Publications

May 2014
Case

Groupon, Inc.

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Blythe J. McGarvie and James Weber

Internet coupon site "Groupon" grew revenues rapidly and went public, but struggled to impress investors or operate profitably. Did it have a sustainable business model? Groupon sold coupons called Groupons which purchasers used to acquire goods or services at... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Corporate Governance; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Organizational Culture; Strategy; Web Services Industry; United States

June 2012 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Best Buy in Crisis

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In June 2012, Best Buy was in crisis. In 1996, Best Buy overtook Circuit City as the world's leader in consumer electronics retailing; however, 18 years later, Best Buy now found this position threatened. With $51 billion in revenues, it was still the biggest CE... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Forecasting and Prediction; Competitive Strategy; Ethics; Management Teams; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Retail Industry

May 2014
Case

Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC

By: V.G. Narayanan and Vidhya Muthuram

IDFC was set up in 1997 to direct private finance to infrastructure projects in India. Over the years, it expanded its capabilities to become a 'complete solutions provider' offering financing solutions including debt and equity, investment banking, brokerage and asset... View Details

SST offered a subscription-based gunfire detection service, ShotSpotter Flex, to cities across the United States, and a few abroad. Over its 20-year history, SST had mostly honed a reliable business to government sales model, and the company had been focused on... View Details

October 2013 (Revised April 2018)
Technical Note

Non-Equity Financing for Entrepreneurial Ventures

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, Ramana Nanda and Piyush Jain

Young, and particularly high-growth ventures often need to raise significant external finance, since their internal cash flow is usually insufficient to support the investments needed to grow. Although raising equity from venture capital or angel investors is the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Financial Services Industry

04 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Making the Case for Consumer-Driven Health Care

of health care is a major research topic at Harvard Business School and its Healthcare Initiative, where some 40 faculty conduct research on questions as diverse as how "work-around" cultures develop in hospitals to the best ways deliver high-impact medical... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

27 Feb 2013
Working Paper Summaries

In Strange Company: The Puzzle of Private Investment in State-Controlled Firms

Keywords: by Mariana Pargendler, Aldo Musacchio & Sergio G. Lazzarini; Financial Services; Financial Services

April 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Resuscitating Monitter

By: Benjamin Edelman and Wei Sun

After a Twitter API change and policy change block his fledgling startup, solo entrepreneur Alex Holt evaluates his options. Should he double-down with a major investment in new servers, rewriting his app from scratch, and charging users for a service that he had... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategy; Envelopment; Dependence; Social Media; Business Strategy; Vertical Integration; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Advertising Industry; Information Technology Industry; Australia

August 2021
Case

Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare

By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria

When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Industry; Scaling; Telehealth; Health Care and Treatment; Small Business; Internet and the Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; Growth and Development Strategy; Opportunities; Mergers and Acquisitions; Health Industry

2017
Working Paper

Inventory Management for Mobile Money Agents in the Developing World

By: Karthik Balasubramanian, David F. Drake and Douglas Fearing

Mobile money systems, platforms built and managed by mobile network operators to allow money to be stored as digital currency, have burgeoned in the developing world as a mechanism to transfer money electronically. Mobile money agents exchange cash for electronic value... View Details

Keywords: Currency; Mobile Technology; Market Platforms; Developing Countries and Economies

SSRN

Read Now

Herman B. ("Dutch") Leonard is Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In... View Details

Keywords: federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government; federal government

2019
Working Paper

U.S. Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

The key pieces of antitrust legislation in the United States—the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Act of 1914—contain broad language that has afforded the courts wide latitude in interpreting and enforcing the law. This article chronicles the judiciary’s... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust; Trusts; Restraint Of Trade; Merger; Cartel; New Deal; Harvard School; Chicago School Of Law And Economics; Post-Chicago; Law; Competition; Policy; Vertical Integration; Horizontal Integration; Acquisition