Publications

03 Apr 2009
What Do You Think?

How Much Obsolescence Can Business and Society Absorb?

until we retired. That may no longer be possible. What are you doing, as hockey great Wayne Gretzky is quoted as saying, to "skate to where the puck is going to be"? What rate of change in communications technology can the organization absorb? What do you... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Journalism & News; Journalism & News

Web

General Merchants to Commodities Brokers | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

enterprise became Lehman Brothers. Henry Lehman died five years later of yellow fever in New Orleans, and Emanuel and Mayer ran the company over the next four decades. New York... View Details

17 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Sharing Design Rights: A Commons Approach for Developing Infrastructure

Keywords: by Nuno Gil & Carliss Y. Baldwin

April 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

Buro Happold

By: Robert G. Eccles and Kerry Herman

Padraic Kelly became Managing Director (MD) of the engineering services firm Buro Happold in 1996. One of his first initiatives was "Aim for Growth," which was intended to help the firm grow beyond its current size where it was constrained by a structure of having each... View Details

Keywords: Training; Entrepreneurship; Leadership Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Skills; Organizational Culture; Programs

30 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Political Polarization: Why We All Just Can't Get Along

Hernandez of New York University, dive into the topic in their working paper Political Identity and Trust. “Our biggest headline finding is that it seems that it’s beliefs that drive trust, not taste"... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Banking; Financial Services

20 May 2013
Research & Ideas

The Long-Term Fix to US Competitiveness

At an event at Harvard Business School that was three parts analysis and one part rally, participants tried to chart a new path forward for the sluggish US economy—a move that may require a new definition of... View Details

Keywords: by Stephanie Schorow & Harvard Gazette

19 Nov 2012
Research & Ideas

LEED-ing by Example

this strategy actually worked, up until now. “LEED [adoption] is not just something to pay attention to when there's a bid to rebuild city hall.” In a new paper, Public Procurement and the Private Supply of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Construction; Real Estate; Energy; Utilities

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

In 2009, a 51-year-old man killed himself in Marseille, a city in southern France, leaving behind a suicide note that blamed his employer for “overwork” and “management by terror.” “I am committing suicide because of my work at France... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

December 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

R/GA: Corporate Venture Studio vs. Accelerator

By: Andy Wu, Grant Son and Aastha Thakkar

New approach to accelerating the development of innovation through corporate venturing by creating partnerships between startup venture and established corporations through the launch of the Global Sports Venture Studios created by R/GA Ventures and the Los Angeles... View Details

Web

Healthy Outcomes - Managing the Future of Work

Why New York City's Tech Scene Is Heating Up Guadalupe Gonzalez 08 Nov 2018 | Inc. Radically Agile: The Future of Work and The Gift of Global Talent Rich Gardner & William Kerr 02 Nov 2018 | Catalant Want to... View Details

21 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 21, 2008

Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain? Authors:Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr Abstract Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Mar 2016
First Look

March 1, 2016

Hurricane Sandy forced a full evacuation of NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. The institution, which comprised NYU Medical School and several teaching hospitals, had been on an upward trajectory... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

Employees Out Sick? Inside One Company's Creative Approach to Staying Productive

put the data in the system.” Sickness wasn’t the only reason for absences. Factory workers, who came to the city from rural areas all over the country, each celebrated holidays by attending cultural festivals, which varied depending on... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Fashion

13 Jun 2017
Blog Post

What is the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program? A Q&A with Professor Tom Eisenmann

Every now and again we have some really big news to share with prospective students. This week’s announcement about the new MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences joint degree was no exception. In a previous post we... View Details

Trust

Entrepreneurial ventures often fail in the developing world because of the lack of something taken for granted in the developed world: trust. Over centuries, the developed world has built customs and institutions such as enforceable contracts, an impartial legal... View Details

January 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

The Rise and Fall of Lehman Brothers

By: Stuart C. Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Sarah L. Abbott

With nearly $700 billion in assets, Lehman was the largest U.S. bankruptcy in history. In 2007, Lehman achieved record earnings of over $4 billion on revenues of $60 billion. By September 2008 the fourth largest investment bank in the world was bankrupt. How had a... View Details

January 2025
Case

Apax Partners: Deciding Whether to Bid for Trader Corp.

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer

Apax Partners’ investment committee was schedule to meet on March 21, 2011, to decide whether to invest in Trader Corporation, a Canadian classified advertising business for used automobiles with both print (magazines) and digital (website) distribution. What made this... View Details