Publications

May 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Background Note

Managing Talent Pipelines in the Future of Work

By: William R. Kerr, Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman and Carl Kreitzberg

In the face of a rapidly-changing economy, organizations that wish to compete in the future of work must develop strategies for acquiring, retaining, and developing talent for their organizations. This primer reviews the major trends shaping jobs, workplaces, and... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Demographics; Labor; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Quality; Supply Chain

July 1998 (Revised October 1998)
Case

Jan Eriksson at Novartis Indonesia: Turmoil in the Indonesian Pharmaceutical Industry

By: Carin-Isabel Knoop and Anthony St. George

Jan Eriksson is the country manager of the Indonesian joint venture of Basel-based Novartis (Novartis Indonesia), the world's largest pharmaceutical company, formed by the 1996 merger between Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy. The case describes the actions he has taken since... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Mergers and Acquisitions; Crisis Management; Management Teams; Financial Crisis; Pharmaceutical Industry; Indonesia

16 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Ideas and Research, May 16

mathematics. Yet they often struggle to fit the profiles sought by employers. A growing number of companies, including SAP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Microsoft, have reformed their HR processes in order to access neurodiverse... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

13 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 13

by deviating frequently and in predictable ways from the recommendations offered by a centralized capacity planning model. Finally, we document that these discretionary capacity supply decisions exhibit a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2012 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Foro Energy (A)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and James McQuade

Foro Energy developed proprietary and patent-pending fiber-laser technologies that could disrupt existing processes and services for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. These breakthrough laser technologies were protected by a strong intellectual... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; United States

April 2008
Article

The Survey of Industrial R&D—Patent Database Link Project

By: William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu

This paper details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER Patent Dataset with the Survey of Industrial R&D conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The dataset constitutes a platform that offers an unprecedented view of... View Details

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Patents; Surveys; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

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July 2019
Teaching Note

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

By: William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg

A Teaching Note for the "AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow" case study (HBS#820-017). The case describes how AT&T designed and implemented a program to retrain 100,000 of its workers. The case first reviews the technological forces that compelled AT&T to... View Details

Person Page

Read excerpts from DENIAL

By: Richard S. Tedlow

The Edifice Complex: Denial at Sears

Book Excerpt: Denial at Sears (BusinessWeek.com, February 26, 2010)

From Denial: Why Business... View Details

February 2017 (Revised June 2017)
Case

ExxonMobil: Business as Usual? (A)

By: George Serafeim, Shiva Rajgopal and David Freiberg

Climate change was becoming an important societal and business issue as more governments were introducing climate change related regulations and investors became increasibly worried about stranded assets within oil and gas firms. In September 2016, the U.S. Securities... View Details

Keywords: Oil ＆ Gas; Oil Prices; Oil Companies; Asset Impairment; Predictive Analytics; Sustainability; Environmental Impact; Innovation; Disclosure; Accounting; Valuation; Climate Change; Renewable Energy; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Reporting; Energy Industry

28 Apr 2016
News

Health Care Dominates HBS Startup Comp

14 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 14, 2017

experts to discuss how researchers can impact a broader audience, by lending their scientific expertise to pressing social issues, current events, and public debates. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Autonomous Vehicles: The Rubber Hits the Road...but When?

By: William Kerr, Allison Ciechanover, Jeff Huizinga and James Palano

The rise of autonomous vehicles has enormous implications for business and society. Despite the many headlines and significant investment in the technology by early 2019, it was still unclear when truly autonomous vehicles would be a commercial reality. Students will... View Details

Keywords: Technology Management; Artificial Intelligence; General Management; Robotics; Technological Innovation; Transportation; Disruption; Information Technology; Decision Making; AI and Machine Learning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

2022
Working Paper

The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans

By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim

Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Credit Products; Loan Contracts; Loans; Corporate Finance; Credit Risk; Environment; ESG; ESG Ratings; Climate Change; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Risk and Uncertainty; Credit

SSRN

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Article

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Investment Recommendations

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

Using a large sample of publicly traded U.S. firms over 16 years, we investigate the impact of corporate socially responsible (CSR) strategies on security analysts' recommendations. Socially responsible firms received more favorable recommendations in recent years... View Details

Keywords: Public Ownership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Experience and Expertise; Value Creation; Public Equity; Markets; Investment; Perception; United States

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23 Mar 2022
News

The Great Resignation Didn’t Start with the Pandemic

Article

Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?

By: Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr

Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demographics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Geographic Location; Employment; Market Entry and Exit; Supply Chain; Manufacturing Industry

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16 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 16

organization profits. Order the book: http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Calls-Twelve-Stories-Decisions/dp/142215811X From Russia with Love: The Impact of Relocated Firms on Incumbent Survival Authors:Oliver Falck, Christina Guenther, Stephan Heblich, and View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Jul 2019
Blog Post

Meet the MBA Class of 2020

View Video Andrew Baxter “YOU BUILD UP PERSONAL CAPITAL BY SHARING COMMON EXPERIENCES.” HOME REGION St. Andrews, UK UNDERGRAD EDUCATION Imperial College London, Chemical Engineering, 2011 PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE Shell, Schlumberger HBS... View Details

February 2011
Case

Chegg: Textbook Rental Takes Flight

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, William A. Sahlman and Evan W. Richardson

In late 2010, Silicon Valley-based Chegg, the leading online college textbook rental company, is scaling rapidly. The case recounts Chegg's history from its origins as a distant competitor to Craigslist in college classified listings through a pivot into textbook... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Books; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Service Operations; Renting or Rental; Online Technology; Education Industry; Service Industry; California