Small Companies - Publications - Faculty & Research

05 Apr 2016
First Look

April 5, 2016

2016 Harvard Business Review Press HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company By: Ruback, Richard S., and Royce Yudkoff Abstract—Find, acquire, and run your own... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthlorne

Amos Hostetter, Jr.

With a few thousand dollars, Hostetter and a partner embarked on the development of a small cable company in the early sixties. Beginning with two small towns in Ohio,... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment & Broadcast Media

01 Sep 2016
News

The Big Business of Little Loans

Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez Before launching Funding Societies, a crowdfunding platform for small businesses in Singapore and Indonesia, Kelvin Teo and Reynold Wijaya (both MBA 2016) visited major... View Details

Keywords: Nancy Miller

01 Jan 2003
News

Lillian Lincoln Lambert, MBA 1969

and great-grandmothers in the African-American community have always taught young people to help others in need. That's the sort of wisdom that anyone would do well to follow." Lillian Lincoln Lambert, the first African-American woman to graduate from HBS, grew her... View Details

20 Jun 2016
Blog Post

Exploring Cleantech at HBS

know basically everyone who shares your interests. Through the Energy and Environment Club, Business & Environment Initiative, and Energy Conference there are several ways to get involved while on campus. Find folks who have worked at your “dream” View Details

01 Jan 2007
News

Donna L. Dubinsky, MBA 1981

When Donna Dubinsky joined Palm Computing in 1992, the eight-person start-up was one of several companies developing a personal digital assistant. Under her leadership, Palm introduced the first successful PDA, creating a multi-billion... View Details

01 Apr 1997
News

Guitar Hero

Berryman and Gary A. Zebrowski purchased the near-bankrupt Nashville, Tennessee, company in 1986. Gibson was suffering from the neglect and mismanagement of its previous owner of nearly twenty years - an Ecuadorian conglomerate that... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons

10 Jan 2017
News

Paying It Forward

who started StopLift in 2003 after studying the matter as a student at Harvard Business School. Now with a staff of 200, the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based software company is deploying its ScanItAll Checkout Vision Systems to foil a wide... View Details

Stanley C. Gault

Taking the helm of the company his father helped to found, Gault was instrumental in reorganizing and revitalizing Rubbermaid from a small household gadget company into a... View Details

Keywords: Fabricated Goods

Profile

Evelyne White

Bookalokal continue to focus only on small and midsized cities. The company seems likely to confront winner-take-all competitive dynamics at the city level, because network effects are strong—more diners... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Services

20 Jul 2015
Blog Post

My Journey to Working with At Night Management / PRMD Music

directly with the artists that make the music we love to listen to. The kind of companies I was targeting don’t recruit on campus, because they’re too small and don’t have a lot of funding. So I knew that it... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment / Media / Sports

Joseph P. Knapp

Knapp took control of his father's small printing operation and transformed it into a publishing empire. He established the American Lithographic Company in 1895 where he invented a multicolor six cylinder... View Details

Keywords: Publishing & Print Media

15 Nov 2016
News

China IFC: Global Access, Global Perspective

Second-year MBA student Anna Koscielecka (MBA 2016) spent two weeks in China during a January 2016 Immersive Field Course (IFC) that expanded her global perspective. “We fully immersed ourselves in Chinese business culture,” says Koscielecka. “And we had unique access... View Details

19 Sep 2016
News

Thomas S. Murphy (MBA 1949)

growth, highlighted by the purchase of ABC, which included ESPN, in 1985. Under his leadership, Capital Cities grew from one small broadcasting station housed in a former convent to a multibillion dollar telecommunications conglomerate.... View Details

18 Sep 2014
News

Room to grow: global expansion in the middle ground

Israeli companies have pursued novel and successful growth strategies that provide valuable lessons to others. In his research, Elie Ofek, the T. J. Dermot Dunphy Professor of Business Administration, explains how these firms have... View Details

25 Jan 2016
News

Helping Young African Managers Find Their Way Home

Igun (MBA 2012) became aware of this situation—and saw an opportunity—while he was a student at HBS, through his involvement with the Africa Business Club and the Africa Business Conference. “At that point, every school was starting to do an Africa business conference,... View Details

Keywords: Constantine von Hoffman

Elbridge A. Stuart

After making a small fortune in the retail grocery business, Elbridge A. Stuart founded Carnation in 1899 to manufacture evaporated milk. During Stuart’s tenure, the market for evaporated milk grew tremendously, as did Carnation, which... View Details

Keywords: Food & Tobacco

John H. Pew

John Pew, along with his younger brother Joseph Jr., took control of their father's company in 1912. The Pew brothers grew it from a small firm, with just a 0.9% share of the overall industrial production of... View Details

Keywords: Utilities & Energy

Ray W. Herrick

Herrick left Ford Motor Company in 1930 to start a small automobile parts manufacturing operation. Four years later, fearing a dependency on the volatile auto industry, he turned his attention to the new... View Details