Publications

April 2018 (Revised September 2023)
Case

Sabine Oil & Gas Corporation

By: Stuart C. Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Sarah L. Abbott

In 2016, a trial began to determine the future of Sabine Oil & Gas Corporation’s $3 billion chapter 11 reorganization plan. The plan called for first- and second-lien-secured creditors to receive new claims representing approximately 98% of the reorganized company’s... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Reorganization; Chapter 11; Oil ＆ Gas; Bankruptcy; Bankruptcy Reorganization; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Energy; Restructuring; Valuation; United States

December 2018
Article

Ideological Misfit? Political Affiliation and Employee Departure in the Private-Equity Industry

By: Y. Sekou Bermiss and Rory McDonald

Though organizations are increasingly active participants in the political realm, little research has investigated how an organization’s heightened focus on political ideology impacts employees. We address this gap by exploring how an individual’s political ideological... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Employees; Organizational Culture; Resignation and Termination; Financial Services Industry; United States

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March 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Supplement

STRIVR (B): Moving into the Enterprise

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

STRIVR, a company focused on virtual reality training, has decided to shift focus from sports to enterprise customers. The change in strategy requires the CEO to solve a number of issues. The company initally offered training for hard skills, but clients have been... View Details

Keywords: Strivr; Virtual Reality; Soft Skills; Hard Skills; VR; Applications and Software; Market Entry and Exit; Business Strategy; Training; Sports; Technology Industry; Education Industry; United States

March 2018 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Verizon 2018

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

In 2018, CEO Lowell McAdam led efforts to transform Verizon through digital innovation, media acquisitions and integration, and changes to the company culture. He sought to manage change at the company as growth in traditional areas slowed and position it as a leader... View Details

Keywords: Change; Change Leadership; Change Management; Innovation; Digital; Management; Leading Change; Innovation and Management; Acquisition; Integration; Telecommunications Industry; United States

February 2018
Case

Health Savings Accounts: Enabling Consumer Participation

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace

Health savings accounts (HSAs), a creation of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, had become an integral part of the drive toward consumer-driven health care. Coupled with high-deductible health plans, HSAs allowed consumers to directly control a significant part of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Healthcare Costs; Health Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Insurance; Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; United States

January 2018
Case

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Quits President Trump's Advisory Council

By: Andy Zelleke and Brian Tilley

In the first six months of Donald Trump’s presidency, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier appeared alongside Trump at least three times at press events, one of which commemorated the first and only meeting of the president’s Manufacturing Job Initiative (better known at the... View Details

Keywords: CEO Role; Politics; Corporate Governance; Moral Sensibility; Managerial Roles; United States

November 2017
Case

iRobot: Moving Beyond the Roomba

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

The makers of the Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner, connected the latest version of their product to the Internet. This new feature opened up a wealth of new opportunities and challenges for the company. View Details

Keywords: Irobot; Smart Home; Connected Home; Roomba; Vacuum; Mapping; Internet Of Things; Connected Products; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; United States

2018
Chapter

Between Economic Planning and Market Competition: International Law and Economics in the U.S.

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

The impact of institutional economics in shaping the American regulatory tradition has largely been dismissed as an incoherent attack on the neoclassical economic paradigm. This essay briefly reconstructs the interwar institutionalist movement, exploring the... View Details

Keywords: Economics; History; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; United States

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July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Propel

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra

In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details

2017
Working Paper

The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth

By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen

We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the... View Details

Keywords: Taxes; Gdp; Corporate Profits; American Jobs Creation Act Of 2004; Taxation; Economic Growth; Profit; United States

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June 2017
Teaching Note

Quiet Logistics (A) and (B)

By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 115-001 and 115-003. View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Five Forces; Risk; Adaptability; Distribution Industry; Technology Industry; United States

May 2017
Case

Street League Skateboarding

By: Robert F. Higgins and Christine Snively

In 2013, Street League Skateboarding, a professional skateboarding league founded in 2010, just concluded its annual Street League World Tour. The growing action-sports property had purchased time on ESPN2 to air its events, and though ESPN was the most-watched sports... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Television Entertainment; Sports; Product Launch; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

May 2017 (Revised October 2017)
Supplement

Uber: Changing the Way the World Moves (B)

By: Youngme Moon

This (B) case was written as a follow-up to the original case, “Uber: Changing the Way the World Moves” (HBS No. 316-101). It describes a slew of controversial incidents besetting the company in early 2017. View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Transportation; Problems and Challenges; United States

April 2017
Supplement

Imprimis (B)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karen Elterman and Marc Appel

This case is a supplement to Imprimis (A). It describes the company’s decision to enter into the pharmaceutical compounding business in 2013–2014. Imprimis purchased a compounded ophthalmological medication called Dropless Therapy, which was injected into patients’... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Drug Compounding; Drug Development; Pharmaceuticals; Small Business; Decision-making, Business Model; Mark Baum; Imprimis; Decision Making; Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Policy; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

March 2017 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Flashion: Art vs. Science in Fashion Retailing

By: Kris Ferreira and Karim R. Lakhani

Kate Wilson, retail analytics manager at Flashion, a fashion flash-sale site, is tasked with developing analytics to optimize pricing for first-exposure products on the site. Many in the industry have relied on years of experience and intuition to determine pricing—can... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Pricing; Data; Service Operations; Forecasting and Prediction; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Mathematical Methods; Decision Making; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; United States

March 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

OpenNotes

By: Jeffrey Rayport and Annelena Lobb

In 2017, executives at OpenNotes, a national movement to improve the relationship between doctors and patients by sharing doctors’ visit notes about patients with patients, were considering options in efforts to achieve scale. The movement hoped to reach 50 million... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Technology Adoption; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; Health Industry; United States

2016
Article

The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet as a Financial-Stability Tool

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel Gregory Hanson and Jeremy C. Stein

We argue that the Federal Reserve should use its balance sheet to help reduce a key threat to financial stability: the tendency for private-sector financial intermediaries to engage in excessive amounts of maturity transformation—i.e., to finance risky assets using... View Details

Keywords: Central Banking; Policy; Risk Management; Public Administration Industry; United States

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2017
Other Unpublished Work

Kicking Ash: Who (or What) Is Winning the War on Coal?

By: David F. Drake and Jeffrey York

Power generators throughout the U.S. have shed coal capacity at an unprecedented rate over the past few years. Multiple stakeholders have claimed credit - natural gas executives, policy makers, renewables advocates, and environmental NGOs. In this paper, we explore the... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; United States