Publications

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24 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Developing Your Next CEO for the Family Business

A good book on CEO succession is The CEO Within by my Harvard Business School colleague Joe Bower. Bower studied how companies perform after hiring a new CEO, noting whether the successor had been recruited from inside or outside the... View Details

Keywords: Re: Andi Wang; Retail; Auto

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

within markets: When sentiment is high, future returns are low on relatively difficult to arbitrage and difficult to value stocks. Private capital flows appear to be one mechanism by which sentiment spreads across markets and forms global... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2010 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Twitter

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, David Chen, Bill Heil and Aaron Smith

Twitter is a micro-blogging company that allows users to send short text updates to others. The site is used by people, including celebrities, government officials, and businesses. It helps to raise money for non-profit organizations and provides first-responders with... View Details

Keywords: Blogs; Revenue; Information Publishing; Growth and Development Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks; Web

22 Dec 2015
First Look

December 22, 2015

demand, and supporting infrastructures, including business ecosystems) and, when feasible, the wider institutional, regulatory, and even cultural context that conventional International business literature takes as a datum. This is examined conceptually and View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 1998 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Acer America: Development of the Aspire

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Anthony St. George

Follows the development, national launch, and global rollout of the Aspire, Acer's first new product developed outside of Taiwan. Implementing a very promising new PC concept proves challenging to Mike Culver and his U.S. team, who are plagued by coordination problems... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Design; Supply Chain; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Business Subsidiaries; Product Launch; Computer Industry; United States; Taiwan

02 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 2, 2019

status-quo-preserving story that prevails despite countervailing evidence. We then advance systems-psychodynamic theory to show how organizations use this narrative and attendant policies and practices as an unconscious “social defense” to help employees fend off... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Web

HBS - The year in Review

core activities of teaching, research, and disseminating ideas. Faculty and students alike embraced the custom technology that enabled teaching and learning both in the classroom and remotely. They were supported by hundreds of frontline... View Details

July 2022
Case

David Crane’s Clean(er) Energy Strategy at NRG

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel and Tom Quinn

In 2015, David Crane was the CEO of NRG, the second-largest energy producer in the United States. NRG got most of its power from fossil fuels, but Crane – hired as CEO in 2003 as NRG emerged from bankruptcy – had invested heavily in alternative energy, loudly... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Leadership; Corporate Governance; Transformation; Alternative Energy; Energy Generation; Climate Change; Corporate Accountability; Renewable Energy; Energy Industry; United States

19 Feb 2013
First Look

First Look: Feb. 19

Society Starts Here Authors:Eccles Robert G., and George Serafeim Publication:CSR Report 2013 Abstract No abstract available. Book: http://www.mediatenor.com/pdf/CSR_2013_web.pdf The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

18 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 18

find that involuntary closures are most frequent in U.S. counties with high rates of households headed by single mothers, low levels of college education, high rates of property crime, a strong presence of multi-market vs. local banks,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2020 (Revised September 2021)
Case

HP Instant Ink: (Self) Disrupting the Consumer Printing Market

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and George Gonzalez

Seeking to disrupt the consumer printing market (before being disrupted by others), and in response to customer pain points, in 2013 HP Inc. launched an ink replenishment service called Instant Ink, where customers pay a monthly subscription fee based on the number of... View Details

Keywords: Printing; Ink; Subscription Model; Customers; Information Infrastructure; Service Delivery; Business Model; Disruption; Growth and Development Strategy

March 1998 (Revised November 1999)
Case

USA TODAY Online

By: John A. Deighton and Anthony St. George

How should USA TODAY use its brand franchise to build a publishing business on the World Wide Web? Advertising Age described the first steps as "a case study in how not to do it," but by the end of 1997 USA TODAY Online is the most visited news site on the Web. Now the... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Design; Profit; Revenue; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Information Industry

Find at Harvard

07 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 7

Drivers of Corporate Sustainability and Implications for Capital Markets: An International Perspective Authors:Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim Publication:In The Landscape of Integrated Reporting, edited View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

interpretable results, and that performance is improved by achieving good results simultaneously along several inter-related dimensions. The Transformation from 'I' to 'We' Authors:Bill George and Andrew N.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2013
Book

Business and the Environment: Critical Perspectives in Business and Management

By: Susse Georg and Andrew J. Hoffman

Over the past four decades, the concept of corporate environmentalism has passed through multiple iterations. Prompted by landmark environmental events such the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the Santa Barbara oil spill, the Cuyahoga River fire,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Management; Natural Environment

October 2005
Case

Tad Piper and Piper Jaffray

By: William W. George and Andrew N. McLean

In 2005, Tad Piper reflects on the successful spin-off from US Bancorp of Piper Jaffray, the investment bank founded by his grandfather. Profiles the development of Piper Jaffray from a Midwestern brokerage house to a national, diversified financial services firm. In... View Details

Keywords: Crisis Management; Leadership Style; Management Style; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry