Publications

28 Jun 2022
News

90 Harvard Alumni Held a Class Reunion in the Metaverse. It Shows the Potential of VR—but the Tech Needs to Improve before It Becomes Mainstream.

23 Feb 2016
First Look

February 23, 2016

transactions in the market for ideas. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45527 Equal Opportunity? Gender Gaps in CEO Appointments and Executive Pay By: Keloharju, Matti, Samuli Knüpfer, and Joacim Tåg... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2024
Working Paper

Economic Budgeting for Endowment-Dependent Universities

By: John Y. Campbell, Jeremy C. Stein and Alex A. Wu

To understand their financial position, universities need to understand the long-term implications of their operating revenues and costs in relation to the financial assets they have available. Standard budgeting procedures that focus on one or two years at a time and... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cash Flow; Cost; Revenue; Education Industry

March 1988 (Revised July 1990)
Case

Walt Disney Productions: Greenmail

Considers a firm whose investment strategies have essentially run out. Walt Disney's original visions and goals have all been fulfilled and after his death no new ones are forthcoming. Disney faces repeated takeover attacks and is forced to either set new corporate... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Crisis Management; Acquisition; Financial Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

July 1999
Article

Analysts' Forecast Accuracy: Do Ability and Portfolio Complexity Matter

By: Michael B. Clement

Prior studies have identified systematic and time persistent differences in analysts’ earnings forecast accuracy, but have not explained why the differences exist. Using the I/B/E/S Detail History database, this study finds that forecast accuracy is positively... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Performance Evaluation; Experience and Expertise

26 May 2021
News

What’s the Point of the Office Again?

March 2022
Case

Copper Nationalization in Chile

By: Jeremy Friedman, John Masko and Jingyu Liu

In 1970 Chile became the first country to elect a Marxist president through open, multi-party elections in Salvador Allende. In his first year as president, Allende nationalized the copper industry, Chile’s largest export industry that was developed and owned by US... View Details

Keywords: Nationalism; History; Political Elections; Natural Resources; Globalized Markets and Industries; National Security; Government Administration; Government and Politics; Chile

July 1998 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Champion International

By: Michael Beer and James Weber

Richard Olson, a long-tenured employee, was named CEO of Champion in 1996. Champion had been conducting an organizational transformation since the early 1980s that could be considered successful on most operational and social measures. However, due to industry... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design

Find at Harvard

Forthcoming
Article

Public Disclosure of Private Meetings: Does Observing Peers’ Information Acquisition Affect Analysts’ Attention Allocation?

By: Yi Ru, Ronghuo Zheng and Yuan Zou

We investigate the impact of observing peers’ information acquisition on financial analysts’ allocation of attention. Using the timely disclosure mandate by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as a setting, we find that, shortly after analysts observe that a firm has been... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Information; Financial Institutions; Accounting; Financial Markets; Financial Services Industry; China

April 2021 (Revised December 2023)
Case

The Mahindra Group: Leading with Purpose

By: Ranjay Gulati and Rachna Tahilyani

India headquartered Mahindra Group is a multibillion-dollar federation of companies operating across the globe. It is ahead of its time in articulating its purpose and mapping its values, something it had first done at inception and then refreshed yet again as ‘Rise’... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Communication Strategy; Family Ownership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Revenue; Auto Industry; Financial Services Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; India; Mumbai; South Korea; Italy; United States

February 2012
Case

Henkel: Building a Winning Culture

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates a CEO-led organizational transformation driven by stretch goals, performance measurement, and accountability. When Kasper Rorsted became CEO of Henkel, a Germany-based producer of personal care, laundry, and adhesives products, in 2008, he was... View Details

Keywords: Performance Measurement; Performance Appraisals; Human Resource Management; Values; Organizational Transformations; Pay For Performance; Strategy Execution; Values and Beliefs; Work-Life Balance; Organizational Culture; Human Resources; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits

21 Mar 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, March 21

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52435 CEO Behavior and Firm Performance By: Bandiera, Oriana, Stephen Hansen, Andrea Pratt, and Raffaella Sadun Abstract—We measure the behavior of 1,114 CEOs... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

July 2024
Article

AI, ROI, and Sales Productivity

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now a loose term for many different things and at the peak of its hype curve. So managers hitch-their-pitch to the term in arguing for resources. But like any technology, its business value depends upon actionable use cases embraced by... View Details

Keywords: ROI; AI and Machine Learning; Sales; Investment Return

09 Dec 2014
News

The Discipline of Business Experimentation

16 Jul 2020
News

Too Fast, Too Furious: Is U.S. Vaccine Development Headed in the Wrong Direction?

July–August 2025
Article

Case Study: Do We Reskill or Replace Our Workforce?

By: William Kerr

To remain competitive in the internet-of-things era, should the CEO of SolidTech Innovations, a fictional elevator company, invest a lot of money in reskilling its entire staff? The industry is moving from hardware to software in the form of smart, connected elevators.... View Details

Keywords: Training; Competency and Skills; Employees; Change Management; Leading Change

Find at Harvard

June 2025
Case

TagHive: Edtech Pricing and Distributor Decisions

By: Isamar Troncoso, Frank V. Cespedes and Stacy Straaberg

Education technology (edtech) company TagHive, founded in 2017, used a direct sales team and third-party distributors to sell its Class Saathi hardware and software solution to 300 clients, mainly primary and secondary schools in India. The product aimed to improve... View Details

February 2023 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield

In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America