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- 2023
- Working Paper
Networking Frictions: Evidence from Entrepreneurial Networking Events in Lomé
By: Stefan Dimitiadis and Rembrand Koning
Spatial proximity between firms plays a crucial role in entrepreneurship by creating knowledge spillovers, enabling resource sharing, and sparking productivity gains. Building on these insights, research has explored whether institutions and organizations can engineer... View Details
- Winter 2023
- Article
Moral Firms?
Building a new political economy requires transforming our markets, our institutions, and our policy and regulatory regimes. In this essay, I argue that it also requires transforming the purpose of the firm: from a singular focus on maximizing financial returns to the... View Details
- January–February 2023
- Article
The Overlooked Key to a Successful Scale-Up
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Davide Sola and Martin Kupp
Many start-ups experience enormous popularity and runaway growth, but only a few go on to become stable giants. What separates them from the pack? They all go through a developmental stage called extrapolation, say three business school professors.
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- December 2022
- Case
To Feed the Planet: Juan Luciano at ADM
By: Joshua D. Margolis, David E. Bell, Damien McLoughlin, Stacy Straaberg and James Weber
In December 2022, Juan Luciano, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness and nutrition giant ADM, considered the next phase of the historic company’s future. Beginning in 2011 when he joined as COO and moving into his tenure as CEO in 2015, Luciano led a transformation of ADM... View Details
Keywords: Agriculture; Leadership; Agribusiness; Acquisition; Business Units; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Forecasting and Prediction; Capital; Cash; Cost of Capital; Cost Management; Profit; Food; Global Range; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Strategic Planning; Risk and Uncertainty; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Vertical Integration; Value Creation; Transformation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Energy Industry; United States; Chicago
- 13 Dec 2022
- Interview
Why Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale
By: Jeffrey Rayport and Curt Nickisch
Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail. That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike have to sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School... View Details
- December 2022 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
KKR at CHI Overhead Doors (A)
By: Dennis Campbell and Ethan Rouen
This case examines the decision by private equity firm KKR to grant equity to every employee at portfolio company CHI Overhead Doors upon purchasing the company in 2015. The case explores whether this initiative will create shared value, growing profits through better... View Details
- December 8, 2022
- Article
What Companies Still Get Wrong about Layoffs
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Marilyn Morgan Westner
Research has long shown that layoffs have a detrimental effect on individuals and on corporate performance. The short-term cost savings provided by a layoff are often overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
I Don't 'Recall': The Decision to Delay Innovation Launch to Avoid Costly Product Failure
By: Byungyeon Kim, Oded Koenigsberg and Elie Ofek
Innovations embody novel features or cutting-edge components aimed at delivering desired customer benefits.
Oftentimes, however, we observe the need to recall new products shortly after their introduction. Indeed, a firm
may rush an innovation to market in an attempt... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
Social Skills Improve Business Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial with Entrepreneurs in Togo
By: Stefan Dimitriadis and Rembrand Koning
Recent field experiments demonstrate that advice, mentorship, and feedback from randomly assigned peers improve entrepreneurial performance. These results raise a natural question: what is preventing entrepreneurs and managers from forming these peer connections... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
The Task Bind: Explaining Gender Differences in Managerial Tasks and Performance
This multi-method study of managers in a grocery chain identifies a novel mechanism by which threats of gender stereotypes undermine women’s ability to be effective managers. I find that women managers face a task bind, a dilemma that managers experience as they try to... View Details
- November 2022
- Case
The Battle Among Channels for Marketing Pharmaceuticals: UpScript, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, and Direct-to-Consumer Sales
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Tiffany Farrell
Can an online, direct-to-consumer pharmacy both improve the quality and speed of care for patients who need branded drugs and stabilize profits for pharmaceutical manufacturers? UpScript, after years spent achieving legal and regulatory compliance and simultaneous... View Details
- November 10, 2022
- Article
5 Ways Startups Can Prepare for a Recession
By: Lou Shipley
Startups face unique challenges during economic downturns. They typically aren’t yet profitable and so are reliant on outside funding—and therefore are especially exposed when macroeconomic conditions change. To make it through a recession, startup CEOs should hit the... View Details
- October 2022 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Masdar City: Aiming for Sustainable and Profitable Real Estate
By: Boris Vallee and Fares Khrais
Masdar City broke ground in 2008 and was conceived by the Abu Dhabi government to be an international beacon of innovation in sustainable energy and real estate. It was also to be a profitable investment for the government. At first glance, the two goals pulled in... View Details
Keywords: Analysis; Business Growth And Maturation; Decisions; Public Sector; Financial Crisis; Construction; Climate Change; Green Technology; Borrowing And Debt; Corporate Finance; Capital; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Cost Of Capital; Equity; REIT; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Innovation; Growth And Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; Urban Development; Middle East; United Arab Emirates; Sustainable Cities; Green Building; Business and Government Relations; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financing and Loans; Real Estate Industry; Construction Industry; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; Abu Dhabi
- 2022
- Article
Diffusing Management Practices within the Firm: The Role of Information Provision
By: Michael J. Lenox and Michael W. Toffel
Why are some firms more successful in adopting profitable environmental management practices than others? A key role of corporate managers is to encourage subsidiaries to adopt innovative practices. We examine the conditions under which corporate managers use... View Details
- September 2022
- Case
Proactive for Her
By: Rembrand Koning and Kairavi Dey
Proactive for Her began amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in August 2020 as a digital platform to provide accessible, evidence-based, primary, preventive non-judgmental healthcare services for Indian women, who were often dissuaded from seeking help as premarital sex and... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Giving a Buck or Making a Buck? Donations by Pharmaceutical Manufacturers to Independent Patient Assistance Charities
By: Leemore Dafny, Christopher Ody and Teresa Rokos
The federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits biopharmaceutical manufacturers from directly covering Medicare enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending for the drugs they manufacture, but manufacturers may donate to independent patient assistance charities and earmark donations... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised March 2023)
- Technical Note
Real Estate iBuying
By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Julia Kelley
This note provides an overview of real estate iBuying, or instant buying, a business model that involves buying homes and then reselling them at a profit. Introduced in the mid-2010s, iBuying streamlined the process of selling a home by offering instant, all-cash... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry
By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... View Details
Keywords: Government Regulation; Deregulation; Change Management; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Business History; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Labor; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Industry Structures; Operations; Strategy; Adaptation; Competition; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- August 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Iluméxico: For Every Family to Have Power
By: Brian Trelstad, Isa Oliveres and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
In 2022, Manuel Wiechers, the CEO of Iluméxico, a for-profit social enterprise that provided off-grid solar energy services in rural Mexico, was finalizing his presentation for the company’s upcoming board meeting. In the 12 years since Wiechers had co-founded... View Details