Publications

January 2014 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Yahoo: Both Sides of the Stamped Deal

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Lisa C. Mazzanti

In 2012, Marissa Mayer became the CEO of Yahoo!, a tech giant with a tumultuous past. When Mayer tries to reinvigorate the company, she hires Jacqueline Reses, who has a private equity background, to head both human resources and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). As part... View Details

Keywords: Mobile App; Acquisition-hire; Exit Strategy; Start-up; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Mergers and Acquisitions; Human Resources; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Product Development; Technology Industry; Sunnyvale; New York (city, NY)

Web

HBS - The year in Review

Venture Competition Turns 25 Celebrating a quarter century of innovation and entrepreneurship, the New Venture Competition in March featured 20 student and alumni finalist teams coming together to compete... View Details

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

can include small “lifestyle” businesses, multi-generational family businesses, high-growth, venture funded technology businesses, and new ventures designed to commercialize... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

14 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Amazon vs. Whole Foods: When Cultures Collide

critics referred to the store as “Whole Paycheck.” The acquisition was initially met positively by Wall Street, amid hopes that Amazon’s data-driven mindset might be just the thing to enable Whole Foods to scale up and add more stores... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

Geoffrey G. Jones

Geoffrey Jones is the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, and Faculty Chair of the School's Business History Initiative. He holds degrees of BA, MA and PhD from Cambridge University, UK. He has an honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business Administration... View Details

Keywords: green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology; green technology

Web

Private Capital Project

interests, such as the application of cutting-edge technologies to solve broad societal problems, overlap with swaths of faculty and practitioners. Private capital techniques have the potential to be a crucial part of the solutions to... View Details

2013
Working Paper

The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying

By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra

We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details

Keywords: Lobbying; Political Economy; H-1B; Business Ventures; Policy; Government Legislation; Immigration; Business and Government Relations; Research; Prejudice and Bias

SSRN

Read Now

October 2011
Case

Gene Sequencing: Staking a Position in an Expanding Industry

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Mara Aspinall and Phillip Andrews

Towards the end of 2010, companies in the gene sequencing industry were pushing aggressive R&D programs to develop technologies and products in the race to sequence the entire human genome at a cost of $1,000. It remained to be seen when the "$1,000 genome" would... View Details

Keywords: Genetics; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Plan; Competition; Venture Capital; Biotechnology Industry

Find at Harvard

07 Jun 2016
First Look

June 7, 2016

focused on the current technical architecture may fall victim to architectural innovations arising outside their boundaries. Thus in technologically dynamic industries, partial mirroring, where knowledge boundaries are drawn more broadly... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2025
Case

The Micro-Family Office: Aamir Rehman

By: Lauren Cohen and Sophia Pan

With a successful career and strong academic credentials, Aamir Rehman sought to design a life grounded in autonomy. For him, this meant serving on boards, continuing his professorship, and ensuring a secure and comfortable life for his family. While he didn’t possess... View Details

October 2011 (Revised September 2014)
Case

Paddle8: Painting a New Picture of the Art Market

By: Mukti Khaire

The Paddle8 case is a short case that presents the idea for a new business in the global art market and asks students to evaluate whether it will work, given the structure and unique workings of the art market. Paddle8 is a New York-based startup that partners with... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Business Plan; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Trade; Fine Arts Industry; New York (city, NY)

March 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Background Note

Service on the Internet: The Effect of Physical Service on Scalability

Develops a framework for exploring the idea of, how service affects the economics of Internet organizations. Development of the framework requires an understanding of the different forms service takes in organizations that conduct business through the Internet. These... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Service Delivery; Service Industry

01 Oct 2024
Cold Call Podcast

Choosing Passion: A Founder’s Mission to Meet a Need for Obesity Care

Keywords: Re: Jon M. Jachimowicz; Health

2010
Book

Unilever'i Yenilemek: Dönüşüm ve Gelenek [Renewing Unilever: Transformation and Tradition]

By: Geoffrey Jones

Unilever's brands can now be found in one out of every two households in the world. This arresting and impressive fact shows the scope and scale of this unique global corporation. Geoffrey Jones, a leading business historian from the Harvard Business School, takes us... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Business Growth and Maturation; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Globalization; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry

2025
Working Paper

The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Charles Ayoubi, Hila Lifshitz, Raffaella Sadun, Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, Yi Han, Jeff Goldman, Hari Nair, Stew Taub and Karim R. Lakhani

We examine how artificial intelligence transforms the core pillars of collaboration— performance, expertise sharing, and social engagement—through a pre-registered field experiment with 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble, a global consumer packaged goods company.... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Teamwork; Human-machine Interaction; Productivity; Skills; Innovation; Field Experiment; AI and Machine Learning; Groups and Teams; Competency and Skills; Performance Productivity; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Product Development

SSRN

October 2009
Supplement

Merger of Equals: The Integration of Mellon Financial and The Bank of New York (C)

By: Ryan D. Taliaferro, Clayton S. Rose and David Lane

[Continuation of "A" and "B" cases.] Less than a month after the close of the merger between The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial, managers at the two firms realized that plans for combining their asset servicing businesses – and realizing the $180 million of... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Horizontal Integration; Financial Institutions; Business Processes; Risk Management; Strategy; Market Transactions; Assets; System; Saving; Banking Industry; New York (state, US)

September 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Atomwise: Strategic Opportunities in AI for Pharma

By: Satish Tadikonda

Abraham Heifets and his co-founder, Izhar Wallach, had founded Atomwise to develop i) an AI engine to transform drug discovery by creating better medicines faster, and ii) a machine learning-based discovery engine that combined the power of convolutional neural... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Science-Based Business; Technological Innovation; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Veeva Systems: The Next Frontier

By: Satish Tadikonda and William Marks

Born out of a desire to bring technological advances in enterprise software into the healthcare vertical, Peter Gassner and Matt Wallach founded Veeva to bring life sciences companies into the digital age for data management in both the commercial and R&D sectors. Over... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Governance Compliance; Applications and Software; Growth Management; Expansion; Technology Industry