Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(11,314)
- Faculty Publications (1,483)
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A1)
By: Fabrizio Ferri, V.G. Narayanan and James Weber
Two activist investors, one a founder and one a hedge fund manager, seek to improve board oversight at a chain restaurant company. Prestley Blake founded Friendly Ice Cream in 1935 with his brother, and the two created a chain of full-service restaurants. In 1979, they... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Supplement
Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A2)
By: V.G. Narayanan, Fabrizio Ferri and James Weber
The A1 and A2 versions of the “Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A)” split the original A case into two parts. The A1 case ends as activists Sardar Biglari and Phil Cooley prepare to meet with CEO Don Smith at Friendly's headquarters in September 2006. The... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Strategy
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
By 2008, a number of the firm's early cleantech investments were showing promise, and the companies were starting to need significantly more money to create the massive scale required in the energy sector. As Khosla thought about the hundreds of millions of dollars... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Marketing; Entrepreneurial Finance; New Product Development; Partnerships; Entrepreneurial Management; Venture Capital; Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Renewable Energy; Entrepreneurship; Investment Funds; Environmental Sustainability; Product Development; Biotechnology Industry; Financial Services Industry
- September 2008 (Revised April 2009)
- Supplement
Wyoff and China-LuQuan: Negotiating a Joint Venture (B)
By: James K. Sebenius and Cheng (Jason) Qian
Through stalled joint venture talks between Pennsylvania-based Wyoff Corp. and Jinan-based China-LuQuan, strategic and cross-cultural negotiation challenges are explored both from American and Chinese perspectives. Wyoff, a leading U.S. chemical company, has been... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
Ithmar Capital
By: Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon
The founders of Ithmar Capital, a mid-market private equity fund targeting businesses in and addressing the Gulf Co-operation Council countries, are about to raise their third fund, targeting $1 billion. The firm's current strategy as demonstrated in Funds I ($70... View Details
- September 2008 (Revised July 2011)
- Case
Keeping Google 'Googley'
By: Boris Groysberg, David A. Thomas and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
This case, set in 2008, examines how Google has worked to avoid potential negative byproducts of rapid growth such as bureaucracy, slow decision-making, lack of visibility, and organizational inconsistency. When the case protagonist, Kim Scott, started with Google in... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
A New Generation of Pension Fund Management
By: Robert C. Merton
In talking about pension plans at this point in American economic and corporate history, we need to discuss three linked issues: the defined-benefit (DB) corporate plans that worked for our parents; the defined-contribution (DC) plans we're getting today because... View Details
- fall 2008
- Article
Toward a Theory of Behavioral Operations
By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano
Human beings are critical to the functioning of the vast majority of operating systems, influencing both the way these systems work and how they perform. Yet most formal analytical models of operations assume that the people who participate in operating systems are... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Variation in Experience and Team Familiarity: Addressing the Knowledge Acquisition-Application Problem
By: Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
Prior work in organizational learning has failed to find a consistent effect of variation in experience on performance. While some studies find a positive relationship between these two variables, others find no effect or even a negative relationship. In this paper, we... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
CEO and CFO Career Penalties to Missing Quarterly Analysts Forecasts
By: Rick Mergenthaler, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We find that missing the quarterly analyst consensus earnings forecast is associated with career penalties in the form of a reduced bonus, smaller equity grants, and a greater chance of forced dismissal for both CEOs and CFOs during the period 1993-2004. These results... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage
By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize... View Details
- July 2008 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Eee PC (A)
By: Willy C. Shih, Chintay Shih, Hung-Chang Chiu, Yi-Ching Hsieh and Ho Howard Yu
ASUSTek Computer was the world's largest manufacture of PC motherboards, yet when it tried to launch its new sub-notebook Eee PC, the organization faced challenges in doing things outside of its established processes. Though many of the team members had worked together... View Details
- July–August 2008
- Article
Interview with a Quality Leader: Regina E. Herzlinger on Consumer-Driven Healthcare
Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA. She received her bachelor's degree from MIT and her doctorate from the Harvard Business School The first woman to be tenured and... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Managing Up
By: Linda A. Hill
Managing up is not political game playing. Rather, it's a conscious approach to working with your supervisor toward goals that are important to both of you. Through managing up, you build a productive working relationship with your boss and create a way to use the... View Details
- 2008
- Simulation
Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay Battery
By: Willy C. Shih and Clayton Christensen
This online simulation allows students to play the role of a business unit manager at Back Bay Battery Company who faces the dilemma of balancing a portfolio of investment strategies across products in the rechargeable battery space. Players have to manage R&D... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised July 2009)
- Case
COFCO Xinjiang Tunhe Co., Ltd.
By: David E. Bell and Aldo Sesia
In 2005, COFCO Ltd., one of China's largest and most successful companies, acquired Xinjiang Tunhe, a tomato processing firm, which had been, in recent years, poorly managed. COFCO changed Tunhe's management team and set out to create a culture of professionalism and... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Cook Composites and Polymers Co.
By: Deishin Lee, Michael W. Toffel and Rachel Gordon
This case describes how a company improves resource efficiency and process quality in its manufacturing process by developing a waste by-product into a new product. The case describes how CCP cleans production equipment between batches using styrene, which becomes a... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
Kit Hinrichs at Pentagram (A)
By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Stecker
This case focuses on Kit Hinrichs, a 65-year-old partner at Pentagram, a privately owned multidisciplinary design firm. One of the world's most prestigious design firms, Pentagram was founded by five designers from different disciplines in London in the 1970s. By 2008,... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Collaborative Architectures for Innovation
By: Gary P. Pisano and Roberto Verganti
Collaborative innovation has become a hot topic in innovation today. Scholars, consultants, and the business press all urge companies seeking to boost innovative performance to become more "collaborative." Too often, however, companies fail to distinguish among the... View Details
- summer 2008
- Article
Corporate Social Responsibility Through an Economic Lens
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Robert N. Stavins and Richard H.K. Vietor
Business leaders, government officials, and academics are focusing considerable attention on the concept of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR), particularly in the realm of environmental protection. Beyond complete compliance with environmental regulations, do... View Details