Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(3,075)
- Faculty Publications (634)
- June 2022
- Teaching Plan
GreenLight Fund
By: Brian Trelstad and Mel Martin
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 320-053. As Tara Noland, the Executive Director (ED) of GreenLight Cincinnati, reflected on her first few years on the job. Noland had delivered on what she had been hired to do in the city: work with leading philanthropists and nonprofit... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Plan
Lifebank Nigeria
By: Brian Trelstad, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal
The aspiration of addressing maternal deaths in Nigeria, which were mostly caused by blood shortages, led Temie Giwa-Tubosun to found LifeBank in 2015. LifeBank developed an online platform that enabled hospitals to connect and purchase blood from local blood banks and... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Strategic Innovation at the United Nations: A Network of Ecosystems
By: Frank Nagle, Elizabeth J. Altman and Amy Klopfenstein
In 2021, Gina Lucarelli, leader of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs, prepared for a meeting with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. The two planned to discuss the future of the Accelerator Labs, a network of social innovation labs located... View Details
Keywords: Change; Disruption; Transformation; Change Management; Education; Learning; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Range; Local Range; Geopolitical Units; Country; Human Resources; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology; Information Management; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Dissemination; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Social Psychology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Society; Social Issues; Welfare; Strategy; Cooperation; Adaptation; Public Administration Industry; North and Central America
- June 2022
- Case
PFA Pensions: The Climate Plus Product
By: Daniel Green, Victoria Ivashina and Alys Ferragamo
The case explores whether alternative investments play a unique role in achieving low carbon dioxide emissions at the portfolio level. This case is set in April of 2020 and follows Kasper Ahrndt Lorenzen, Chief Investment Officer, and Peter Tind Larsen, Head of... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Note
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-419. On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
Deborah Quazzo at GSV Ventures
By: William A. Sahlman, Michael D. Smith and Nicole Tempest Keller
As COVID-19 swept across the globe in 2020, the education sector faced unprecedented disruption. Schools and colleges worldwide shut down, forcing over a billion students and teachers to move to online learning. Investor interest in the EdTech space exploded as... View Details
- May 2022 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Founder Collective
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Founder Collective ("FC") launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, the seed market had become... View Details
- May 2022 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
The Freedom Fund (A): Ending Modern Slavery
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Courtney Han
The Freedom Fund founded in 2013 to end modern slavery had raised more than half its intended target (by 2025) of $200 million. In 2021, impressed by its decentralized-partnering style of operations, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott awarded the Fund a gift of $35 million... View Details
- April 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Conflicts of Interest at Uptown Bank
By: Jonas Heese
In 2013, two employees debated whether to blow the whistle on their employer, Bell Bank, after completing an internal review that revealed undisclosed conflicts of interest. Bell Bank’s Asset Management business disproportionately invested clients’ money in Bell Bank’s... View Details
Keywords: Whistleblower; Whistleblowing; Mutual Funds; Conflicts Of Interest; Decision Making; Decisions; Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Financial Institutions; Banks and Banking; Financial Management; Investment; Investment Funds; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Policy; Law; Legal Liability; Social Psychology; Motivation and Incentives; Perception; Perspective; Trust; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States
- March 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Teaching Note
Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences
By: Jill Avery
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; B2B; E-commerce; Technology Platform; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Social Media; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Advertising Industry; United States
- March 2022
- Case
In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault
To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020.... View Details
Keywords: Finance; Fintech; Emerging Market; Fundraising; Financial Inclusion; Strategy; Expansion; Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Togo; Nigeria; Ghana
- March 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Pakistan Rising: Bazaar's Growth Story (A)
By: Paul A. Gompers and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2021 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are contemplating whether the year-and-a half old startup should also venture into offering financing to... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Perch
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Stacy Straaberg and Julia Kelley
In May 2021, Perch CEO Chris Bell needed to decide whether his e-commerce aggregator company, which bought and scaled Amazon Marketplace brands, should acquire up to three acquisition targets. The prospective acquisitions, Web Deals Direct, HomeCo, and Future Brands,... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Business Strategy; Integration; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; California; Asia; Philippines
- February 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Pushing Past the Boundaries of ESG Investing: AQR Capital Management
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Richard B. Evans, Umit G. Gurun and Quoc H. Nguyen
Cliff Asness was facing a dilemma into how he would plunge his hedge fund into the hottest investment area worldwide—ESG Investing. Founder and managing principal of AQR—one the most storied quantitative hedge funds in the world—Asness knew anything less than a big... View Details
- January 2022
- Technical Note
Introduction to Capital Structure Analytics
By: Samuel Antill and Ted Berk
This technical note provides an overview of key analytical approaches that are useful in assessing the appropriateness of a firm’s capital structure and funding plan. This note introduces basic quantitative tools and metrics that are commonly used as inputs to this... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Supplement
Katerra (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving—with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
QuantumScape's Mission to Revolutionize Energy Storage for a Sustainable Future
By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga
QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh juggles the many activities required to lead the next-generation battery pioneer. Founded in 2010, QuantumScape’s mission was to develop new “solid-state” car batteries that would improve upon traditional lithium-ion batteries in key... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Engine No. 1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil
By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski
ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
upGrad: Delivering Career Outcomes Online: Degree by Degree
By: John J-H Kim, Anjali Raina and Rachna Chawla
In August 2021, the founders of upGrad, the latest unicorn in the Indian higher education online space, were deciding how to best use the funds to execute on their ambitious growth plans. Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli had envisioned upGrad as an... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin
In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details