Publications

May 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Supplement

H-Soft (B-2): Vikram Sharma

By: Ramana Nanda

Siddharth Kapoor, the Founder and CEO of H-Soft Mumbai, reflected on his meetings as he walked out of VC Ventures' offices in Mumbai. After a few months of intensely pitching his startup to several different investors, he finally had a term sheet in hand. Despite this... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Venture Capital Term Sheet; India; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Investment; Contracts; Partners and Partnerships; India

Article

What Do State-Owned Development Banks Do? Evidence from BNDES, 2002–09

By: Sergio G. Lazzarini, Aldo Musacchio, Rodrigo Bandeira-de-Mello and Rosilene Marcon

Defendants of state-owned development banks emphasize their role in reducing capital constraints and fostering productive investment; detractors point out that they may benefit politically connected capitalists or bail out inefficient firms. We study the effect of... View Details

Keywords: State Capitalism; Development Banks; Industrial Policy; Banking Industry; Brazil

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December 2013
Article

Leviathan as a Minority Shareholder: Firm-level Implications of State Equity Purchases

By: Carlos F. K. V. Inoue, Sergio G. Lazzarini and Aldo Musacchio

In many countries, firms face institutional voids that raise the costs of doing business and thwart entrepreneurial activity. We examine a particular mechanism to address those voids: minority state ownership. Due to their minority nature, such stakes are less affected... View Details

Keywords: Business Groups; Development Banks; State Capitalism; Performance; State Ownership; Brazil

23 Jan 2019
News

Worm Capital Q&A With Clayton Christensen On Innovation -- And His New Book "The Prosperity Paradox"

November 2011
Case

Pacific Grove Spice Company

By: William E. Fruhan and Craig Stephenson

Pacific Grove Spice Company is a profitable, rapidly growing manufacturer, marketer, and distributor of quality spices and seasonings. The company's business model requires significant investment in accounts receivable, inventory, and fixed assets to support sales.... View Details

Keywords: Capital Expenditures; Investments; Acquisitions; Securities Analysis; Debt Securities; Opportunities; Cost of Capital; Valuation; Investment; Capital Budgeting; Business Model; Cash Flow; Financing and Loans; Acquisition; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

Educators

2014
Working Paper

Eclipsed and Confounded Identities: When High-Status Affiliations Impede Organizational Growth

By: Daniel Malter

I propose that an organization's growth potential may suffer if its identity is eclipsed by or confounded with the organizations with which it collaborates and competes. Using status as a salient feature of identity, I devise two network measures to capture the degree... View Details

Keywords: Distinctiveness; Status; Networks; Resource Acquisition; Growth; Venture Capital; Status and Position; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity; Growth and Development Strategy

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2020
Book

American Business History: A Very Short Introduction

By: Walter Friedman

By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's... View Details

Keywords: American Economy; Democratic Capitalism; Business History; Economy; Entrepreneurship; United States

June 2013 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Procter & Gamble

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Kathleen Durante

On July 12, 2012, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management announced publicly that it had purchased about $2 billion of Procter and Gamble (P&G) stock. Shares in the company closed up 3.75% the day the disclosure was made public. Ackman told the New York... View Details

Keywords: Ackman; P＆G; Pershing Square Capital Managment; Disruption; Management Succession; Crisis Management; Acquisition; Consumer Products Industry; Financial Services Industry

Educators

2004
Other Unpublished Work

Capital and Value of Risk Transfer: Presented at Actuarial Approach for Financial Risks (AFIR) Colloquium, Boston, MA, November

By: K. Froot, G. Venter and J. Major

Keywords: Capital; Risk and Uncertainty

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March 2018 (Revised February 2023)
Teaching Note

McKinsey & Company: Early Career Choices

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

Teaching Note for HBS No. 618-034. View Details

Keywords: Management Skills; Human Capital; Personal Development and Career; Decision Choices and Conditions; Outcome or Result; Consulting Industry

2013
Working Paper

Overcoming Organizational Barriers to Waste Heat Recovery

By: Chonnikarn Fern Jira and Deishin Lee

Waste heat recovery is a proven technology for improving energy efficiency and reducing the environmental impact of energy-intensive manufacturing firms. However, evidence suggests that opportunities for recovering waste heat are untapped. By showing how the process... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Energy; Capital Budgeting; Waste Heat Recovery; Manufacturing; Energy Industry; Manufacturing Industry

April 2022
Article

Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment

By: Meg Rithmire

How do state-business relations interact with outward investment in authoritarian regimes? This paper examines this question in the context of China’s rapid transformation into a major capital exporter. While most political economy scholarship focuses on firms’... View Details

Keywords: Outward Investment; Capital Controls; Corruption; Foreign Direct Investment; Political Economy; State-owned Enterprises; Investment; Global Range; Capital; Globalization; Policy; Government and Politics; China

June 2014
Article

The Capitalist's Dilemma

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Derek C. M. van Bever

Sixty months after the 2008 recession ended, the economy was still sputtering, producing disappointing growth and job numbers. Corporations seemed stuck: Despite low interest rates, they were sitting on massive piles of cash and failing to invest in new initiatives. In... View Details

Keywords: Capital Investments; Creating Markets; Evaluating Business Investments; Innovation; Emerging Markets; Investment; Economic Growth; Capital; Innovation and Invention

Aug 2012
Conference Presentation

When Does the Glue of Social Ties Dissolve: Syndication Ties and Performance Clues in Withdrawals from Venture Capital Syndicates

By: Pavel Ivanov Zhelyazkov

31 Mar 2025
News

MBAs Are Launching Venture Capital Funds to Back Their Classmates. Now, Harvard Business School Has One, Too.

Article

The Effects of Media Slant on Firm Behavior

By: Vishal P. Baloria and Jonas Heese

The media can impose reputational costs on firms because of its important role as an information intermediary and its ability to negatively slant coverage. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment that holds constant the information event across firms, but varies the... View Details

Keywords: Media Slant; Reputational Capital; Strategic Corporate Decisions; Media; News; Communication Strategy; Reputation

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