Publications

2010
Working Paper

Just Say No to Wall Street: Putting A Stop to the Earnings Game

By: Joseph Fuller and Michael C. Jensen

Putting an end to the "earnings game" requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value. In place of earnings forecasts, management should... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Performance Expectations; Goals and Objectives; Risk and Uncertainty; Growth and Development Strategy; Decisions; Risk Management; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Value; Projects

SSRN

July 2021
Case

Y Combinator

By: John R. Wells

Y Combinator (YC) was a business startup accelerator based in Mountain View, California. Originally founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2005, by 2021, YC listed 2,830 companies amongst its alumni. More than 80% of these companies were still active, had been... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Growth and Development; Business Startups; Decisions; Strategy

June 2021 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Asian Corporate Governance Association: Stemming a 'Race to the Bottom' by Stock Exchanges?

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Billy Chan

This case describes the movement towards dual-class listings on Asian stock exchanges and the efforts of the Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA), a not-for-profit shareholder advocacy group, to discourage this trend. As a not-for-profit organization with no... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Nonprofit Organizations; Stocks; Financial Markets; Financial Services Industry; Hong Kong; China; Asia

November–December 2017
Article

Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy

By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek

Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for retailers. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a “self-matching policy,” which allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and store prices to... View Details

Keywords: Price Self-matching; Multichannel Retailing; Pricing Strategy; Online Shopping; Omnichannel; Price Discrimination; Price; Strategy; Competitive Strategy

Find at Harvard

August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
Supplement

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (B)

By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in February 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the... View Details

Keywords: Grocery; Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Turkey

17 Jan 2019
Blog Post

MBA Curriculum Spotlight: Short Intensive Programs (SIPs)

will be a combination of case discussions, guests, panels, and workshops. Fintech: Disruptions in Credit, Payments and Real Estate The advent of new technologies and big data promise to revolutionize the finance world by disintermediate... View Details

Web

The Gift of Global Talent

government, and individual decision making to explore the data and ideas that should drive the next wave of immigration policy and business practice. Featured Videos What Is Global Talent? What Is Global Talent? Who Benefits From Global... View Details

November 2010 (Revised May 2012)
Background Note

Assessing a Company's Future Financial Health

By: Thomas R. Piper

The case provides students with (1) an understanding of the essence of long-term financial health; (2) familiarity with the calculation and meaning of various financial ratios; and (3) an understanding of the influence of a company's operating and competitive... View Details

Keywords: Financial Condition; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment Return; Operations; Competitive Strategy

27 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 27

ideas across academic communities. The Predictive Value of Accruals and Consequences for Market Anomalies Authors:Francois Brochet, Seunghan Nam, and Joshua Ronen Publication:The Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance (forthcoming)... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

10 Oct 2023
Blog Post

Policy Drivers for Environmental Justice: What Businesses Need to Know

Disadvantaged Communities (DACs): communities “marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.”[1] Environmental Racism: “racial discrimination in environmental policy making, corporate decision making, and/or practice which... View Details

10 Aug 2016
Blog Post

3 Benefits of the Case Method

analogous case I studied comes to mind, and how helpful it is to consider the lessons I learned from it. 2. I had the privilege of learning from my classmates The case method depends on in-class participation. Each class session is fundamentally a debate centered on a... View Details

2016
Working Paper

Pros vs Joes: Agent Pricing Behavior in the Sharing Economy

By: Jun Li, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang

One of the major differences between markets that follow a “sharing economy” paradigm and traditional two-sided markets is that the supply side in the sharing economy often includes individual nonprofessional decision makers, in addition to firms and professional... View Details

Keywords: Two-sided Market; Sharing Economy; Behavioral Economics; Revenue Management; Hospitality; Two-Sided Platforms; Price; Behavior; Experience and Expertise

SSRN

August 2020 (Revised November 2024)
Case

NextView Ventures

By: Jo Tango and Nori Gerardo Lietz

David Beisel, Rob Go, and Lee Hower are non-partners at different-and-established venture capital (VC) firms. They decide to leave their positions to start a new seed-stage VC firm. The case covers the genesis of the firm, the formulation of its strategy and... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Strategy

2014
Working Paper

Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors

By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson

General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Structure; Decision Making; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry

Read Now

20 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: Jan. 20

Decentralize? Authors:Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen Abstract There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

Technologies (B) Harvard Business School Supplement 407-093 Supplements the (A) case. Purchase this supplement: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=407093 JetBlue: Prepare for Financing Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

standardized processes that are intended to produce low-cost, nondifferentiated services for internal or external customers. Perhaps many HR, IT, and finance departments do indeed strive to be low-cost suppliers of standardized services.... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

12 Mar 2021
News

My Favorite Case

a fintech unicorn that spans multiple verticals. After another sales record during the 2016 Global Shopping Festival with Alibaba, Ant Financial’s chief strategy officer contemplates the various opportunities and challenges associated with the firm’s international... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

2020
Working Paper

Best Ideas

By: Miguel Antón, Randolph B. Cohen and Christopher Polk

We ﬁnd that the stocks in which active mutual fund or hedge fund managers display the most conviction towards ex-ante, their “Best ideas,” outperform the market, as well as the other stocks in those managers’ portfolios, by approximately 2.8 to 4.5 percent per year,... View Details

Keywords: Mutual Funds; Managerial Skill; Market Efficiency; Investment Funds; Management; Investment Portfolio; Decision Making