilon health serves two pedagogical purposes: • it faces a difficult evaluation about how to grow the firm • It introduces the students to... View Details

Keywords: Health Industry

December 2020
Case

XP: Dual Track Financing Alternatives

By: Marco Di Maggio, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira

XP, an investment platform, was on the verge of defining whether to do an IPO or selling off a majority stake to Itaú Unibanco, Brazil´s largest financial conglomerate. Under the leadership of Guilherme Benchimol, XP´s co-founder and CEO, XP had risen to become the... View Details

Keywords: Financing Decisions; Expansion; Decision Choices and Conditions; Latin America; Brazil

Web

Business & Environment - Faculty & Research

transient investors. This result is more pronounced for firms with high growth opportunities, not controlled by a family, operating in 'sin' industries, and exhibiting commitment to IR. I find that the... View Details

14 Mar 2007
Op-Ed

Government’s Misguided Probe of Private Equity

collaborative practices constituted an anticompetitive conspiracy. The judge observed that activities the government depicted as nefarious were "nothing more nor less than a gradual, natural, and normal growth or evolution by which... View Details

Keywords: by Josh Lerner; Financial Services

Web

Entrepreneurship - Faculty & Research

the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed, and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro level, experimentation by new firms underlies the Schumpeterian notion of creative destruction. However, at a micro level,... View Details

March 2013 (Revised July 2014)
Supplement

Bay Partners (B)

By: Josh Lerner and Lauren Barley

In December 2012, Salil Deshpande has rejoined Bay Partners (Bay), which had been restructured following the 2010 departures of three of its general partners. Life was good for Deshpande: his firm had distributed roughly $1 billion to its limited partners (LPs) over... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Funds; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry

February 2021 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Shopify: The Conquest for Chinese E-Commerce

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Avani Patel, Samantha Lin and Ariel Yang

In mid-2020, Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, faced a critical decision on how to time potential expansion into the China market. Over the prior 15 years, his Canadian software-as-a-service company had grown from a small e-commerce solutions provider to a full service... View Details

September 2011 (Revised March 2012)
Case

KKR: Leveraging Sustainability

The case describes KKR's Green Portfolio Program, one of the firm's environmental initiatives, which has achieved $160 million in cost savings. While pleased with its progress in achieving greater energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions, the firm is looking for... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Energy Conservation; Cost Management; Supply Chain Management; Risk Management; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development; Performance Efficiency; Financial Services Industry

Web

Organizational Behavior - Faculty & Research

and its rapid growth despite that controversial choice. It traces the company’s scaling efforts, major fundraising rounds, acquisitions, and ultimate expansion to general access by 2023. Keywords: Purpose ; Identity ; Cultural Branding ;... View Details

September 2010
Case

Quanta Research Institute: Rainforest or Hothouse?

By: Willy C. Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Ho Howard Yu

Barry Lam, the CEO and founder of Quanta Computer (the largest notebook computer manufacturer worldwide), has recognized for many years that he had to transform the company to decrease its dependence on producing commodity hardware for other global brands and move the... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Research and Development; Computer Industry; Taiwan

2017
Working Paper

Business History, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence

By: Geoffrey Jones

This working paper provides a business history perspective on debates about the Great Divergence, the rise of the income gap between the West and the Rest, and the more recent Great Convergence, which has seen a narrowing of that gap. The literature on the timing and... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Economics; History; Wealth and Poverty; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth

SSRN

Read Now

08 Aug 2017
First Look

First Look at Research and Ideas, August 8, 2017

Matthew D. Shaffer, and Charles C.Y. Wang Abstract—We study how a stock index can affect corporate behavior by serving as a source of prestige. After decades of low corporate profitability in Japan, the JPX-Nikkei400 index was introduced in 2014. The index selected 400... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Lehman Brothers

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

In 2008, the U.S. financial system was in a state of crisis and Lehman Brothers went from a major Wall Street investment bank to an insolvent institution. It was a swift end for a firm that had its beginnings over 150 years prior. What would be the firm's legacy? And... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Development Economics; Business Exit or Shutdown; Investment Banking; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Economic Growth; Financial Crisis; Financial Services Industry; United States

08 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 8, 2010

describes the growth of Guggenheim Brothers as one of the largest mining companies in the world in the early twentieth century. Global expansion led the firm to Chile, first in copper and later in natural... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 2

strategies leads to better access to finance. We hypothesize that better access to finance can be attributed to a) reduced agency costs due to enhanced stakeholder engagement and b) reduced informational asymmetry due to increased transparency. Using a large... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2017 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Ryan Greene at Rainier Wearables

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Christopher Payton

This case provides a platform for discussing mental health and depression in entrepreneurship. Why do entrepreneurs have more mental health issues than other professions? What can an entrepreneur do if they face a situation where their mental well-being is being... View Details

Keywords: Mental Health; Depression; Entrepreneurship; Well-being; Personal Development and Career

Research Summary

Management Control Systems in Multiunit Companies

By: Tatiana Sandino

Professor Sandino conducts research on early-stage multiunit companies that introduce management control systems to help maintain operations, as well as company culture, as they grow, but also to enable adaptation to the different markets that they serve. Building... View Details

April 2004 (Revised July 2007)
Case

OfficeTiger

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Johanna Regine Naunton Blaxall

OfficeTiger was founded in late 1999 with an innovative approach to global outsourcing. The company's employees, located primarily in India, provided services for corporations, investment banks, and professional services firms throughout the United States, Europe, and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Globalized Markets and Industries; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; India