Publications

February 2014 (Revised May 2014)
Background Note

Finding the Money: An Overview of Infrastructure Finance Challenges and Opportunities

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Daniel Fox

This overview describes how the United States funds and finances infrastructure investment to maintain its economic competitiveness. It considers the roles of taxpayers, users, government allocators and lenders, and private investors in the infrastructure funding... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Infrastructure; Technology; United States

May 2013
Case

Bridgewater Associates

By: Jeffrey T. Polzer and Heidi K. Gardner

Bridgewater Associates was the world's largest hedge fund with approximately $120 billion in assets under management in mid-2012, and its leaders attribute its record-beating performance to the firm's culture of "radical transparency." The founder, Ray Dalio, was... View Details

Keywords: Management Style; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Performance; Leadership Style; Investment; Financial Services Industry

Professor Stuart Gilson is the Steven R. Fenster Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and former chairman of the Finance Unit. His research, teaching, and consulting focuses on the financial, business, and legal strategies that companies... View Details

Keywords: investment banking industry; investment banking industry

March 2020
Case

Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander... View Details

2008
Working Paper

The Future of Social Enterprise

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Herman B. Leonard and Susan McDonald

The Future of Social Enterprise considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. We trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Performance Effectiveness; Social Enterprise; Consolidation; Value

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January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Runa

By: Paul Gompers and Carla Larangeira

In early 2022, Courtney McColgan, founder and CEO of Runa, a human resources and payroll Software-as-a-Service platform, faced an unexpected tech market downturn. Founded in 2018, Runa catered to small and medium-sized businesses in Mexico, offering an affordable and... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Volatility; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Leadership; Management; Venture Capital; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Growth and Maturation; Latin America

04 Oct 2019
News

GPIF’s Hiromichi Mizuno’s Term Is Extended for Six Months

March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation

By: Archie L. Jones, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Henry McGee

Philanthropist Clara Wu Tsai is committed to racial equity and investing in Brooklyn-based minority business owners. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, she decides to create a new initiative called the Social Justice Fund and commit an initial $50 million over 10... View Details

Keywords: Minority-owned Businesses; Racial Equity; Entrepreneurship; Race; Values and Beliefs; Small Business; Partners and Partnerships; Social Issues; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Decision Making; Brooklyn

November – December 2007
Article

Fundamentally Flawed Indexing

By: Andre F. Perold

A new theory of finance is being advanced as providing definitive proof that holding stocks in proportion to their market capitalizations is an inferior investment strategy. The claim is that capitalization weighting necessarily invests more in overvalued stocks and... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Capital Markets; Financial Strategy; Stocks; Financial Management; Valuation

Find at Harvard

2024
Working Paper

Hidden Risk

By: Daniel Barth, Phillip Monin, Emil Siriwardane and Adi Sunderam

Since 2013, large U.S. hedge fund advisers have been required to report risk exposures in their regulatory filings. Using these data, we first establish that managers’ perceptions of risk contain useful information that is not embedded in fund returns. Investor flows... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Investment Funds; Risk and Uncertainty; Investment Return; Communication Strategy; Financial Services Industry

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19 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

What Chandrayaan-3 Says About India's Entrepreneurial Approach to Space

R&D spent in the US in the last couple of decades. And that is just a corpus of knowledge that is the ultimate public good, right? Anybody can access it in theory. India does not invest adequately in R&D, sadly. I’ve written about... View Details

Keywords: by Clea Simon, Harvard Gazette; Aerospace

Teaching Interest

Demystifying the Family Enterprise

By: Christina R. Wing

This course is primarily designed for students who are pursuing a career in family run businesses, family owned businesses, investment roles in family offices, or students that might invest in or wholly purchase a family owned business through a private equity firm,... View Details

March 1992 (Revised November 1993)
Case

Beta Management Co.

A manager of a small investment company has been successfully using index funds for limited market timing. Growth has allowed her to move into picking stocks. She is considering two small and highly variable listed stocks, but is concerned about the risk that these... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Stocks; Financial Services Industry

December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
Supplement

Katerra (B)

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving—with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Failure; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Entrepreneurship; Construction; Real Estate Industry; Construction Industry; Technology Industry; United States

15 Dec 2021
News

Some Government Programs Just Don’t Work Out. ‘Abandoned’ Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word.

18 Nov 2022
HBS Case

What Does It Take to Safeguard a Legacy in Asset Management?

members of the investment team are at par and make investment decisions together, instead of having someone who ultimately makes the investing calls. This is possible when... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

2023
Working Paper

Flow-Driven ESG Returns

By: Philippe van der Beck

I show that the recent returns to ESG investing are strongly driven by price impact from flows towards ESG funds. Using data on institutional trades, I estimate the market’s ability to accommodate the demand of ESG funds, which is given by the elasticity of... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Markets; Investment Return

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October 2008 (Revised March 2010)
Case

PlanetTran

By: Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy

PlanetTran is an environmentally-friendly car service that utilizes a fleet of hybrid cars in providing livery service to corporations and individuals. The founder, Seth Riney, is evaluating outside funding options in order to expand the company, and has met several... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Venture Capital; Investment; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Expansion; Value

March 2009
Case

Aderans

By: Robin Greenwood, Rakesh Khurana and Masako Egawa

Steel Partners is a U.S.-based hedge fund that has made a large investment in Japan-based wigmaker Aderans. The case is set at the close of the annual meeting in May 2008, when shareholders have voted against all incumbent board members. Steel Partners must act... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Investment; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Ownership Stake; Business and Shareholder Relations; Japan