Publications

May 2021 (Revised May 2022)
Supplement

Odebrecht's 'Transformation Journey' (B)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Pedro Levindo

The case describes the changes in Odebrecht’s board of directors while the company had to file for court-supervised reorganization and cope with an ongoing feud within its founding family, and the new challenges that the Group’s leadership has to face. The changes in... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Reputation; Mission and Purpose; Business and Government Relations; Engineering; Family Business; Emerging Markets; Construction Industry; Brazil; Latin America

February 2020 (Revised August 2021)
Case

Australia: Commodities, Competitiveness, Climate and China

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Laura Alfaro

For the past few decades, Australia has dealt with the benefits and costs of repeated mining booms—inflation, a housing bubble, a current account deficit, and growing dependence on China. Between 1996 and 2007, however, Australia had most of these issues under control... View Details

Keywords: Commodities; Competitiveness; Carbon Tax; Environment; Capital Flows; Current Account; Mining; Economy; Problems and Challenges; Climate Change; Taxation; Competition; Financial Condition; Government and Politics; Inflation and Deflation; Environmental Sustainability; Australia

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

reluctance to take environmental issues seriously. But these were not overnight developments. Beyond that, did GM's financial controls become too powerful a force for the product engineers to overcome? Did... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Chemours (A)

By: David G. Fubini and David Lane

The July 2015 spin-off of DuPont’s performance chemicals division as the independent company Chemours burdened new CEO Mark Vergnano and his team with perilous challenges. Despite market-leading offerings in several areas, the company faced a glutted market for its... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Chemicals; Leading Change; Crisis Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Chemical Industry; United States

August 2001 (Revised March 2016)
Case

Doral Costa

By: William J. Poorvu, John H. Vogel Jr., Arthur I. Segel and Amy Silverstein

Doral Costa is a proposed 277,803 square foot Class A office park development in Miami, FL. Trammell Crow Co. would like to develop this office park in joint venture with a partner. Samantha Spar, the acquisitions partner at Titan Associates, a large real estate... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Joint Ventures; Acquisition; Investment; Partners and Partnerships; Decision Choices and Conditions; Fair Value Accounting; Construction; Property; Real Estate Industry; Consulting Industry; Miami

18 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

How Eliminating Non-Competes Could Reshape Tech

does not worry about one engineer replicating Google Search. Furthermore, it would be illegal and easy to prove in court if someone transferred software and data to themselves. Financial firms like Citadel... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Technology

26 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 26, 2008

similar behavior following periods of poor financial performance. In addition to offering promotions more frequently, we find that firms offer deeper price discounts to manage earnings during these periods. Furthermore, our results... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Welcome to Retirement. Who Am I Now?

ways. A retired engineer threw himself into doing hands-on engineering work as a volunteer for the new community center being built in town. Finding a new source for valued affirmation: Retirees often miss... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Entertainment & Recreation

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

15 Podcast Episodes That Grabbed Listeners in 2023

president of engineering and research at Google and the founding managing director of the Google Center in Israel, explains how Google uses AI and machine learning to tackle some of the biggest challenges for climate mitigation and... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

reported that digital transformation takes significant financial investment and time. Of those who reported making significant progress on their journey, 60 percent had been at it for at least five years. In calculating the resources,... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

07 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Fail—and How Their Founders Can Bounce Back

Failure Can Be An Asset, But Personal Failure Is Ruinous Still, stubborn entrepreneurs continue to found companies, in spite of the failure rates, which raises the question of why. It's not as if any of them harbored childhood dreams of launching a search View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

13 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

Among the culprits contributing to the recent financial crisis were bank loan officers who approved mortgage loans that were doomed to fail. Many of these frontline workers were motivated by bonuses and other incentives to approve... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking

16 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

When the Internet Runs Out of IP Addresses

engineering time to handle all the details. But when a Web site supports both IPv6 and IPv4, some users will mistakenly try to reach the site by IPv6 because their computers and network cards are misconfigured. (For example, certain... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Telecommunications

October 2015
Teaching Note

Molycorp: Financing the Production of Rare Earth Minerals (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield

Molycorp, the western hemisphere's only producer of rare earth minerals, was in the middle of a $1 billion capital expenditure project in its effort to become a vertically integrated supplier of rare earth minerals, oxides, and metals. Yet it had just reported lower... View Details

18 Aug 2022
Op-Ed

Your Best Employees Are Burning Out: A Framework for Retaining Talent

burnout started to percolate. "Generation X entered the workforce after the tumultuous economic recovery of the 1970s and enjoyed the roaring ‘90s, only to experience the dot.com bust, followed by the financial crisis in 2008.” Generation... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and MaShon Wilson

03 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

negatively associated with their departments’ performance. Implications beyond retail and gender While Feldberg’s research focused on a bricks-and-mortar grocery chain, its findings apply to other fields. Women engineering managers,... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Retail; Consumer Products

19 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

What Chandrayaan-3 Says About India's Entrepreneurial Approach to Space

engineering step forward. “This is going to be really important as we confront adapting to climate change, an area the Mittal Institute is exploring in a deep way with the Salata Institute.” Gazette: What does this moon landing mean to... View Details

Keywords: by Clea Simon, Harvard Gazette; Aerospace

December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Katerra (A)

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Construction; Real Estate Industry; Technology Industry; United States