Publications

Research Summary

Overview

Yanhua Bird's research encompasses two streams: (1) entrepreneurship and social innovation — how the design and structure of alternative forms of enterprises influence their activities and success, with a focus on peer-to-peer markets and social enterprises, and (2)... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Strategy; Social Evaluation; Entrepreneurship; Social Innovation; Social Movements; Non-market Strategy; Corporate Sustainability

March 2006 (Revised November 2010)
Background Note

Protecting Foreign Investors

By: Louis T. Wells Jr.

Describes the emergence of several kinds of efforts to assure the safety of foreign investment in emerging markets: international arbitration, expanded official political risk insurance, credit from government agencies, and intervention by investors' home governments.... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Risk Management; Emerging Markets; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Government Relations; Safety

11 Mar 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Return Migration and Geography of Innovation in MNEs: A Natural Experiment of On-the-Job Learning of Knowledge Production by Local Workers Reporting to Return Migrants

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury; Technology

10 Dec 2009
Working Paper Summaries

State Owned Entity Reform in Absence of Privatization: Reforming Indian National Laboratories and Role of Leadership

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury & Tarun Khanna

January 2021
Supplement

A Half-Deal

By: Marco Di Maggio, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira

In June 2020, XP and Itaú faced intensified competition and tension in their partnership, with the latter owning a minority stake at XP. Two years earlier, in May 2017, Itaú had announced it would acquire 49.9% of XP for $1.8 billion, followed by three additional... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Financing Strategy; Competition; Partners and Partnerships; Financing and Loans; Strategy; Latin America; Brazil

January–February 2017
Article

Africa's New Generation of Innovators

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Derek van Bever

With a young, urbanizing population, abundant natural resources, and a growing middle class, Africa seems to have all the ingredients necessary for huge growth. Nevertheless, a number of multinationals have recently left the continent, discouraged by widespread... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Economic Growth; Africa

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16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Making the Most of Government Upheaval

privatization have created unprecedented opportunities for firms of all sizes and varieties to compete in larger markets than ever before. In the process, a handful of global organizations have risen to replace formerly state-owned... View Details

Keywords: by Nancy O. Perry

November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Augmedix

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Alexandra N. Rachlin

In April 2015, Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran, cofounders of Augmedix, are discussing how to grow their emerging health care startup. The company’s sole product, also called Augmedix, streams video of doctor-patient interactions to remote medical scribes, thus freeing... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Sales Management; Scaling; Hiring; Pricing; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Sales; Technology; Health Industry; United States

October 2014 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Mobileye: The Future of Driverless Cars

By: David B. Yoffie

Mobileye was an Israeli company, officially headquartered in The Netherlands, which was a Tier 2 supplier to the global automobile industry. After 15 years of building a leading technology for autonomous driving systems, Mobileye emerged in 2014 as one of the most... View Details

Keywords: Driverless Car; Competitive Advantage; Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Technology; Auto Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Technology Industry; Israel

11 Mar 2001
Research & Ideas

Group Therapy

emerging markets has been part of a larger effort to understand how local business environments influence company strategy. Thus far, strategy scholars have emphasized the importance of industry and... View Details

Keywords: by Peter Jacobs

October 1997 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Eli Lilly and Company: Drug Development Strategy (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke, Ashok Nimgade and Paul Pospisil

Describes how Eli Lilly and Co. tries to accelerate its new drug development process with the aid of "combinatorial chemistry"--a rapidly emerging and revolutionary approach to preclinical drug discovery. The product manager of a potential blockbuster migraine drug... View Details

Keywords: Chemicals; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Time Management; Markets; Product Development; Organizations; Business Processes; Problems and Challenges; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Competition; Pharmaceutical Industry

November – December 2011
Article

Explaining Influence Rents: The Case for an Institutions-Based View of Strategy

By: Gautam Ahuja and Sai Yayavaram

Research in strategy has identified and tried to explain four types of rents: monopolistic rents, efficiency rents, quasi rents, and Schumpeterian rents. Building on previous work on political and institutional strategies, we add a fifth type of rent: influence rents.... View Details

Keywords: Institutions; Influence Rents; Generic Strategies; Strategy; Organizations; Renting or Rental; Economics

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May 2017 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: Unilever and the Kraft Heinz Takeover Bid (A)

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

This case describes Kraft Heinz Company’s (KHC) February 2017 unsolicited $143 billion takeover offer to acquire Unilever. The offer was made to Unilever CEO Paul Polman by KHC chairman Alexandre Behring, who was also co-founder and CEO of Brazilian-based 3G Capital... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions

07 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis

As the COVID-19 virus pandemic began to sweep across the world, Doug McMillon and his team at Walmart watched in horror. Suddenly, they realized, tomorrow would be nothing like “business as usual” and everything in the company’s marketing... View Details

Keywords: by Jill Avery and Richard Edelman

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

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Laura Alfaro is the Warren Alpert Professor of Business Administration. At Harvard since 1999, she served as Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy in Costa Rica from 2010-2012, taking a leave from HBS. She is Co-Editor of the Journal of International... View Details

March 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

CDC Capital Partners: December 2002

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Paul Fletcher, CEO of CDC Capital Partners, a private equity group investing in the world's poorest countries, is wrestling with questions raised by the imminent reorganization of the firm. Previously an arm of the United Kingdom's international aid agency, CDC is... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Privatization; Venture Capital; Business and Government Relations; Emerging Markets; Infrastructure; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; United Kingdom

Research Summary

Overview

In industries characterized by extreme dynamism, complexity, and uncertainty, formal structure often “falls behind” actual work processes. The nature of work in these environments evolves continuously while formal structure can only do so at specific times in discrete... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Identity; Identity Work; Strategy; Strategic Change; Collaboration; Cross-functional Integration; Cognition; Organizational Evolution; Organizational Alignment; Social Media

November 2000 (Revised December 2001)
Case

Alibaba.com

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Carin-Isabel Knoop and David Lane

This case focuses on the strategic issues of an emerging dot-com in a rapidly emerging Internet nation-China. Alibaba, a bulletin board company based in Hangzhou, China, is trying to carve out a niche in the B-to-B e-commerce world. It also shows the speed and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Marketing; Strategy; Service Industry; Information Technology Industry; Hangzhou; Europe; United States