Publications

September 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Rose Electronics Distributing Company

By: Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Itamar Frankenthal was evaluating bank loan proposals to finance his acquisition of Rose Electronics Distributing Company (“Rose”). He contacted 40 small and large banks that lent in the region and that outreach and follow-up calls resulted in nine term sheets received... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Acquisition; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry

09 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Five Steps to Better Family Negotiations

Negotiations between family members who own a business are different—different from negotiations between non-family members and also different from negotiations between family members who don't have a business. This is because family... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Davis and Deepak Malhotra

Christopher T. Stanton

Christopher Stanton is Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. Professor Stanton's research streams focus on personnel economics, organizational economics, labor markets, and entrepreneurship. His MBA... View Details

November 2009 (Revised October 2010)
Case

AME Learning Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Ann Leamon

Justin Joffe is about to graduate from HBS in Spring 2009. He must decide whether to join his father's company, Toronto-based AME Learning, as president working alongside his father who will be CEO. AME has been in business for 12 years, mostly as a small consulting... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Family Business; Age; Private Equity; Financing and Loans; Growth and Development Strategy; Family and Family Relationships

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February 2005 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Chuck's Wagon Inc.

By: Paul W. Marshall and Derek Lewis

This case describes the experiences of an HBS student as he takes on the challege of transitioning from an intern to a president at a small consumer packaged goods firm in Southern Texas. This HBS student is confronted with the opportunity to perform an operational and... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Goods; Operations Strategy; Executive Development; Strategy; Small Business; Production; Transformation; Management Skills; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Texas

March 2021
Article

Loan Guarantees and Credit Supply

By: Natalie Bachas, Olivia S. Kim and Constantine Yannelis

The efficiency of federal lending guarantees depends on whether guarantees increase lending supply or simply act as a subsidy to lenders. We use notches in the guarantee rate schedule for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to estimate the elasticity of bank... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Credit

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April 2008
Supplement

Ti-Tech (B)

By: Benson P. Shapiro and John T. Gourville

This case concerns the selection and scheduling of orders by a small industrial titanium fabricator that recently has been plagued by poor deliveries and a lack of capacity. At the time of the case, Ti-Tech must decide which of four orders to accept, with capacity... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Production; Performance Capacity; Marketing Strategy; Bids and Bidding; Manufacturing Industry; Industrial Products Industry; United States

09 Sep 2015
News

Entrepreneurship: Increasingly, the Province of the Wealthy

December 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Worldwide Orphans Foundation

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Susan Saltrick

How does a small non-profit build its organization, funding, & visibility to become sustainable? Traces the history of Worldwide Orphans Foundation from its early days as little more than the dream of its impassioned founder, Dr. Jane Aronson, to a thriving global... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Business History; Business Growth and Maturation; Welfare

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December 1996 (Revised June 1998)
Case

Midnight Networks, Inc.

By: H. Kent Bowen and Marilyn Matis

Midnight Networks, Inc., is a small computer network validation company. This case describes how the five founders built their business from operations earnings and how they established "best practices" operational processes to run their firm successfully. Operational... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business or Company Management; Operations; Organizational Culture; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Information Technology Industry; Massachusetts

July 2018
Teaching Note

Cumplo.com

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-039. Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-039. Cumplo is a Chilean-based fin-tech startup that provides investors and small businesses with opportunities to access loans and investments in ways distinct from traditional financial institutions in... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Alternative Finance; Crowdfunding; Crowdlending; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Financial Services Industry; Latin America; South America; Chile

February 1992 (Revised December 1992)
Case

MCI Vision (A)

By: Frank V. Cespedes

This case series focuses on divisional marketing and sales efforts concerning Vision, a new telecommunication product intended for the small business marketplace. Vision represents both a significant opportunity, and different field marketing requirements, for MCI.... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Development; Groups and Teams; Sales; Opportunities; Competitive Strategy

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September 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Atomwise: Strategic Opportunities in AI for Pharma

By: Satish Tadikonda

Abraham Heifets and his co-founder, Izhar Wallach, had founded Atomwise to develop i) an AI engine to transform drug discovery by creating better medicines faster, and ii) a machine learning-based discovery engine that combined the power of convolutional neural... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Science-Based Business; Technological Innovation; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Propel

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra

In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details

December 2009 (Revised September 2014)
Case

TD Canada Trust

By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan

The case illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Commercial Banking; Profit; Balanced Scorecard; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Banking Industry; Canada

May 2005 (Revised April 2010)
Case

GlaxoSmithKline: Reorganizing Drug Discovery (A)

By: Robert S. Huckman and Eli Strick

Describes the reorganization of drug discovery at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) following the formation of GSK from the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. This reorganization placed nearly 2,000 research scientists into six centers of excellence in drug discovery... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Choices and Conditions; Operations; Organizational Structure; Performance Improvement; Research and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry

Fall 2020
Article

Sizing Up Corporate Restructuring in the COVID Crisis

By: Robin Greenwood, Benjamin Iverson and David Thesmar

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Economy; System Shocks; Financial Crisis; Restructuring