Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,790)
- Faculty Publications (212)
- June 2015 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
LOYAL3: Own What You Love™
By: Luis M. Viceira and Allison M. Ciechanover
This case features San Francisco–based financial technology startup, LOYAL3. Founded in 2008, the company seeks to disrupt the capital markets and democratize access to those markets for retail investors. By the fall of 2014, LOYAL3 had three products. In the first,... View Details
- December 2014
- Case
Louis Dreyfus Commodities
By: David E. Bell
Louis Dreyfus Commodities (LDC or Dreyfus) is the D of the ABCD grain-trading giants. The case describes how their business works and details the strategy by which management turned the company around in recent years. The case presents a number of issues facing the... View Details
- Article
Doing Business with Strangers: Reputation in Online Service Marketplaces
By: Antonio Moreno and Christian Terwiesch
Online service marketplaces allow service buyers to post their project requests and service providers to bid for them. To reduce the transactional risks, marketplaces typically track and publish previous seller performance. By analyzing a detailed transactional data... View Details
- November 2014 (Revised February 2016)
- Case
DoubleDutch
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Matthew G. Preble
Lawrence Coburn and Pankaj Prasad, co-founders of the event solution startup DoubleDutch, have to make a significant decision about their young company's sales function. DoubleDutch's key product was a mobile application (app) and event management platform that... View Details
- September 2014 (Revised June 2016)
- Case
edX: Strategies for Higher Education
By: David Collis, Matthew Shaffer and Ashley Hartman
In May 2012, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) founded edX, a new non-profit joint venture that would provide a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). edX did not produce original courses or instructional content—it made... View Details
- 2014
- Contribution
Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets: Contextual Intelligence for the Study of Two Thirds of the World's Population
By: Tarun Khanna
In this paper, I review the concept of "institutional voids" that provides a way to understand the structure of emerging markets. These voids impede would-be buyers from getting together with would-be sellers, and hence compromise the functioning of markets.... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Signaling without Certification: The Critical Role of Civil Society Scrutiny
By: Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell and Michael W. Toffel
In response to stakeholders' growing concerns, companies are joining voluntary environmental programs to signal their superior environmental management capabilities. In contrast to the literature's focus on certification programs that require a third-party audit, we... View Details
Keywords: United Nations; Labor Standards; Supplier Relationship; Procurement; Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Quality And Safety; Risk; Globalization; Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance; Working Conditions; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Reputation
- Summer 2014
- Article
Taiwan's PC Industry, 1976–2010: The Evolution of Organizational Capabilities
By: Howard H. Yu and Willy C. Shih
The stellar growth of Taiwan's personal computer (PC) industry over the past three decades represents a paradox. Participating in the global production system, local firms in Taiwan grew in association with established firms in the West. Despite their technical... View Details
Keywords: Personal Computer; PC; PC Industry; Taiwan PC Industry; Taiwan PC Manufacturers; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Industry Clusters; Industry Growth; Industry Structures; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Mobile Technology; Information Technology Industry; Taiwan
- 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
- April 2014
- Case
Don Valentine and Sequoia Capital
By: Felda Hardymon, Tom Nicholas and Liz Kind
Don Valentine participated in the beginnings of two significant milestones: the birth of the silicon chip and the development of the venture capital industry. From humble beginnings, Valentine became a legendary salesman at Fairchild Semiconductor and National... View Details
- Spring 2014
- Article
Leveraging Crowdsourced Peer-to-Peer Assessments to Enhance the Case Method of Learning
By: Jill Avery
Many marketing educators use the case method to help their students strengthen their decision-making skills. Rigorous class participation is essential to achieving learning objectives in case method learning. One challenge for case method instructors is the assessment... View Details
- March 2014 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Teach For China and the Chinese Nonprofit Sector
By: William C. Kirby and Erica M. Zendell
Teach For China was founded in 2008 with the mission of expanding educational opportunity across China. By 2013, Andrea Pasinetti's lofty dream had taken flight: over 300 graduates from top American and Chinese universities were participating in its 2-year teaching... View Details
Keywords: Nonprofit; China; Business And Government Relations; Business And Poverty; Business And Society; Emerging Market Entrepreneurship; Emerging Market; NGO; Education; Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Emerging Markets; Non-Governmental Organizations; Nonprofit Organizations; Education Industry; China
- October 2013
- Case
Pearle Vision: Clearly Different?
By: Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred
Ohio-based optical retailer Pearle Vision, part of the vertically integrated Italian eyewear group Luxottica, sold glasses and offered in-store eye exams. Once the largest U.S. optical retailer, Pearle Vision, with 266 corporate stores and 356 franchised stores in... View Details
- October 2013
- Supplement
Alcoa's Bid for Alcan (B)
By: Paul Healy and Penelope Rossano
In spring 2007, Alcoa CEO Alain Belda was concerned about the company's market position in light of increased competition from developing markets. China's recent entry into the aluminum market was affecting both supply and demand. Furthermore, downstream and upstream... View Details
- October 2013
- Article
Ad Revenue and Content Commercialization: Evidence from Blogs
By: Monic Sun and Feng Zhu
Many scholars argue that when incentivized by ad revenue, content providers are more likely to tailor their content to attract "eyeballs," and as a result, popular content may be excessively supplied. We empirically test this prediction by taking advantage of the... View Details
- August 2013 (Revised November 2015)
- Case
Prudential Financial - General Motors Pension Risk Transfer: Back to the Future?
By: Luis M. Viceira and Emily A. Chien
In November 2012, Prudential Financial and General Motors closed on a $25.1B pension risk transfer (PRT) transaction, the largest of its kind to date by an order of magnitude both in the U.S. market and globally. In exchange for an in-kind transfer of $25.1B in... View Details
- Summer 2013
- Article
A Tale of Two Stories: Sustainability and the Quarterly Earnings Call
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
One of the challenges companies claim to face in making sustainability a core part of their strategy and operations is that the market does not care about sustainability, either in general or because the time frames in which it matters are too long. The response of... View Details
- July 2013
- Case
B. Zaitz & Sons Co. Farmland Investing
By: Andre F. Perold
In April 2013, Ben Zaitz was looking down at an expanse of agricultural land as his plane flew over the Midwest. He would soon arrive in northern Minnesota to meet with farmers regarding land he had recently purchased there. The vast tracts of row-crop acreage below... View Details
- July 2013
- Case
Novozymes: Establishing the Cellulosic Ethanol Value Chain
By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai
As the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes, Novozymes had invested heavily for many years to bio-engineer enzymes that could break down cellulose into fermentable sugar. In 2010, the company had launched what it thought would become a breakthrough product... View Details
Keywords: System Complexity; Industrial Enzymes; Ethanol; Collulosic Ethanol; Fermentation; Genomics; Genetic Engineering; Value Chain; Assembling Value Chain; Energy Sources; Renewable Energy; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Growth; Production; Research; Research and Development; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Vertical Integration; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Biotechnology Industry; Energy Industry; Denmark; United States
- June 2013 (Revised November 2013)
- Case
Bluefin Labs: The Acquisition by Twitter
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
What is the value of Bluefin Labs's social listening data to Twitter? Acquired by Twitter in 2013, Bluefin had built a system that gathered millions of online comments in an effort to develop new metrics for TV programs and brand advertising. With data from Twitter... View Details