Publications

30 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Retirement Planning

know we should be saving for retirement, but how much should we be squirreling away? And of the funds our company's plan offers, which should we choose? According to Harvard Business School professor Robert C. Merton, the defined... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Banking; Financial Services

October 2022
Case

Single.Earth

By: Rembrand Koning and Emer Moloney

Estonian greentech company Single.Earth is launching a nature-backed token that is linked to and funds the protection of a specific plot fo land. The first landowners had been onboarded to the company's Digital Twin, a virtual representation of the planet's natural... View Details

Keywords: Alternative Assets; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Natural Resources; Pollution; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Markets; Market Timing; Strategy; Green Technology Industry; Estonia

18 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 18

Publications November 2014 Wiley Encyclopedia of Management Management as a Profession By: Khurana, Rakesh, and Eric Baldwin Abstract—No abstract available. Publisher's link: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1119972515.html November 2014 Marketing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2015
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Howard Fischer, Eric Jacobsen, and Gratitude Railroad's Impact Investing

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Daniel Lennox-Choate

In 2013, Howard Fischer (hedge fund founder) and Eric Jacobsen (serial entrepreneur and private equity investor) established Gratitude Railroad as a community of impact investors in nine different "tracks." Each track represented a different concept for using... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Social Change; Sustainable Business And Innovation; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; United States

15 Dec 2015
First Look

December 15, 2015

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50235 forthcoming Organization Science Scrutiny, Norms, and Selective Disclosure: A Global Study of Greenwashing By: Marquis, Christopher, Michael W. Toffel, and Yanhua Zhou... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

December 2010
Background Note

Risk and Reward in Venture Capital

By: William A. Sahlman

This note describes the payoff structure of investment in individual venture capital–backed companies and in venture capital portfolios. Venture Capital investments are characterized by high failure rate (0ver 50%) and a small number of given successes (greater than... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Venture Capital; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Analytics and Data Science; Failure; Performance; Information Technology

March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Sustainable Development & Socially Responsible Investing: ABB in 2000

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Several investment firms and mutual funds position themselves as providers or facilitators of opportunities for socially responsible investment. This case addresses the impact of these firms on publicly traded companies. Focuses on managers at ABB, a large... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Business Strategy; Capital Markets; Management Teams; Business and Community Relations; Trade; Electronics Industry; Switzerland

12 Jan 2016
First Look

January 12, 2016

Management Science The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States By: Goh, Joel, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and Stefanos A. Zenios Abstract—Even though epidemiological evidence links specific... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

2024
Working Paper

Capital Market Integration and Growth across the United States

By: Leonardo D'Amico and Maxim Alekseev

What drives the integration of national financial markets and what are its consequences for regional growth? We digitize and collect US state-level banking data from 1953 to 1983 and document a tight link between high nominal short rates and financial integration,... View Details

Keywords: Interest Rates; Financial Markets; Economic Growth; Banks and Banking; Analytics and Data Science

June 2025
Supplement

Transforming a Titan (C)

By: George Serafeim and Lena Duchene

Three years in his tenure as CEO, Cobuz must decide whether to launch a more than €500 million carbon-capture-and-storage facility. The project—Europe’s largest planned CCS installation—would cut almost 20% of group emissions and unlock a €234 million EU Innovation... View Details

Keywords: CEO; Family; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Leadership; Infrastructure; Business and Government Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Europe; European Union; Greece

10 Apr 2007
First Look

First Look: April 10, 2007

School Case 207-084 Following a successful model in Europe, JP Morgan has introduced a set of five U.S. retail mutual funds with an investment philosophy and marketing strategy grounded in behavioral finance. The asset management group... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

BiomX: Bringing Phage Back to the Stage

By: Paul A. Gompers, Elie Ofek, Orna Dan and Emilie Billaud

In the spring of 2023, and following the favorable results of a trial involving its phage cocktail for treating lung infections among cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, the leadership of BiomX had several critical issues to wrestle with. First, given its precarious... View Details

Keywords: Working Capital; Financing and Loans; Health Testing and Trials; Product Development; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Commercialization; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

28 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 28, 2007

Harvard Business School Case 107-035 Obadiah Vineyard's owners create financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to help them obtain funding to plant more acreage. The owners grapple with... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2021
Working Paper

Invisible Primes: Fintech Lending with Alternative Data

By: Marco Di Maggio, Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Don Carmichael

We exploit anonymized administrative data provided by a major fintech platform to investigate whether using alternative data to assess borrowers’ creditworthiness results in broader credit access. Comparing actual outcomes of the fintech platform’s model to... View Details

Keywords: Fintech Lending; Alternative Data; Machine Learning; Algorithm Bias; Finance; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Analytics and Data Science; Credit

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2021
Working Paper

Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors

By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Impact Portfolio Companies; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Investment Portfolio; Business Ventures; Analytics and Data Science; Performance; United States

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May 1999 (Revised November 2000)
Case

AES Global Values

By: Lynn S. Paine

Members of the development team for the AES Corp.'s power plant project in India must decide what plant technology to specify in their application for techno-economic clearance from the government of India's Central Electric Authority. Their choice is between more... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Generation; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; India; United States

February 2024 (Revised April 2024)
Case

CPP Investments—The Road to Zero

By: Vikram Gandhi and Radhika Kak

In February 2022, Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) Investments, the investment management organization that managed funds for the CPP, one of the biggest pension plans in the world, announced a net-zero commitment for its portfolio by 2050. Under its CEO, John Graham, it... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Asset Management; Investment Portfolio; Leading Change; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Services Industry; Canada; California