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- September 2022 (Revised June 2025)
- Case
York Capital CLOs and WorldStrides International
By: Victoria Ivashina and William Vrattos
The case follows the debt restructuring of WorldStrides International, a travel program provider in the education market, after the onset of COVID-19. The pandemic severely impacted the travel industry, creating challenges for many companies like WorldStrides, which... View Details
- September 2022
- Case
Selling for a Song: Valuing Robert Farrell’s Music Catalog
By: E. Scott Mayfield and Chijioke Orjiakor
- September 10, 2022
- Article
NFT Sales: Clearing the Market, Avoiding Gas Wars
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden
Instead of letting the market decide the price for their primary sale offerings, many NFT projects choose to initially sell their NFTs at prices below the market-clearing level. But what happens when market designers trade off efficiency for equity; or when demand far... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Human Versus Machine: A Comparison of Robo-Analyst and Traditional Research Analyst Investment Recommendations
By: Braiden Coleman, Kenneth J. Merkley and Joseph Pacelli
We provide the first comprehensive analysis of the properties of investment recommendations generated by “Robo-Analysts,” which are human analyst-assisted computer programs conducting automated research analysis. Our results indicate that Robo-Analyst recommendations... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised October 2023)
- Case
Bajaj Finance: Building an Omnipresent Financial Services Firm
By: Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani
Bajaj Finance, India’s largest consumer finance firm with $20.9 billion of assets across 50.5 million customers, is on a journey to transform itself from a traditional firm that sells loans and other financial products through brick-and-mortar outlets to an omnipresent... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised March 2023)
- Technical Note
Real Estate iBuying
By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Julia Kelley
This note provides an overview of real estate iBuying, or instant buying, a business model that involves buying homes and then reselling them at a profit. Introduced in the mid-2010s, iBuying streamlined the process of selling a home by offering instant, all-cash... View Details
- July 2022 (Revised February 2025)
- Case
A Soul and a Service: North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (the Mutual) was founded in 1898 as a for-profit entity selling life insurance catering to the Black community. The Mutual was entering a field crowded with established White-owned competitors that largely refused to... View Details
- 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
- 2024
- Working Paper
Do Collusive Norms Maximize Profits? Evidence From a Vegetable Market Experiment in India
By: Abhijit Banerjee, Greg Fischer, Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe and Benjamin N. Roth
Social norms have been shown to facilitate anti-competitive behavior in decentralized markets.
We demonstrate that these norms can also reduce aggregate profits. First, we present
descriptive evidence of competition-suppressing norms in Kolkata vegetable markets.... View Details
- June 2022
- Case
Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion
By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli
Born in 2008 as a small startup selling flip flops, by mid-2021 Zalando had turned into an online fashion company with an assortment of more than 4,500 international brands, 45 million active customers, and a presence in 23 European markets. An essential component in... View Details
Keywords: Transition; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Platforms; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Infrastructure; Logistics; Service Operations; Strategy; Business Strategy; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Shipping Industry; Technology Industry; Europe
- June 9, 2023
- Article
A Radical Treatment for Insulin Pricing
By: Leemore S. Dafny
In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first interchangeable biosimilar for long-acting insulin, which many hoped would be substantially cheaper than the reference branded product. I explain why prices have barely changed, and argue that a... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Dollar Tree: Breaking the Buck
By: Jill Avery and Marco Bertini
For thirty-five years, Dollar Tree, a discount retail chain selling general merchandise, had held its fixed price point steady, pricing all of its household items, food, stationery, books, seasonal items, gifts, toys, and clothing that made up its diverse and... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
Grupo Big Exit: Options for Advent and Walmart
By: Victoria Ivashina, Ruth Costas and Pedro Levindo
After conducting an impressive turnaround in Walmart’s subsidiary in Brazil, Private Equity firm Advent International has to decide how to exit this investment: through an IPO or selling the business to Carrefour. View Details
- Article
Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?
By: Samuel Antill
In U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of... View Details
- April 2022
- Supplement
MicroStrategy: Accounting for Cryptocurrency (B)
By: Jonas Heese and Annelena Lobb
In early 2022, the technology firm MicroStrategy unveiled a series of letters with the SEC that questioned its accounting practices around its holdings of Bitcoin. Since 2020, the firm had shifted its strategy to include not just selling software but buying and holding... View Details
Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Bitcoin; Holding Structures; SEC; Accounting; Finance; Financial Strategy; Technology Industry
- March 2022
- Case
GrowSari (A): Design for the Last Mile Customer
By: Brian Trelstad, Cam Carag and Michi Ferreol
Reymund (ER) Rollan and Shivapratim (Shiv) Choudhury, founders of the digital technology platform GrowSari, were at a crossroads. The feedback from their initial product roll-out were not what they had expected, and they needed to decide how to proceed. The pair,... View Details
- March 2022
- Supplement
GrowSari (B)
By: Brian Trelstad, Cam Carag and Michi Ferreol
Case supplement for HBS Case No. 322-036. Reymund (ER) Rollan and Shivapratim (Shiv) Choudhury, founders of the digital technology platform GrowSari, were at a crossroads. The feedback from their initial product roll-out were not what they had expected, and they needed... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Sekisui House and the In-Home Early Detection Platform
By: John D. Macomber and Akiko Kanno
To address an aging population and sales declines, a major Japanese homebuilder considers pivoting to provide and support an in-home health detection platform, in competition with tech companies. This case considers the point of view of major builders regarding how... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
Agora (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual “town halls,” making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and... View Details
- February 2022
- Supplement
Agora (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
This is the conclusion to Agora (A), where founder Elsa Sze decides if she wants to continue investing energy in her civic technology startup.
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between... View Details