Publications

2017
Working Paper

The Need for Speed: Effects of Uncertainty Reduction in Patenting

By: Mike Horia Teodorescu

Patents are essential in commerce to establish property rights for ideas and to give equal protection to firms that develop new technologies. Young firms especially depend on the protection of intellectual property to bring a product from concept to market. However,... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Natural Language Processing; Machine Learning; Patents; Business Startups; Risk and Uncertainty; Outcome or Result; Green Technology Industry

Article

Governments as Owners: State-Owned Multinational Companies

By: Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Andrew Inkpen, Aldo Musacchio and Kannan Ramaswamy

The globalization of state-owned multinational companies (SOMNCs) has become an important phenomenon in international business (IB), yet it has received scant attention in the literature. We explain how the analysis of SOMNCs can help advance the literature by... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Corporation; State-owned Enterprises; State Capitalism; FDI; Internationalization; Government And Business; National Oil Companies; State Ownership; Multinational Firms and Management; Business Subsidiaries; Acquisition; Pharmaceutical Industry; Energy Industry; China; India; Europe

2010
Article

Geography, Poverty and Conflict in Nepal

By: Quy-Toan Do and Lakshmi Iyer

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the geographic, economic and social factors that contributed to the spread of civil war in Nepal over the period 1996-2006. This within-country analysis complements existing cross-country studies on the same subject. Using a... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; War; Poverty; Geography; Conflict and Resolution; Government and Politics; Economics; Nepal

June 2024
Article

Oral History and Business History in Emerging Markets

By: Geoffrey Jones

This article describes the motivation, structure and use of the Creating Emerging Markets (CEM) oral history-based project at the Harvard Business School. The project consists of lengthy interviews with business leaders from emerging markets. By June 2024 183... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Economies; Oral History; Emerging Markets; Business History; Research

10 Jul 2023
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2023

from Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster to Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future by Saul Griffith. But even grounded books such as The Disposable City by Mario Alejandro Ariza make the challenges seem overwhelming. View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Research Summary

The Real Estate Challenge: Capitalizing on Change

By: William J. Poorvu

William J. Poorvu has developed a new casebook and instructor's manual for teaching how to manage change in real estate. Two chapters that describe changes that are currently affecting the industry are followed by twenty case studies-approximately 60 percent of them... View Details

2011
Chapter

Financing Constraints and Entrepreneurship

By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

Financing constraints are one of the biggest concerns impacting potential entrepreneurs around the world. Given the important role that entrepreneurship is believed to play in the process of economic growth, alleviating financing constraints for would-be entrepreneurs... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Investment; Policy; Research

June 2004 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Business Intelligence Software at SYSCO

The large food service company SYSCO has decided to purchase business intelligence (BI) software, a technology intended to provide superior monitoring and analysis capabilities. Twila Day, assistant vice president of technology and applications, is in charge of the BI... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Decision Making; Management Systems; Distribution Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

March 2002
Background Note

Incentive Strategy Within Organizations

By: Brian J. Hall

This case serves as a supplement to any course on incentive design and implementation. The analysis first locates incentive strategy within the larger structure of organizations and markets and then helps to define the central components and difficulties of incentive... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Performance Evaluation; Strategy; Situation or Environment; Problems and Challenges

September 1974 (Revised April 1975)
Case

Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. (A)

At the conclusion of a small-scale pilot survey, management must decide whether to invest in a larger survey or terminate the project. The objective of the study is to use psychographic measurement techniques to study the alternative positions of cranberry sauce.... View Details

Keywords: Surveys; Product Positioning; Mathematical Methods; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

06 Jan 2015
News

Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Paul Vatter Dies at 90

April 2020
Article

Technological Leadership (de)Concentration: Causes in Information and Communication Technology Equipment

By: Yasin Ozcan and Shane Greenstein

Using patent data from 1976 to 2010 as indicators of inventive activity, we determine the concentration level of where inventive ideas originate and then examine how and why those concentrations change over time. The analysis finds pervasive deconcentration in every... View Details

Keywords: Deconcentration; Technological Innovation; Innovation Leadership; Patents; Market Entry and Exit; Telecommunications Industry

September 1990 (Revised June 1994)
Case

Catawba Industrial Co.

By: Francis Aguilar

A department general manager has to decide whether or not to add a lightweight compressor to the line, what price to charge, and what volume to produce. The analysis requires maximizing contribution in a situation where one factor is constrained. As such, it takes into... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Capital Budgeting; Business Earnings; Cost Accounting; Cost Management; Asset Pricing

March 1991 (Revised January 1993)
Background Note

Why Do Good Managers Choose Poor Strategies?

The uncertainty and complexity of most business environments make successful management a difficult art. Frequently, bright, experienced, well-educated people manage their companies into strategic distress. Many of these bad results are not simply a matter of bad luck.... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Prejudice and Bias; Business Strategy; Cognition and Thinking