Publications

Lynn Sharp Paine is a Baker Foundation Professor and John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, at Harvard Business School. A member and former chair of the General Management unit, she has served in numerous leadership positions including Senior... View Details

January 2014 (Revised December 2014)
Case

GenapSys: Business Models for the Genome

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Joseph B. Fuller and Matthew Preble

GenapSys, a California-based startup, was soon to release a new DNA sequencer that the company's founder, Hesaam Esfandyarpour, believed was truly revolutionary. The sequencer would be substantially less expensive—potentially costing just a few thousand dollars—and... View Details

Keywords: DNA Sequencing; Life Sciences; Business Model; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Genetics; Business Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Technology Industry; Health Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States

June 2001 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Spir-It, Inc. (A): Building the Business

Early in February 1934, two and a half months after the end of prohibition, Jack Sindler sat with a friend in Boston's Ritz Hotel bar enjoying a drink. Sindler worked for the Converse Rubber Co., and he was always inventing something. He held several patents for rubber... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Production; Market Entry and Exit; Management Succession; Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Acquisition; Growth and Development; Product Development; Manufacturing Industry; Boston

Find at Harvard

October 2013
Case

Mitch Daniels and the State of Indiana

By: Robert Steven Kaplan and Wendy K. Winer

Mitch Daniels, Governor of the State of Indiana, knew he had to make a difficult choice as he sat in his office in December 2010. Should he aggressively push the state legislature to pass comprehensive education reform—a major priority of his administration—or,... View Details

Keywords: Education Reform; Priorities; Leadership; Education; Government and Politics; Public Administration Industry; Education Industry; Indiana

April 2017 (Revised May 2017)
Case

GE Capital After the Crisis

By: John C. Coates, John D. Dionne and David S. Scharfstein

Keith Sherin, CEO of GE Capital, faced a decision on which hinged billions of dollars and the fate of one of America’s most storied companies. On his desk sat two secret analyses: Project Beacon, a proposal to spin off most of GE Capital to GE shareholders, and... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Institutions; Strategy

June 2011 (Revised November 2011)
Case

The Expansion of Ping An

By: Robert C. Pozen and Nina Yang

In June 2010, Mingzhe Ma, chairman and chief executive officer of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China ("Ping An" or "the Company"), sat down with Sun Jianyi, vice chief executive officer and executive vice president at Ping An, to discuss the future direction of... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Conglomerates; Conferences; Banks and Banking; Financial Strategy; Insurance; Global Strategy; Leadership Style; Strategic Planning; Opportunities; Diversification; Expansion; China

August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Revenue Recognition at HBP

By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi

In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be... View Details

Keywords: Accrual Accounting; Budgets and Budgeting; Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Publishing Industry; Education Industry; United States

2017
Working Paper

Peer Effects on the United States Supreme Court

By: Matthew Lilley, Richard Holden and Michael Keane

Using data on essentially every US Supreme Court decision since 1946, we estimate a model of peer effects on the Court. We consider both the impact of justice ideology and justice votes on the votes of their peers. To identify these peer effects we use two instruments.... View Details

Keywords: Supreme Court; Peer Effects; Voting Behavior; Legal System; Courts and Trials; Voting; Behavior

SSRN

September 2022
Case

Blake Sports: Evolution of the CEO and the Executive Team

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden

Cameron (Cam) Barker, CEO and Founder of Blake Sports Apparel, sat in his office at his company’s headquarters in Birmingham, England, feeling stunned and disappointed. Only a few minutes prior, he had wrapped up a meeting with CFO James Ryan, a highly-respected star... View Details

Keywords: Leadership And Managing People; Leadership Skills; Team Dynamics; Team Effectiveness; Team Leadership; Team Management; Leadership Style; Leadership; Management; Management Skills; Management Style; Talent and Talent Management; Groups and Teams; United Kingdom

09 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Clayton Christensen’s “How Will You Measure Your Life?”

watch the DVDs that they had ordered. As long as the DVDs sat unwatched at customers' homes, Netflix did not have to pay return postage-or send out the next batch of movies that the customer had already paid the monthly fee to get. “As... View Details

October 2016
Case

Turkasset: Bringing Customer-Centricity to Debt Collection

By: Dennis Campbell and Gamze Yucaoglu

In December 2014, in preparation for the year-end board presentation, Hilmi Guvenal (PMD 1993), shareholder and CEO of Turkasset, and Ilker Yoney, COO, sat down to discuss Turkasset’s five- and ten-year strategic plans. Since taking leadership of the company in 2009,... View Details

26 Apr 2024
HBS Case

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

reviewing uniform, merchandise, and apparel designs. “No one questioned if he sat in on a meeting about pedestrian traffic for an upcoming football game, reviewed a working design of a commemorative poster to be handed out to fans, or... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Sports

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

about. I invited him over to dinner. It was one of the best dinners I ever had. And friends came and we just sat there all night asking him questions about the brain and about happiness. And I said, we should do something together. And so... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

March 2013
Teaching Note

Nestlé: Agricultural Material Sourcing Within the Concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV) (TN)

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Matthew Preble

In December 2012, Hans Jöhr, Nestlé's head of corporate agriculture, was preparing to meet with the company's board of directors to discuss its vision for the future related to sustainable agriculture. Nestlé's continued success depended on its ability to access the... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Agribusiness; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Nutrition; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

February 2022
Case

NFX Capital and Moov Technologies

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller

In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Network Effects; Marketplace Matching; Digital Platforms; Market Design; Applications and Software; Semiconductor Industry; Financial Services Industry; San Francisco