Publications

February 1981 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Harris Seafoods, Inc.

By: William E. Fruhan Jr. and William A. Sahlman

Presents data relevant to a major capital expenditure--the construction of a shrimp plant. Designed to test student's ability to identify relevant cash flows, to estimate the cost of capital, and to decide whether or not to invest. View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Cash Flow; Cost of Capital; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

February 1978
Case

Sierra Log Homes, Inc. (A)

By: Michael E. Porter

Describes the history and evolution of the log home manufacturing industry, a rapidly growing embryonic industry capitalizing on the back-to-basics lifestyle changes in the United States. Focuses on one of the leading firms in the industry, but allows a discussion of... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Change Management; Industry Structures; Supply and Industry; Problems and Challenges; Business Startups; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; United States

January 1977
Case

MRC, Inc. (Consolidated)

By: Thomas R. Piper

A large diversified company must develop a strategy for a division whose performance has deteriorated due to its aging product. Alternatives range from liquidation to a major investment in a new product. The formal capital budgeting system is compared with the informal... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Business Divisions; Capital Budgeting

September 1976 (Revised January 1977)
Case

Del Norte Paper Co. (C)

By: William A. Sahlman

Designed to serve two roles: first, it provides a reasonably comprehensive description of an ongoing capital budgeting system for the international operations of a large American company. Second, it allows the student to focus upon and critically analyze a series of... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; International Relations; Globalized Markets and Industries; Goals and Objectives; Service Delivery; Business Subsidiaries; Performance Evaluation; Performance Expectations; Financial Services Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry

June 1975 (Revised September 2004)
Case

Angus Cartwright III

By: Kenneth J. Hatten, William J. Poorvu, Howard H. Stevenson, Arthur I. Segel and John H. Vogel, Jr.

Judy and John DeRight, looking to diversify their investment portfolios, have retained Angus Cartwright, Jr. to identify prospective real estate acquisitions. Mr. Cartwright has four potential properties that he feels merit an in-depth financial analysis. The case... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Taxation; Balanced Scorecard; Valuation

March 1969 (Revised January 2000)
Case

Industrial Products, Inc.

By: Joseph L. Bower and John W. Rosenblum

Involves the decision of whether to construct a new plant in another part of the country for a line of fire protection equipment. Capital funds set aside for the construction are blocked by Fireguard's continued record of substantial operating losses and divisional... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Capital; Construction; Financing and Loans; Expansion; Business Earnings; Markets; Product; Manufacturing Industry

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March 1968 (Revised July 2010)
Case

Basic Industries

By: Joseph L. Bower and John W. Rosenblum

Policy problems, mainly organizational issues, face a young middle manager in the context of capital budgeting in a highly technological conglomerate firm with high market uncertainty. View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Capital Budgeting; Policy; Managerial Roles; Risk and Uncertainty

Forthcoming
Article

Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Engagement with Open Source Communities, Innovation, and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub

By: Annamaria Conti, Christian Peukert and Maria P. Roche

We study the engagement of nascent firms with open source communities and its implications for innovation and attracting funding. To do so, we link data on 160,065 U.S. startups from Crunchbase to their activities on the open source software development platform... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Knowledge; Open Source Communities; GitHub; Machine Learning; Innovation; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Information Technology; Strategy

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Forthcoming
Article

Catching Outliers: Committee Voting and the Limits of Consensus When Financing Innovation

By: Andrey Malenko, Ramana Nanda, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Savitar Sundaresan

We document that investment committees of major VCs use a voting rule where one partner `championing' an early-stage investment is sufficient to invest. Their stated reason for this rule is to `catch outliers'. The same VCs use a more conventional `majority' rule for... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Voting Rules; Innovation and Invention; Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making; Voting

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Financing New Business Formation

By: Paul A. Gompers

New business creation has become a potent force for economicdevelopment in the United States. Prior to 1980, large firms created the majority of new jobs in the American economy. While considerable debate rages over whether small firms are the source of recent job... View Details

Forthcoming
Article

FinTech Lending and Cashless Payments

By: Pulak Ghosh, Boris Vallée and Yao Zeng

Borrower's use of cashless payments both improves their access to capital from FinTech lenders and predicts a lower probability of default. These relationships are stronger for cashless technologies providing more precise information, and for outflows. Cashless payment... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Lending; Payments; Data Sharing; Financing and Loans; Information Technology; Banks and Banking; Business Model