Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,749)
- Faculty Publications (406)
- January 2022 (Revised November 2023)
- Supplement
Uber in China (C): The Cost of Success for Didi
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
On June 30, 2021, ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing (Didi) raised $4.4 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the largest IPO of a Chinese company listed on an American exchange since Alibaba raised $25 billion in 2014.... View Details
- November 2021
- Case
Steve Schwarzman on Dealmaking I: “Becoming a ‘Friend of the Situation’” (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
Blackstone Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, whom Forbes has called “Wall Street’s Greatest Dealmaker,” played a major role in the negotiations that transformed Blackstone from a fragile startup in 1985 with $400,000 in capital into a dominant... View Details
- November 2021
- Case
Steve Schwarzman on Dealmaking II: When They Hold All the Cards (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
Blackstone Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, whom Forbes has called “Wall Street’s Greatest Dealmaker,” played a major role in the negotiations that transformed Blackstone from a fragile startup in 1985 with $400,000 in capital into a dominant... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Business of K-12 Education in China
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu
This working paper examines the evolution of K-12 education in China, especially between 1985 and the present day, drawing extensive interviews with participants in the educational sector. China has been hugely successful in reaching almost 100 percent literacy,... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Bühler: Mobilizing Industry around a Common Purpose
By: Ranjay Gulati, Franz Wohlgezogen and Malini Sen
Bühler Group, a Swiss multinational processing technology provider, started by selling machines for processing grains and later transitioned into selling food processing solutions. A family-owned business in the fifth generation, Bühler’s high-end milling, grinding,... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Spire, the CubeSat Revolution, and the Government as a Space Data Customer
By: Matthew Weinzierl, Mehak Sarang and Brendan L. Rosseau
This case outlines the rise of Spire Global, a young space company using CubeSats to provide weather data and weather prediction services. In addition to tracing the evolution of a space startup from novel idea to publicly-traded company, the case also examines the... View Details
- August 2021 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
KKR
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In June of 2021, KKR’s executive team convened to prepare for an upcoming board meeting. From a small, three-person partnership that started in 1976 and invested only in U.S. LBOs, the firm 45 years later was a public company that employed over 1,600 people and managed... View Details
- July 2021
- Case
Bessemer Venture Partners: Century Fund
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In July of 2021, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) contemplated the future of its growth investing practice, known as “Century.” While still relatively new as a focused initiative, BVP’s growth investing already had significant momentum. The fund’s investment pace had... View Details
- July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Fynd
By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details
- July–August 2021
- Article
SPACs: What You Need to Know
By: Max Bazerman and Paresh Patel
Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, have been around in various forms for decades, but during the past two years they’ve taken off in the United States. In 2019, 59 were created, with $13 billion invested; in 2020, 247 were created, with $80 billion... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors
By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
Etsy: Crafting a Turnaround to Save the Business and Its Soul
By: Ranjay Gulati, Luciana Silvestri and Monte Burke
Etsy, the online seller of handmade goods, was founded in 2005 on an almost utopian ideal—a responsible, caring company that offered individual crafters a place to sell their wares, a wholesome alternative to companies that sold mass-manufactured products. The company... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised October 2023)
- Case
Mary Kay Ash: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case describes the rise of Mary Kay, the founder of the worldwide cosmetics company. As a young single mother, Mary Kay had to overcome many obstacles to start her business and guide it to success. Today, there are more than 3.5 million Mary Kay beauty consultants... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion.... View Details
Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Restructuring; Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Bonds; Investment Return; Institutional Investing; Profit Sharing; Business History; Management Style; Private Ownership; Performance Effectiveness; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry; United States
- February 12, 2021
- Article
The Commercial Space Age Is Here
By: Matt Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
In May of 2020, SpaceX made history as the first private company to send humans into space. This marks not only a tremendous technological achievement, but also the first indication that an entirely new “space-for-space” industry—that is, goods and services designed to... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised March 2023)
- Supplement
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (B)
By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin
By December 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had swept across the globe, creating widespread disruption in all aspects of everyday life. Almost 90 million people had been infected and nearly two million had died from the disease. By this point in the pandemic—a year since... View Details
- January 2021
- Case
Saham Group: It's In the Genes
By: Christina R. Wing and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in August 2020 as Moulay Mhamed Elalamy (Mhamed), CEO of the Saham Group (the Group), a pan-African investment company that operates a variety of businesses out of Morocco, contemplates the Group’s identity, its investment strategy, and how to navigate... View Details
- January–February 2021
- Article
Compensation Packages That Actually Drive Performance
By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah Abbott, Michael R. Marino and Metin Aksoy
By aligning executives’ financial incentives with company strategy, a firm can inspire its management to deliver superior results. But it can be hard to get pay packages right. In this article four experts break down the key elements of compensation and explain how to... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Riverstone
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
In 2020, Luke Minion and the leadership team at Riverstone, a hog producer founded in 2013 in Shandong, China, were evaluating Riverstone’s strategy as it rebounded from outbreaks of African Swine Fever (ASF) in two of its three farm complexes. Riverstone was a joint... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Globalization; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Disruption; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Consulting Industry; United States; China
- December 2020 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
France Télécom (A): A Challenging Restructuring
These cases explore the impacts of industry shocks, resulting corporate actions that had a devastating impact on employees, and the legal conviction of corporate leaders for “institutional harassment."
This case series follows the evolution of France... View Details
This case series follows the evolution of France... View Details
Keywords: Health ＆ Wellness; Human Resource Management; Strategic Change; Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Leadership And Change Management; Leadership And Managing People; Change; Restructuring; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Health; Human Capital; Human Resources; Labor; Labor and Management Relations; Labor Unions; Law; Social Psychology; Strategy; Leadership; Leadership Style; Organizations; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Crisis Management; Organizational Culture; Employees; Well-being; Telecommunications Industry; Europe; European Union