Publications

January 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Autonomous Vehicles: The Rubber Hits the Road...but When?

By: William Kerr, Allison Ciechanover, Jeff Huizinga and James Palano

The rise of autonomous vehicles has enormous implications for business and society. Despite the many headlines and significant investment in the technology by early 2019, it was still unclear when truly autonomous vehicles would be a commercial reality. Students will... View Details

Keywords: Technology Management; Artificial Intelligence; General Management; Robotics; Technological Innovation; Transportation; Disruption; Information Technology; Decision Making; AI and Machine Learning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

14 Feb 2021
Blog Post

Celebrating Love @ HBS in 2021

Love at HBS is an annual celebration of the diverse expressions of love that exist on our campus and in the world around us. Even with the unique challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, love has endured, and our students have... View Details

May 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Background Note

Managing Talent Pipelines in the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman and Carl Kreitzberg

In the face of a rapidly-changing economy, organizations that wish to compete in the future of work must develop strategies for acquiring, retaining, and developing talent for their organizations. This primer reviews the major trends shaping jobs, workplaces, and... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Demographics; Labor; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Quality; Supply Chain

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

by deviating frequently and in predictable ways from the recommendations offered by a centralized capacity planning model. Finally, we document that these discretionary capacity supply decisions exhibit a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

18 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 18, 2009

useful and saleable by-product. The term "by-product synergy" (BPS) has been coined to describe this practice. By converting waste into by-product, the firm not only reduces its waste disposal cost and potentially increases... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

January 2014
Article

The Consequences of Entrepreneurial Finance: Evidence from Angel Financings

By: William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner and Antoinette Schoar

This paper documents that ventures that are funded by two successful angel groups experience superior outcomes to rejected ventures: they have improved survival, exits, employment, patenting, web traffic, and financing. We use strong discontinuities in angel funding... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Financing and Loans; Interests; Employment; Patents; Internet and the Web; Operations; Entrepreneurship; Business Exit or Shutdown

Read Now

June 2010
Article

What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns

By: Glenn Ellison, Edward Glaeser and William R. Kerr

Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic... View Details

Keywords: Production; Economics; Industry Clusters; Analytics and Data Science; Labor; Theory; Goods and Commodities; United States; United Kingdom

April 2008
Article

The Survey of Industrial R&D—Patent Database Link Project

By: William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu

This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Survey of Industrial R&D conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The dataset constitutes a platform that offers an unprecedented view of... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Patents; Surveys; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

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September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Gain Liquidity

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Evan Richardson

Samir Kaul, a Partner at Khosla Ventures, looked out his office window. It was late June, 2011, and like almost every day in Menlo Park, the sun was shining. Kaul was reflecting on what had been a very positive 10 months in the venture capital business. Over that span,... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Financial Strategy; Business or Company Management; Partners and Partnerships; Product Development; Investment Portfolio; Financial Services Industry

01 Mar 2014
News

Generation Next

Nisa Godrej Illustration by Anita Kunz In the summer of 2007, Mark Kahn (MBA 2006) received an unusual call from Mumbai. A former HBS classmate had a problem. She wanted him to look over strategic and financial documents for a diversified... View Details

Keywords: Mark Bergen; Godrej Group; Management

October 2022
Case

EducationSuperHighway 2.0

By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Emily Grandjean

In 2012, Evan Marwell launched EducationSuperHighway (ESH) to address a major problem: though most public K-12 schools in the US had access to the Internet, only roughly 30% had true broadband access that would enable every student to have high speed connectivity. ... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Leading Change; Early Childhood Education; Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Telecommunications Industry; Education Industry; Technology Industry; United States; San Francisco

18 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 18, 2008

Purchase this case: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/ b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=109034 PublicationsAttracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients Authors:Lauren Cohen and Breno Schmidt... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

11 Jul 2019
Blog Post

Meet the MBA Class of 2020

View Video Andrew Baxter “YOU BUILD UP PERSONAL CAPITAL BY SHARING COMMON EXPERIENCES.” HOME REGION St. Andrews, UK UNDERGRAD EDUCATION Imperial College London, Chemical Engineering, 2011 PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE Shell, Schlumberger HBS... View Details

16 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 16

organization profits. Order the book: http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Calls-Twelve-Stories-Decisions/dp/142215811X From Russia with Love: The Impact of Relocated Firms on Incumbent Survival Authors:Oliver Falck, Christina Guenther, Stephan Heblich, and View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 Jul 2011
First Look

First Look: July 19

claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development of specialized expertise, while the benefits of greater breadth are linked to the economies... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2023
Case

Swanson Health: Becoming a Super Seller

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and Paige Boehmcke

Founded in 1969, Swanson Health sold vitamins, supplements, natural health products, and organic foods. Over the years, the company had successfully navigated multiple industry transitions as it expanded from a print catalog to sell products on its own... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Transition; Growth Management; Distribution Channels; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Health Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

June 2025
Article

In the Red: Overdrafts, Payday Lending and the Underbanked

By: Marco Di Maggio, Angela Ma and Emily Williams

The reordering of transactions from “high-to-low” is a controversial bank practice thought to maximize fees paid by low-income customers on overdrawn accounts. We exploit multiple class-action lawsuits resulting in mandatory changes to this practice, coupled with... View Details

Keywords: Overdraft; Payday Loans; Excessive Fees; Underbanked; Underserved; Income; Personal Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Banks and Banking