Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(3,638)
- Faculty Publications (447)
- January 2023
- Supplement
Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)
By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details
Keywords: Iphone; Encryption; Data Privacy; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Globalized Firms and Management; Government and Politics; Health; Health Pandemics; Leadership; Markets; Safety; Social Issues; Information Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Health Industry; United States; Europe
- January 2023 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Veeva Systems and the Transformation to a Public Benefit Corporation
By: Ranjay Gulati and Allison M. Ciechanover
Peter Gassner, the co-founder and CEO of Veeva Systems, steered the company through rapid scaling from its launch in 2007 to 2022. Year after year, the company had exceeded expectations, with its market capitalization reaching $50 billion at its peak. By 2022, the... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
EKI Energy Services: One Billion Carbon Credits
By: George Serafeim
Within nine months from the time of its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in April of 2021, EKI Energy Services (EKI) shares had increased by more than 8,000%. Equally explosive was the growth of the company’s revenues and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes and Depreciation... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Market for CEOs: Evidence from Private Equity
By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov
Most research on the CEO labor market studies public company CEOs while largely ignoring CEOs in private equity (PE) funded companies. We fill this gap by studying the market for CEOs among U.S. companies purchased by PE firms in large leveraged buyout transactions.... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Corporate Misconduct’s Relevance to Society through Everyday Misconduct
By: Eugene Soltes
Terms like "corporate misconduct" and "white-collar crime" typically bring to mind major scandals like Enron or Bernie Madoff. This popular perception overlooks another important—and in fact much more typical—type of deviance: "everyday misconduct." Everyday misconduct... View Details
- November 2022 (Revised March 2023)
- Case
OneSmart
By: Nien-he Hsieh, Meg Rithmire and Shu Lin
At the end of 2021, Xi “Steve” Zhang was facing an existential crisis for himself and his business. OneSmart was a premium educational company founded in 2008 offering K-12 afterschool tutoring for students nationwide under a number of brands. The company was founded... View Details
- October 2022
- Case
Spaceport America, Public Sector Risk-taking, and Political Accountability (A)
By: Matthew Weinzierl, Dava Newman, Rebecca Browder and Angela Acocella
Sitting quietly in the heart of the New Mexico desert in the summer of 2014, Spaceport America (SA) housed little of the activity its supporters anticipated when opening its hangar doors in 2011. Despite $1 million in annual rent from Virgin Galactic, British... View Details
- September–October 2022
- Article
Case Study: What's the Right Career Move After a Public Failure?
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz and Francesca Gino
“Reunions are for happy people,” Mariani Kallis said to her friend Whitney on the phone. “I’m not going.” “Come on, it won’t be the same without you,” Whitney pleaded. “Besides, no one is happy right now. Everyone’s life is a mess.”
“I’m pretty sure none of our... View Details
- 2022
- White Paper
The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement
By: Matt Sigelman, Joseph Fuller, Nik Dawson and Gad Levanon
The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement is a new effort to give companies and other stakeholders a set of robust tools that measure how well major employers are doing in fostering economic mobility for workers and how they could do... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry
By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... View Details
Keywords: Government Regulation; Deregulation; Change Management; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Business History; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Labor; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Industry Structures; Operations; Strategy; Adaptation; Competition; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- July 2022
- Case
boAt Lifestyle
By: Rajiv Lal and Kairavi Dey
boAt began as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics category in 2016 with the aim of bringing affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories to millennials and Gen-Z customers in India. Born in 2016 with Amazon India as its only sales... View Details
- July 15, 2022
- Article
Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?
By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic
Does Elon Musk have a strategy? Or is he just out there winging it? Looking at Musk’s many companies, common themes stand out across three areas: what fits into his vision for problems to solve, how he designs an organization as a solution to those problems, and why he... View Details
- Article
The C-Suite Skills That Matter Most
By: Raffaella Sadun, Joseph B. Fuller, Stephen Hansen and PJ Neal
Landing a job as a CEO today is no longer all about industry expertise and financial savvy. What companies are really seeking are leaders with strong social skills. That’s what the authors discovered after analyzing nearly 7,000 job descriptions for C-suite roles.... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Sustainability Reporting at Dollar Tree, Inc.
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
The cases discusses the ESG strategy of Dollar Tree Inc., a U.S. Fortune 500 company in the deep discount retail industry and the and shareholder pressure faced by the company. In 2022, the company faced a shareholder resolution from a renowned shareholder advocacy... View Details
Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Shareholder Activism; Dollar Tree; Sustainability Reporting; ESG Reporting; Board Of Directors; Shareholder Engagement; GHG; Environmental Accounting; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Trends; Communication; Announcements; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Reports; Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Strategic Planning; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Situation or Environment; Opportunities; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Value Creation; Retail Industry; United States; Virginia
- May 2022
- Case
Byte
By: Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly Baden and Julia Kelley
In January 2021, Byte co-founders Scott Cohen and Blake Johnson reflected on how far their Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer (DTC) orthodontics company had come since launching its clear aligners just a little over two years earlier. Cohen and Johnson were both... View Details
- April 2022
- Case
Mastercard: Creating a World Beyond Cash
In late 2021, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach and Chairman and former CEO Ajaypal “Ajay” Banga considered how Mastercard could best position itself for continued success in the years to come. Since Mastercard’s initial public offering in 2006, the company had grown and... View Details
Keywords: Technological Innovation; Leadership; Leading Change; Organizational Culture; Business Strategy; Change; Change Management; Money; Cash; Credit; Financial Institutions; Banks and Banking; Central Banking; Financial Instruments; Credit Cards; Financial Markets; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Style; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Information Technology; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States; New York (state, US)
- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses
By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan
The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised April 2023)
- Case
Pittsburgh: A Successful City?
Pittsburgh, PA, was once the crown jewel of American heavy industry. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city was an undisputed leader in steel production, boasting some of the largest companies and wealthiest individuals in the world. Its abundance of... View Details
Keywords: Economic And Social Disparities; Economic Development; Local Economic Development; Contextual Intelligence; Contextual Knowledge; Context; City Growth; City Innovation; City Leadership; Pittsburgh; Local Government; Local Stakeholders; Business And Community; Business And Community Relations; Community Engagement; Community Relations; Cross-sector Collaboration; Innovation; Innovation Economy; Innovation Clusters; Innovation Ecosystems; Shared Prosperity; Equality Of Opportunity; Equity; Inclusion; Business And Government; Business ＆ Government Relations; Business And Government Relations; Business And Society; Neighborhoods; Race And Ethnicity; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Household; Income; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Economics; Local Range; Urban Development; Urban Scope; City; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Government and Politics; Government Administration; Growth and Development; History; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Society; Civil Society or Community; Culture; Human Needs; Public Opinion; Public Sector; Social Issues; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Education Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Pittsburgh; Pennsylvania
- February 2022 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Resident 2020
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Jaypee Infratech and the Indian Bankruptcy Code
By: Kristin Mugford, William Vrattos and Radhika Kak
In 2016, India passed a new bankruptcy law (IBC) to counter a brewing bank crisis and increased corporate distress. Homebuilder Jaypee Infratech, one of India largest distressed companies (the “dirty dozen”) began restructuring under the IBC in 2017. Two years later,... View Details
Keywords: Restructuring; Decisions; Judgments; Voting; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Public Sector; Asset Pricing; Borrowing and Debt; Corporate Finance; Credit; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Debt Securities; Bonds; Investment Return; Price; Government Legislation; Laws and Statutes; Bids and Bidding; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; India; Delhi