Publications

February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space (A)

By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella

Jeff Bezos, six years after starting a revolution in retailing with Amazon.com, turned his life-long passion for space into a start-up, Blue Origin. Blue (as it was called) was a part of the New Space industry, a collection of startup aerospace engineering companies... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Partners and Partnerships; Transportation; Business Startups; Government and Politics; Business and Government Relations; Aerospace Industry

June 2010
Case

Digital Link (A)

The Digital Link (A) and (B) cases present the struggles of a small public technology company to get and maintain analyst and investor attention during the "dot-com boom" of the 1990's. The case can be used in MBA or Executive Education classes. The (A) case takes... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Institutional Investing; Public Ownership

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October 2010 (Revised November 2010)
Case

YES BANK: Mainstreaming Development into Indian Banking

By: Michael Chu and Namrata Arora

YES BANK, founded in 2003 and highly successful, has consistently been profitable meeting the Indian government's Priority Sector Lending (PSL) requirements, unlike virtually all other private sector banks, which view PSL activity as a necessary but loss-making part of... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Private Equity; Microfinance; Investment; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Expansion; Banking Industry; India

2014
Working Paper

Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide

By: Jordan I. Siegel, Lynn Pyun and B.Y. Cheon

The organizational theory of the multinational firm holds that foreignness is a liability, and specifically that lack of embeddedness in host-country social networks is a source of competitive disadvantage; meanwhile the literature on labor market discrimination... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Human Capital; Selection and Staffing; Multinational Firms and Management; Competitive Advantage; Markets; Profit; Gender; South Korea

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February 2008
Article

Where Do Transactions Come From? Modularity, Transactions, and the Boundaries of Firms

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

This article constructs a theory of the location of transactions and the boundaries of firms in a productive system. It proposes that systems of production can be viewed as networks, in which tasks-cum-agents are the nodes and transfers—of material, energy and... View Details

Keywords: Boundaries; Production; Market Transactions; Supply Chain; Management; Cost; Theory; Performance Productivity; Information Management; Complexity

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04 Feb 2025
HBS Seminar

Anocha Aribarg, University of Michigan

18 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

The Best Person to Lead Your Company Doesn't Work There—Yet

details, including a top executive’s stake in the firm. So, the researchers turned to Pitchbook, a company that tracks buyout data for private companies. They added specific CEO data from Capital IQ, LinkedIn, press releases, and company... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

18 Oct 2023
News

Spreading the Words

Shafiq Khan (MBA 1982) loves to solve problems. It’s what attracted him to the case study method at HBS and, after graduation, to consulting at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Then, at United Airlines, Khan encountered another challenge: The company was spending one-sixth of... View Details

Keywords: April White

01 Sep 2023
News

Solving for Z

known a world without the internet and can’t imagine one without social media. So savvy employers are turning to platforms like TikTok and Instagram to reach potential hires. Other aspects are more subtle and involve addressing the... View Details

Keywords: Alexander Gelfand; Illustrations by Doug Chayka; Administration of Human Resource Programs; Government

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

15 Podcast Episodes That Grabbed Listeners in 2023

BlackBerry had gone from being a corporate world must-have to a global has-been. Chen tells Ranjay Gulati that the key to turning Blackberry around was being prepared to make hard calls, even in midst of uncertainty. He says that, in... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

09 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Could Clean Hydrogen Become Affordable at Scale by 2030?

Hydrogen is poised to move from the sidelines of global clean energy as the industry learns to produce it more efficiently and at lower cost, according to newly published research led by Gunther Glenk, a climate fellow with Harvard Business School's Institute for the... View Details

Keywords: by Desmond Dodd; Energy; Green Technology

23 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 23, 2008

Working PapersSecuring Online Advertising: Rustlers and Sheriffs in the New Wild West Author:Benjamin G. Edelman Abstract Read the news of recent computer security guffaws, and it's striking how many problems stem from online advertising. Advertising is the bedrock... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

July 2020
Supplement

PeopleAnswers (B): The Infor Acquisition

By: Daniel P. Gross

In the fall of 2009, founder and CEO Gab Goncalves has turned PeopleAnswers, Inc. from a fledgling startup to a steadily growing company of nearly 50 employees and $10 million recurring revenue. PeopleAnswers provides people analytics software which its clients use to... View Details

Keywords: People Analytics; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Growth and Development; Human Resources; Selection and Staffing; Mergers and Acquisitions

October 2018
Case

Zenefits Board of Directors (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Leadership; Risk Management; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; California

January 1997 (Revised December 1999)
Case

OXO International

By: H. Kent Bowen, Marilyn Matis and Sylvie Ryckebusch

OXO, a kitchen tools and gadgets company, was started by a businessman who had 30 years of experience in the housewares industry. With his wife and son as founders, he creates a new niche in the gadgets industry for high-end gourmet stores. The company has headquarters... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Supply Chain Management; Production; Design; Ownership; Business Startups; Acquisition; Consumer Products Industry; Asia; New York (city, NY); Connecticut