Publications

Program

Senior Executive Leadership Program—China

Summary Today's global business environment offers many exciting prospects for talented executives and ambitious organizations. To take full advantage of emerging opportunities in China and beyond, businesses need exceptional leaders—forward-thinking executives who are... View Details

September 2020
Case

Uber at a Crossroads (2017)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman

This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its... View Details

12 Apr 2011
First Look

First Look: April 12

system rather than a government-controlled system. Book: http://www.gale.cengage.com/servlet/ItemDetailServletCr?region=9&imprint=070&titleCode=GCCL&cf=p&type=3&id=254645 Corporate Ownership Structure and Bank Loan... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2016
Supplement

Canadian Pacific's Bid for Norfolk Southern Spreadsheet Supplement

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield

In December 2015, Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) has just made its third bid to acquire Norfolk Southern Corporation (NSC), one of the largest railroads in the United States. Having rejected the prior offers, NSC’s CEO James Squires and the NSC board must now value... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Cash Flow; Cost of Capital; Financial Strategy; Investment Activism; Bids and Bidding; Negotiation Offer; Corporate Strategy; Rail Transportation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Transformation; United States; Canada

September 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

The Pokémon Company: Evolving into an Everlasting Brand

By: Tomomichi Amano and Masaki Nomura

Super Bowl 50, the fiftieth annual championship game of the American National Football League played in February 2016, featured 52 commercials, and brands spent more than six million dollars each for a 30-second commercial slot. Surprisingly, the commercial that... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Growth and Development Strategy; Video Game Industry; Japan

Josh Lerner graduated from Yale College with a special divisional major. He worked for several years on issues concerning technological innovation and public policy at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private task force in Chicago, and on... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; high technology; venture capital industry

11 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans

Christophe Pérignon, a finance professor at HEC Paris. The study offers empirical evidence that politicians routinely used high-risk loans on purpose, for political gain, in spite of the risks. Furthermore, the strategy worked: Toxic... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

30 Nov 2017
News

Law, Management, and Strategy: Collapsing Boundaries and Managing the Interstices

March 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

When Should CEOs Speak Out Publicly? The 2021 Georgia Voting Law

By: William W. George, Hubert Joly and Amram Migdal

This case describes the March 2021 passage of a voting and elections law in the U.S. state of Georgia and reactions by corporations and corporate leaders to the law. Included are a brief history of voting rights in the United States and Georgia and an overview of the... View Details

Willy Shih is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration. He is part of the Technology and Operations Management Unit, and he teaches in the MBA and Executive Education Programs. His expertise is in manufacturing, product... View Details

Keywords: aerospace; automotive; biotechnology; communications; computer; digital imaging; electrical equipment; electronics; entertainment; high technology; industrial goods; information technology industry; manufacturing; retailing; semiconductor

May 2008 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Intel NBI: MXP Digital Media Processor

By: Willy C. Shih and Thomas Thurston

"Gila" was a high-performance image processor project housed in Intel's New Business Initiatives (NBI) group. NBI was an incubator for corporate entrepreneurs, and it had an established methodology for ensuring a degree of autonomy while these ventures got started. But... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Integration; Semiconductor Industry; United States

21 Jul 2006
Op-Ed

Enron Jury Sent the Right Message

The most noteworthy message of the Enron trial is that corporate executives can be convicted in a court of law for a pattern of deception that may or may not be illegal. Left unaddressed in the trial were many financial transactions and... View Details

Keywords: by Malcolm S. Salter

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Women Leading Business: A New Kind of Conversation

company that is recognized as successful, with substantial revenues and profits. Our corporate participants are presidents of their companies or divisions, or they're executive vice presidents—almost always within two strikes of the top.... View Details

Keywords: Re: Myra M. Hart & Cynthia A. Montgomery

Working Paper

Diversification as an Adaptive Learning Process: An Empirical Study of General-Purpose and Market-Specific Technological Know-How in New Market Entry

By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Gary P. Pisano

An enduring trait of modern corporations is their propensity to diversify into multiple lines of business. Penrosian theories conceptualize diversification as a strategy to exploit a firm’s fungible, yet “untradeable,” resources and point to redeployment of... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Adoption; Diversification; Market Entry and Exit; Transformation

Read Now

November 2009
Case

Dawn Stokes: The View from the Driver's Seat

By: Boris Groysberg and Lindsay Tanne

Dawn Stokes founded and was successful as CEO of Texas Driving Experience, a company that provided driving lessons, both safety-based for teens, and high-performance racecar driving for individual thrill seekers and corporate events. Although the company had done well,... View Details

Keywords: Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Training; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Auto Industry; Service Industry; Texas

Find at Harvard

Program

Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance

Summary As the focus on corporate governance and oversight has grown, so has the complexity of regulatory challenges facing audit committees. This corporate governance strategy... View Details

14 Dec 2021
Op-Ed

To Change Your Company's Culture, Don't Start by Trying to Change the Culture

CEOs who had led successful corporate transformations and came to the same conclusion in a Harvard Business Review article: “[These leaders] say that culture isn’t something you 'fix.' Rather, in their experience, cultural change is what... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer

November 2005 (Revised February 2006)
Case

Oracle vs. PeopleSoft (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Guhan Subramanian and David Millstone

Focuses on the hotly contested takeover battle between software rivals Oracle and PeopleSoft in 2003 and 2004. Raises novel issues of takeover law under Delaware corporate law as well as issues of fair competition under California law. A central issue is whether the... View Details

Keywords: Takeover; Fiduciary Duty; Mergers and Acquisitions; Applications and Software; Ethics; Law; Governing and Advisory Boards; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competition; Strategy; Information Technology Industry; United States