Publications

March 2017 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Interline Brands: Don't Stop Believing

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Ricardo Andrade

Interline Brands, a leading distributor of residential housing maintenance and repair parts and equipment in the U.S., had just held its November 2014 board meeting. The meeting had been productive but not without some soul searching for both the company’s management... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Exit; Consumer Goods; IPO; Private Equity; Initial Public Offering; Decision Choices and Conditions

January 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Mauboussin

By: Anat Keinan, Sandrine Crener and Audrey Azoulay

Mauboussin is a French jewelry brand founded in 1827 in Paris. In the 1920s, the company earned a huge notoriety for capturing the aesthetic and emotional dimension of the Art Deco movement in its design and gained a worldwide reputation for innovation and expertise in... View Details

March 2006 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Rwanda: National Economic Transformation

By: Michael E. Porter, Kaia Miller, Michael McCreless, Kjell Carlsson, Jem Hudson and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason

Set in the year 2004, when Rwanda commemorated the 10th anniversary of a genocide that had claimed the lives of over 10% of its population. Focuses on the formulation of an economic strategy to rebuild the economy and its institutions after the devastation. Rwanda, one... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Developing Countries and Economies; Policy; Government Administration; Crisis Management; Strategy; Rwanda

July 2003
Case

De La Salle Academy

By: Thomas J. DeLong and David Ager

Brother Brian Carty, headmaster and founder of De La Salle Academy, a private school for academically talented, economically disadvantaged children in grades six to eight in New York City, is scheduled to meet with the school's board of directors to discuss how the... View Details

Keywords: Middle School Education; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Organizational Design; Management Succession; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Community Relations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Education Industry

Find at Harvard

15 Jul 2021
News

Hubert Joly Turned Around Best Buy. Now He’s Trying to Fix Capitalism.

16 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

Kids of Working Moms Grow into Happy Adults

wind up just as happy in adulthood as the children of moms who stayed home. Harvard Business School Professor Kathleen McGinn hopes the findings bring a big sigh of relief for guilt-ridden mothers who either have to hold down a job to make ends View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

05 Sep 2023
Book

Thriving After Failing: How to Turn Your Setbacks Into Triumphs

Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need Today How to Learn from the Big Mistake You Almost Make Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

Web

Entrepreneurs-in-Residence - Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs-In-Residence Entrepreneurs-in-Residence Venture Capital Advisors Lawyers-in-Residence The Entrepreneurs in Residence have founded, sold, or IPO’d successful ventures in tech, consumer products, healthcare, biotech, media and entertainment, and more. These... View Details

Research Summary

Understanding and Managing Information Intermediaries

Brian Bushee is investigating whether information intermediaries such as institutional investors and financial analysts are sophisticated and efficient users of accounting information and whether these intermediaries' decisions influence the choices made by... View Details

March 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Kashat: Navigating the Uncertainties of the Egyptian Fintech Market

By: Paul A. Gompers and Ahmed Dahawy

Karim Nour, the founder of Kashat, an Egyptian nano-lending fintech company, is contemplating how to manage the growth of his startup. Over the summer of 2022, Kashat's loan disbursements had grown by nearly 40%, fueled by macroeconomic instability in Egypt. However,... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Business Model; Developing Countries and Economies; Acquisition; Business Exit or Shutdown; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Financing and Loans; Capital; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Egypt

August 2022
Case

Meaningful Gigs

By: Brian Trelstad and Rachel Philbin

In October 2020, just a year after founding their company Meaningful Gigs, founders Ronnie Kwesi Coleman and Stephanie Nachemja-Burton prepared for a vital investment meeting with Rethink Education. They had already reached $400,000 in annually recurring revenue (ARR)... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Revenue; Education Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; United States

October 2018
Case

The Proxy Fight at ADP

By: Robin Greenwood and E. Scott Mayfield

In July 2017, shares of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) surged 12% following a report that the activist investor Bill Ackman had acquired a sizable stake in the company and planned to nominate his own slate of directors at the company’s annual meeting in... View Details

02 May 2016
News

What You Won’t Hear About Trade and Manufacturing on the Campaign Trail

12 Oct 2022
Video

Christine Marie Ortiz Guzman on how we are all “designers”

Web

Making Strategic Trade-offs - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

proposition is to provide good design and function at a low price. Its target customer is what IKEA calls the person “with a thin wallet.” In choosing its particular kind of value and the activities needed to deliver it, IKEA has accepted a set of limits: it does not... View Details

Research Summary

Multinational Enterprises and Corporate Responsibility

By: Nien-he Hsieh

Multinational enterprises, especially those operating in developing economies, face wide-ranging demands to help persons whose basic needs are unmet. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, are asked to provide access to life-saving therapies to patients in countries... View Details

October 2024 (Revised November 2024)
Case

SWEN Blue Ocean: Impact Investing Goes to Sea

By: Vikram S Gandhi and David Allen

In August 2023, SWEN Blue Ocean, a €170 million impact fund that invested in startups contributing to ocean sustainability, faced a critical investment decision. Part of SWEN Capital Partners, an €8 billion, Paris-based private equity fund, Blue Ocean was co-founded in... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Investment Funds; Science-Based Business; Technological Innovation; Financial Services Industry; France; Paris; Italy

October 2023
Case

Fixie and Conversational AI Sidekicks

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In March 2023, Fixie Co-Founder and Chief Architect Matt Welsh and co-founders had the kind of meeting no founders want to have. The president of leading artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment firm OpenAI, which had catapulted into fame with its ChatGPT... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; Entrepreneurship; Decision Choices and Conditions; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry; United States