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February 2017
Article

The Throne vs. the Kingdom: Founder Control and Value Creation in Startups

By: Noam Wasserman

Does the degree to which founders keep control of their startups affect company value? I argue that founders face a "control dilemma" in which a startup's resource dependence drives a wedge between the startup's value and the founder's ability to retain control of... View Details

Keywords: Founders; Entrepreneurial Management; Value Creation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups

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September 2010
Case

Bush Brothers & Company

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Chad Carr

The chairman and CEO of Bush Brothers grapples with leading and managing changes in strategy, governance and board composition, as well as succession, compensation and ownership issues, as he takes the family owned/family operated business into its fourth generation.... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Change Management; Decision Making; Selection and Staffing; Leading Change; Management Succession; Governing and Advisory Boards; Wages; Values and Beliefs; Growth and Development Strategy

February 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Theranos: The Unicorn That Wasn't

By: Joseph B. Fuller and John Masko

In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup dedicated to making blood testing easier and more affordable. By 2015, her company, Theranos, was worth $9 billion. It boasted a star-studded board and contracts with national pharmacy and supermarket chains... View Details

Keywords: Theranos; Blood; Lab Testing; Fraud; Holmes; Balwani; Shultz; Carreyrou; Securities And Exchange Commission; Food And Drug Administration; FDA; SEC; Health Testing and Trials; Corporate Accountability; Organizational Culture; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Clubs

Consulting for Impact Club

Keywords: Consulting

Dennis Campbell

Dennis W. Campbell is currently the Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research and teaching activities focus broadly on how management control systems can be designed to balance short-term strategy execution... View Details

Keywords: financial services; service industry; hotels ＆ motels; consumer products; restaurant; manufacturing; professional services

09 Jun 2016
Blog Post

Pursuing an Interest in Nonprofits at HBS

There are a number of ways to pursue an interest in nonprofit organizations while at HBS. I have personally explored this interest through joining the Board Fellows and Social Enterprise Consulting Club, undertaking an Independent... View Details

Derek C. M. van Bever

Derek van Bever is a Senior Lecturer in the General Management Unit of Harvard Business School. He teaches courses in both years of the MBA program (“Leadership and Corporate Accountability” in the first-year required curriculum and “Building and Sustaining a... View Details

March 1991 (Revised October 1991)
Case

CEO Evaluation at Dayton Hudson

By: Jay W. Lorsch

Describes the Dayton Hudson CEO evaluation process, one of the most intensive in corporate America today. The board of directors' role in the evaluation is examined, as is the question of whether the Dayton Hudson CEO evaluation process should serve as a model for... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Management Succession; Management Teams

16 Jul 2013
News

Joining Boards: It's Not Just Who You Know That Matters

08 Sep 2016
News

Harvard Business School Launches New Executive Education Program For Women Senior Executives

December 2004 (Revised November 2006)
Case

Esrey & LeMay Sprint Options, The

By: Henry B. Reiling and Kevin Wall

Sprint's outside auditor simultaneously provided tax advice--including the recommendation of tax shelters related to Sprint options--to senior Sprint officers. These tax structures were called into question amid circumstances that raise a variety of conflicting issues... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Conflict of Interests; Governing and Advisory Boards; Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Development and Career; Telecommunications Industry

November 2015 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Cisco Systems: In Search of the Next CEO

By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott, Olivia Hull and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

It’s August 2014 and John Chambers is expected to announce his retirement after 17 years as CEO of global technology giant Cisco Systems. Under Chambers’s leadership, Cisco has grown from $2.2 billion in annual revenues and under 4,000 employees to revenues of $46... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Succession Planning; CEO Succession; Managing Change; Person-organization Fit; Management Succession; Transition; Talent and Talent Management; Change Management; Retirement; Innovation Leadership; Recruitment; Corporate Governance; Experience and Expertise; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; San Jose; California

12 May 2009
News

Schumer's Shareholder Bill Misses the Mark

Tarun Khanna

Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School. For almost three decades, he has studied entrepreneurship as a means to social and economic development in emerging markets. At HBS since 1993, after obtaining degrees from Princeton... View Details

21 Jul 2020
Video

Shirley Zinn

Shirley Zinn explains why she resigned from the Board of Cricket South Africa in 2019 to protest about poor corporate governance and media censorship. The CEO was dismissed shortly... View Details

Career Coach

Wabantu Hlophe

Wabantu wants to help students build networks that can help them access new opportunities in industries off the beaten path. Having gained significant experience in clean energy investing, startups and consulting before HBS; and pivoting into the gaming industry at... View Details

September 2024
Article

Activist Directors: Determinants and Consequences

By: Ian D. Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Suraj Srinivasan

This paper examines determinants and consequences of hedge fund activism, focusing on activist directors, i.e., directors appointed in response to activist demands. Using a sample of 3,259 activism events from 2004 to 2016, we identify 1,623 activist directors.... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Investment Activism; Business and Shareholder Relations

July–August 2014
Article

Sustainability in the Boardroom: Lessons from Nike's Playbook

By: Lynn S. Paine

One surprising role of Nike's corporate responsibility committee is to provide support for innovation. More and more companies recognize the importance of corporate responsibility to their long-term success—and yet the matter gets short shrift in most boardrooms,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry