Publications

April 1996 (Revised May 1997)
Case

Netscape's Initial Public Offering

By: W. Carl Kester and Kendall Backstrand

In August 1995, Netscape's board of directors was confronted with a decision about what price to offer the company's shares in its initial public offering (IPO). Preliminary demand for shares was high, but the company had not generated any positive earnings at the time... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Information Technology; Problems and Challenges; Valuation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Information Technology Industry

February 1996
Case

USX Corporation

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott

A large diversified steel and energy firm is pressured by a corporate raider to spin off its steel business in order to increase its stock price. As an alternative to the spinoff, management proposes replacing the company's common stock with two new classes of... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Stocks; Valuation; Financial Institutions; Cash Flow

January 1994
Case

National Convenience Stores, Inc.

By: Steven R. Fenster, Stuart C. Gilson and Roy Burstin

National Convenience Stores seeks to emerge from Chapter 11. Central to the nature of the reorganization plan is the company's determining enterprise value. The various constituencies (secured debt, unsecured debt, etc.) will seek to find an enterprise value that... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Valuation; Restructuring; Strategic Planning; Borrowing and Debt; Food and Beverage Industry; Texas

April 2025
Case

Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Valuation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Industrial Products Industry; North America; Europe

01 Jun 2002
News

Books

until plummeting stock valuations in the spring of 2000 burst the Internet stock “bubble,” venture capitalists, investment bankers, mutual funds managers, accountants, and corporate leaders had sponsored a financial mania at the expense... View Details

Keywords: Nancy O. Perry

October 2014
Teaching Note

MuMaté

By: Thomas Eisenmann

This teaching note is designed for use with "MuMaté: Funding Growth," "MuMaté (B-1): Confidential for Maxwell," "MuMaté (B-2): Confidential for Cantor," HBS Nos. 814-063, 813-149, 813-150, to help faculty deepen student comprehension of business issues and energize... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Growth Management; Negotiation; Expansion; Valuation; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Culture; Business Startups; Food and Beverage Industry

October 2008 (Revised September 2011)
Supplement

PepsiCo's Bid for Quaker Oats (B)

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Leonid Soudakov

Second in a series on PepsiCo's bid for Quaker Oats. Describes the negotiations between PepsiCo and Quaker including due-diligence process, first bid, and counteroffer. Quaker's counteroffer included a collar on equity consideration, and thus the case offers an... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Equity; Bids and Bidding; Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Preparation; Valuation; Food and Beverage Industry

November 2007
Article

The Accidental Entrepreneur: The Emergent and Collective Process of User Entrepreneurship

By: Sonali K. Shah and Mary Tripsas

We develop a process model of how users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and commercialize their ideas. We compare and contrast our model to the classic model of the entrepreneurial process, highlighting the emergent and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Valuation; Business Model; Commercialization; Adoption; Adaptation; Product; Civil Society or Community

Find at Harvard

Read Now

Web

Bibliography - Option Pricing in Theory & Practice: The Nobel Prize Research of Robert C. Merton - Exhibits - Historical Collections

Scholes. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities." Journal of Political Economy 81 (May/June 1973): 637-654. Black, Fischer, and Myron S. Scholes. "The Valuation of Option Contracts and a Test of Market Efficiency." Journal of... View Details

Web

Courses by Title - Course Catalog

Management, Technology & Operations Management Willy Shih Spring 2026 Q4 1.5 Business Analysis and Valuation Using Financial Statements Accounting & Management Joseph Pacelli Fall 2025 Q1Q2 3.0 Business Analysis and View Details

30 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, May 30

company had performed well and was gaining momentum. Interline was a rare asset in terms of the scale it had reached. However, there were still unknowns. Would buyers reward Interline with a high valuation multiple that reflected its... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Jun 2016
What Do You Think?

When Business Performance Falters, is Culture Change the Fix?

“ it is not an either/or but a coordinated process.” Art Stewart added, “In my view, culture must now be treated as an integrated strategy and viewed as a core asset for contributing to marketplace value and corporate valuation as well as... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett

15 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 15

(Search-Based Peers or SBPs) are fundamentally similar on multiple dimensions. In direct tests, SBPs dominate GICS6 industry peers in explaining cross-sectional variations in base firms' out-of-sample (a) stock returns, (b) valuation... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Angels Face the Innovator’s Dilemma

venture companies: Kleiner Perkins was one, Greylock was another. And the ... valuation was over 700 million dollars. "And as he beat his chest, the other entrepreneurs in the audience stood up and applauded," marveled... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

11 Jun 2020
Blog Post

Know Your Audience - Recruiting HBS Students for Venture Capital

backgrounds including banking, private equity, and technology. The diversity of backgrounds is another benefit to firms as they look to fill different roles. Students with strong analytical and valuation skills will be an ideal fit for... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital / Private Equity

12 May 2016
News

Food Rescue Is on a Mission

models are very powerful,” he explains. “We have trucks that do deliveries, but the innovation is in how we are able to suit local needs, with many different collection models customized for local circumstances.” For Carson, a founder of PPB Advisory, a specialist firm... View Details

Keywords: Jill Radsken

March 2017
Case

SKS Microfinance (Abridged)

By: Shawn Cole and Theresa Chen

Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Venture Capital; Microfinance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Valuation; Financial Services Industry; India

Fourth Quarter 2007
Article

Contingent Claims Approach to Measuring and Managing Sovereign Credit Risk

By: Dale . F. Gray, Robert C. Merton and Zvi Bodie

This paper proposes a new approach to measure, analyze, and manage sovereign risk based on the theory and practice of modern contingent claims analysis (CCA). The paper provides a new framework for adapting the CCA model to the sovereign balance sheet in a way that can... View Details

Keywords: Credit; Investment; Sovereign Finance; Risk Management; Emerging Markets; Market Transactions; Mathematical Methods; Valuation