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October 2007
Article

Grist: A Strategic Approach to Climate

By: Michael E. Porter and Forest Reinhardt

Climate change will affect everything businesses do, as government efforts to mitigate carbon emissions cause their prices to rise steeply. This special edition of Forethought takes a hard-nosed look at the risks and opportunities of climate change. Michael E. Porter... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Leadership; Logistics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Improvement; Climate Change; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy

June 1990 (Revised January 1994)
Case

Desktop Printer Industry in 1990

The desktop printer industry in 1990 is characterized by significant uncertainty about new technologies and about the types of features customers may demand in the next decade. The case looks at the positions of Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Kodak, Xerox, and IBM enabling... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Change Management; Competition; Hardware; Computer Industry

November 2016 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Elon Musk's Big Bets

By: David B. Yoffie, Eric Baldwin and Brandon Kaufmann

Between late 2014 and late 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk undertook several major, and risky, initiatives that would dramatically expand the scale and scope of Tesla’s business. In late 2014, Tesla began construction on a $5 billion “gigafactory” that would manufacture... View Details

December 2003 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Globalizing the Cost of Capital and Capital Budgeting at AES

By: Mihir A. Desai and Douglas Kurt Schillinger

With electricity generating businesses around the world, AES Corp. is seeking a methodology for calculating the cost of capital for its various businesses and potential projects. In the past, AES used the same cost of capital for all of its capital budgeting, but the... View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Risk Management; Globalized Firms and Management; Cost of Capital; Valuation; Emerging Markets; Foreign Direct Investment; Capital Budgeting; Energy Industry; South America

24 Jan 2024
Op-Ed

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

aviation technology from the past 30-40 years, Stonecipher elected to maximize profits from older models and use the cash to buy back Boeing stock. Just two years after taking over, Stonecipher resigned after violating the company’s code... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Air Transportation; Transportation; Aerospace

22 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Humans vs. Machines: Untangling the Tasks AI Can (and Can't) Handle

training saw a 24 percentage point decline in correct answers compared to non-AI-using peers, and those using AI alone saw a 13 percentage point drop. Lessons from AI’s first year So, how can knowledge-based businesses use AI well without wandering outside the frontier... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

02 May 2023
What Do You Think?

How Should Artificial Intelligence Be Regulated—if at All?

Minutes, April 16, 2023. Bailey Schulz, “Schumer proposes plan to address AI’s potential risks,” USA Today, April 18, 2023. Nico Grant and Karen Weise, “A.I. Frenzy Leads Tech Giants to Take Risks in Ethics... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Information Technology; Technology

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Begenau’s research agenda is directed at better understanding how financial markets work and how they affect the real economy. She uses quantitative analysis to build both prescriptive and descriptive models concerning financial risk in banking, and she also... View Details

2014
Article

Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Zhike Lei

Psychological safety describes people's perceptions of the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in a particular context such as a workplace. First explored by pioneering organizational scholars in the 1960s, psychological safety experienced a renaissance starting... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Groups and Teams

07 Mar 2023
HBS Case

ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

year detailing Gebru’s efforts within Google to urge caution with AI, saying tech companies shouldn’t race to launch systems without considering the potential risks and harms they could cause. She warned that unchecked AI databases could... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Technology

Forthcoming
Article

The Stock Market and Bank Risk-Taking

By: David S. Scharfstein and Antonio Falato

We argue that stock market pressure to generate earnings encourages banks to increase risk. We measure risk using confidential supervisory ratings as well as financial information released in regulatory filings. We document that there is an increase in the risk-taking... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market; Financial Markets; Business Earnings; Banks and Banking; Risk and Uncertainty

August 2011 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Career at a Crossroad: Akhil Patel

By: Noam Wasserman, Lisa Brem and Yael Braid

Akhil Patel is passionate about his business idea: an innovative green technology fuel cell. He wants to dive in and commit to his startup, but his fiancée is much more risk averse, his parents don't approve of the startup, and Akhil has an enticing alternative offer... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Risk and Uncertainty; Opportunities; Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Green Technology Industry; Consulting Industry

October 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Teaching Note

Alvogen

By: Daniel Isenberg, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

Alvogen is an Icelandic pharmaceutical company that makes and sells generic drugs. Founder and CEO Robert Wessman is deciding whether to take on private equity investors willing to buy out all shareholders, merge with a large and publicly-traded US pharmaceutical... View Details

Keywords: Biotechnology; Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Biotechnology Industry

April 2012
Article

Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages

By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao

This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multilocation firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Research and Development; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Technology

23 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig—without destroying the franchise Whereas with Rocky, you're pretty much stuck with Sylvester Stallone." Risk Vs. Reward Companies also must assess risk... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

02 Apr 2024
What Do You Think?

What's Enough to Make Us Happy?

The result is measured in terms of outcomes that may be more or less than we expected, just as customer satisfaction is measured in terms of whether our expectations were met or exceeded. But how many of us take time out periodically to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2020
Working Paper

Corporate Leadership and Creditor Recovery Rates: Evidence from Executive Gender

By: Clarissa Hauptmann, Syrena Shirley and Anywhere Sikochi

We examine the relationship between the gender of executives and corporate creditor recovery rates. Using 2,288 defaulted debt instruments, we find that female executives are associated with higher creditor recovery rates. Our findings are robust to tests that correct... View Details

Keywords: Executive Gender; Default; Recovery Rates; Debt; Corporate Bonds; Conservatism; Leadership; Gender; Borrowing and Debt; Bonds; Risk Management