Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,559)
- Faculty Publications (212)
- October 2019 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
A Conversation with Ellen J. Kullman, Chair & CEO of DuPont, 2009-2015
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
Ellen J. Kullman, the retired Chairman and CEO of DuPont, describes how she guided the storied science and technology company through a contentious proxy battle with activist investor Trian Partners, which acquired DuPont shares in 2013 and sought to break up the... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised March 2021)
- Background Note
Modern Automation (B): Robotics
By: William R. Kerr and James Palano
Driven largely by advances in perception and situational awareness, robots in the 2010s were gaining functionality that allowed them to be applied to fundamentally new types of work. The expanding range of new tasks that could be completed by machines had significant... View Details
- September 2019
- Exercise
Difficult Conversations (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details
- September 2019
- Teaching Note
Difficult Conversations (A) and (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 820-055 and 820-056. View Details
- September 2019
- Exercise
Difficult Conversations (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised March 2020)
- Background Note
Note on Structured Interviewing
By: Ethan Bernstein and Amy Ross
Making good hiring decisions is a critical management activity, yet many leaders just “wing it” when interviewing candidates to fill openings by having an organic conversation to assess the candidate’s fit, unknowingly subjecting the process to unconscious bias.... View Details
- Article
Why ‘Tell Them Something They Don't Know’ Is Bad Advice in B2B Sales
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Tracy DeCicco
Common advice in sales is to provide insights to customers during sales calls. But this advice generally stays at the level of “tell people something they don’t already know” and results in sales conversations littered with many irrelevant factoids. This article... View Details
- May 2019
- Background Note
Founders' Agreements
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Sanchali Pal
Crafting a Founders’ Agreement is an important component of startup infrastructure as it documents a complex set of decisions that build a company’s roots. Its four key elements are: roles and responsibilities, rights (decision rights, rewards, position on board),... View Details
- April 2019 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Wayfair
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie L. Ma and Matthew G. Preble
In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual... View Details
- February 2019
- Article
Does It Matter If Your Health Insurer Is For Profit? Effects of Ownership on Premiums, Insurance Coverage, and Medical Spending
By: Leemore S. Dafny
There is limited empirical evidence about the impact of for-profit health insurers on various outcomes. I study the effects of conversions to for-profit status by Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) affiliates in 11 states, spanning 28 geographic markets. I find both the... View Details
- 2019
- Article
Turning Lead into Gold: How Do Entrepreneurs Mobilize Resources to Exploit Opportunities?
By: David R. Clough, Tommy Pan Fang, Balagopal Vissa and Andy Wu
The mobilization of resources is a central and defining feature of entrepreneurship. As the body of empirical research on entrepreneurial resource mobilization has grown, the literature has become increasingly fragmented. We review the literature on entrepreneurs’... View Details
Keywords: Resource Mobilization; Entrepreneurship; Organizations; Theory; Research; Strategy; Opportunities
- December 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Husk Power: Scaling the Venture
In January 2018, Manoj Sinha—founder and CEO of Husk Power—was contemplating raising $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread... View Details
- Fall 2018
- Article
The Value of Fit Information in Online Retail: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
By: Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
Online channels generate frictions when selling products with nondigital attributes, such as apparel. Customers may be reluctant to purchase products they have not been able to try on, and those customers who do purchase may return products when they do not fit as... View Details
- June 2018
- Teaching Note
ALAC International
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
ALAC International (ALAC) was awarded the U.S. distributorship of di-isononyl phthalate (DINP) which provided ALAC an opportunity to increase its sales and profits. But the opportunity required a significant additional investment in working capital. The DINP, shipped... View Details
- June 2018
- Case
Candor at Clever
By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala
Clever, a high-growth EdTech company based in San Francisco, had grown quickly in market share and headcount. As with many high-growth companies, however, early employees (many of whom had never managed people before) had been given the opportunity to manage teams, and... View Details
Keywords: Performance Feedback; Talent Development And Retention; Talent Management; Feedback; Difficult Conversations; Radical Candor; Scaling Start-ups; Scaling And Growth; Developing Effective Managers; Effective Managers; First-time Managers; Kim Scott; Clever; Bay Area; Silicon Valley; Interpersonal Communication; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources; Leadership Development; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Management Style; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Conflict and Resolution; Technology Industry; Education Industry; San Francisco; United States
- June 2018
- Teaching Note
Difficult Conversations and Dealing with Challenging Situations at Work
By: Boris Groysberg and Amram Migdal
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 416-031, 416-032, 416-033, 416-034, 416-035, and 416-036. View Details
Keywords: Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Human Resources; Employee Relationship Management; Management Skills; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Personal Development and Career; Relationships; Groups and Teams; Social Psychology; Attitudes; Behavior; Conflict and Resolution; Conflict Management; Emotions; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Perspective; Power and Influence; Prejudice and Bias; Reputation; Satisfaction; Trust
- May–June 2018
- Article
The Surprising Power of Questions
By: Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John
Much of an executive’s workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught... View Details
- April 2018
- Case
Cisco Systems and OpenDNS: Strategic Integration
By: Andy Wu, George Gonzalez and David Wang
With more than 72,000 employees and revenues approaching the $50B mark, Cisco Systems is one of the largest information technology and networking firms globally. As the company grew and expanded into different lines of businesses, Cisco consistently looked outwards for... View Details
- Article
Offline Showrooms in Omni-channel Retail: Demand and Operational Benefits
By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
Omnichannel environments where customers shop online and offline at the same retailer are ubiquitous and are deployed by online-first and traditional retailers alike. We focus on the relatively understudied domain of online-first retailers and the engagement of a key... View Details