Publications

08 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 8, 2008

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=608080 Bidding on Martha's Vineyard (A) Harvard Business School Case 908-044 To buy a desirable Martha's Vineyard property, Robert and Sally Franklin must craft a bidding strategy informed View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2016
Supplement

Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone (B)

By: William C. Kirby, Yuanzhuo Wang, Shuang L. Frost and Adam K. Frost

Starting in 2014, for two years Uber had fought an intense, costly battle for China’s ridesharing market with well-financed and well-connected domestic Chinese competitors. During this time, Uber also had to respond to an ever-shifting regulatory landscape that looked... View Details

Keywords: China; Uber; Didi Chuxing; Start-up Growth; Regulation; Ride-sharing; Transportation; Business Startups; Growth and Development; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; China

2015
Working Paper

Informal Tradables and the Employment Growth of Indian Manufacturing

By: Ejaz Ghani, William R. Kerr and Alexander Segura

India's manufacturing growth from 1989 to 2010 displays two intriguing properties: 1) a substantial fraction of absolute and net employment growth is concentrated in informal tradable industries, and 2) much of this growth is connected to the development of one-person... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; India; Informality; Small And Medium-sized Enterprises; Development Economics; Manufacturing Industry; India

Read Now

November 2021
Article

Gaussian Process Subset Scanning for Anomalous Pattern Detection in Non-iid Data

By: William Herlands, Edward McFowland III, Andrew Gordon Wilson and Daniel B. Neill

Identifying anomalous patterns in real-world data is essential for understanding where, when, and how systems deviate from their expected dynamics. Yet methods that separately consider the anomalousness of each individual data point have low detection power for subtle,... View Details

Keywords: Pattern Detection; Subset Scanning; Gaussian Processes; Mathematical Methods

Read Now

29 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 29, 2007

worldwide. The organization is at a crossroads as it attempts to reach the ambitious goal of serving 10% of the 20 million Egyptians living in poverty by 2023, while at the same time developing the local NGO capacity to serve the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 Sep 2013
First Look

First Look: September 17

Publications September 2013 Management Science Diasporas and Outsourcing: Evidence from oDesk and India By: Ghani, Ejaz, William R. Kerr, and Christopher Stanton Abstract—This study examines the role of the Indian diaspora in the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2020
Article

Collusion in Markets with Syndication

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Richard Lowery and Jordan M. Barry

Markets for IPOs and debt issuances are syndicated, in the sense that a bidder who wins a contract may invite losing bidders to join a syndicate that together fulfills the contract. We show that in markets with syndication, standard intuitions from industrial... View Details

Keywords: Collusion; Antitrust; IPO Underwriting; Syndication; ＂Repeated Games＂; Markets; Game Theory

SSRN

Find at Harvard

January 2013 (Revised May 2013)
Case

Kunshan, Incorporated: The Making of China's Richest Town

By: William C. Kirby, Nora Bynum, Tracy Yuen Manty and Erica M. Zendell

In 1980, the city of Kunshan was mere countryside, registering neither on the Chinese government's nor the international business community's radar. By 2010, Kunshan had become the richest city per capita in China and a global technology powerhouse, home to companies... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Investment; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Emerging Markets; FDI; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Innovation Leadership; Technology Industry; China; Taiwan Strait

February 2022
Article

Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and William L. Skimmyhorn

Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan.... View Details

Keywords: Retirement Savings; Automatic Enrollment; Choice Architecture; Nudge; Financial Distress; Retirement; Saving; Borrowing and Debt; Behavior

Find at Harvard

Read Now

December 2012
Case

Blink Booking

By: William R. Kerr, Magnus Thor Torfason and Alexis Brownell

Rebeca Minguela hopes to create an arbitrage platform, similar to Rocket Internet, that can bring start-up ideas and opportunities to Spain. However, Blink Booking, her first venture and proof of concept, is rocked by a co-founder's breach of confidence and departure.... View Details

Keywords: Clones; Cloning; Rocket Internet; Start-up; Equity Split; Arbitrage; Incubator; Mobile App; Expansion; Spain; Europe; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Internet and the Web; Information Technology Industry; Accommodations Industry; Travel Industry; Spain; Europe

August 2015 (Revised May 2017)
Case

TSG Hoffenheim: Football in the Age of Analytics

By: Feng Zhu, Karim R. Lakhani, Sascha L. Schmidt and Kerry Herman

In 2015, Dietmar Hopp, owner of Germany's Bundesliga football team TSG Hoffenheim and co-founder of the global enterprise software company SAP, was considering how to ensure long-term sustainability and competitiveness for TSG Hoffenheim. While historically a small... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Measurement and Metrics; Sports; Sports Industry

June 2016
Case

Augustine Heard & Co.: Building a Family Business in the China Trade (A)

By: William C. Kirby, Joycelyn W. Eby and John S. Ji

Augustine Heard Sr. founded Augustine Heard & Company, a commission house focused on trade between China and the United States, in 1840. He welcomed his four nephews into the family business as it expanded in the increasingly complex economic and political environment... View Details

Keywords: Exports; China; Commissions; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; China; Boston

16 Dec 2014
First Look

First Look: December 16

benefits are at most partially realized. The same institutions and practices that facilitate efficient ad placement can also facilitate fraud. The networks that should be serving advertisers have decidedly mixed incentives, such as cost savings from cutting corners,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

York Capital and Enovix

By: William Vrattos, Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

In June 2020, Jeremy Blank prepared for a meeting with his fellow partners at York Capital to discuss an investment he had championed in Enovix, a company developing a state-of-the-art, silicon-based battery. Early-stage technology companies, like Enovix, were not... View Details

Keywords: Investment Evaluation; Partners and Partnerships; Investment Portfolio; Judgments; Opportunities

May 2014 (Revised June 2014)
Case

Intellectual Property Strategy at North Technology Group—Sailing Downwind

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and William W. Fisher III

North Sails is the world's leading sailmaker. The company commands a global market share of more than 50% and is largely responsible for the rapid technological progress in the sailmaking industry over the past 30 years. CEO Tom Whidden needs to consider how to best... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Intellectual Property

June 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Chipmaking in the Desert: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's Global Expansion

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

On December 6, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Executive Chairman Mark Liu outlined the company’s ambitious plans to invest $40 billion to build semiconductor manufacturing plants in Phoenix. The event also celebrated the... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitical Units; Government and Politics; Government Legislation; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan; United States

June 2011 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Home Essentials: Building a Global Service Business with Local Operations

By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr and David Lane

Chris Exline founded Home Essentials, a furniture rental business targeted toward expatriates, in Singapore but rapidly moved the base of operations to Hong Kong. The company was highly successful in Singapore and Hong Kong and then pursued rapid global expansion.... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Renting or Rental; Corporate Governance; Global Strategy; Failure; Singapore; Hong Kong