Publications

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Jumia's Path to Profitability

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details

17 Sep 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Secrets of the Academy: The Drivers of University Endowment Success

Keywords: by Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar & Jialan Wang; Education

November 2001
Case

Korea-Tender

By: Das Narayandas and Kate Attea

Korea-Tender is a closed-bidding auction company trying to break even and must select the best opportunity to increase membership and revenue. It can continue its current model with heavy advertising, try to modify its costs, or develop an additional business model... View Details

Keywords: Auctions; Business Model; Advertising; Business Startups; Problems and Challenges; Marketing Strategy; Revenue; Growth and Development Strategy

12 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

How Can Financial Advisors Thrive in Shifting Markets? Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

like education planning and account aggregation, advisory firms can strengthen their businesses, shows the study, which Di Maggio cowrote with five collaborators from the investment company Dimensional Fund Advisors. "The issue is, the... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Financial Services

January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Module Note

Analysis of Financial and Non-Financial Information for Forecasting Performance

By: Charles C.Y. Wang

This note describes the main themes and cases of a teaching module on the analysis of information from, and outside of, financial statements for forecasting firms’ future financial performance. The module’s pedagogical goal is to deepen students’ understanding of the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Performance; Analysis; Valuation; Accounting; Finance

October 2009 (Revised January 2010)
Case

The Joslin Diabetes Center

By: Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg and Scott Wallace

The Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts is a leading center for diabetes care, clinician training, and research. The incidence of diabetes is rising precipitously worldwide, challenging quality of life with its complications and rapidly accelerating health... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Service Delivery; Medical Specialties; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Corporate Finance; Health Industry; Boston

January–February 2013
Article

Golfing Alone? Corporations, Elites and Nonprofit Growth in 100 American Communities

By: Christopher Marquis, Gerald F. Davis and Mary Ann Glynn

We examine the link between corporations and community by showing how corporate density interacts with the local social and cultural infrastructure to affect the growth and decline of the number of local nonprofits between 1987 and 2002. We focus on two sub-populations... View Details

Keywords: Business and Community Relations; Civil Society or Community; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Business Growth and Maturation; Profit; Local Range; Welfare or Wellbeing; Business Processes; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Trends; Management Practices and Processes; United States

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27 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 27, 2007

the general Buenos Aires population, in spite of the large differences. On the Pricing of Intermediated Risks: Theory and Application to Catastrophe Reinsurance Authors:K. A. Froot and P. O'Connell Periodical:Journal of Banking and View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

03 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

Why a Failed Startup Might Be Good for Your Career After All

Glass profile database, which collects work history and education data from various public and private sources. Combined with Dow Jones VentureSource data, the list was winnowed to 14,000 founders of VC-backed companies who listed a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

21 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Fixing the Marketing-CEO Disconnect

collaboration with Harvard Business School's Educational Technology Group. McGovern will be using the product in the Advanced Management Program "Managing for Senior Executives" program in June. The program has been made... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

March 2017
Case

PharmAccess and the M-TIBA Platform: Leveraging Digital Technology in the Developing World

By: Kevin Schulman, Sashidaran Moodley and Anant Vasudevan

PharmAccess is an Amsterdam-based NGO working to support the development of the private health care market in Africa. This work is critical as over 50% of care is delivered through the private sector, but well-intentioned efforts to address global health through the... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Online Technology; Health Industry; Africa; Kenya

23 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

After High-Profile Failures, Can Investors Still Trust Credit Ratings?

Credit ratings play an essential role in global finance by assessing whether borrowers can meet their debt obligations. Agency analysts study data from financial statements to make initial assessments about bond issuers, which include... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

August 2023
Article

Do Rating Agencies Behave Defensively for Higher Risk Issuers?

By: Samuel B. Bonsall IV, Kevin Koharki, Pepa Kraft, Karl A. Muller III and Anywhere Sikochi

We examine whether rating agencies act defensively toward issuers with a higher likelihood of default. We find that agencies' qualitative soft rating adjustments are more accurate as issuers' default risk grows, as evidenced by the adjustments leading to lower Type I... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Soft Rating Adjustments; Default; Credit; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Institutions; Risk Management

29 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 29, 2008

1,582 loans financing private equity-sponsored leveraged buyouts between 1993 and 2005, we find that bank relationships explain cross-sectional variation in the loan interest rate and covenant structure. Our results indicate that two... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

financed them—declared such brick-and-mortar businesses were dinosaurs on their way to extinction. The success of Bluemercury proved the critics wrong. “We’ve always had a hard time being able to identify the skills and behaviors of... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

December 1998
Article

Entrepreneurs and Business Performance in Nineteenth Century France

By: Tom Nicholas, Elisa Boccaletti and James Foreman-Peck

A popular explanation for the supposed "delayed industrialisation" of the nineteenth century French economy has been the inappropriate attitudes and actions of the managerial classes and family firms. To address these claims we model the supply and demand for... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Performance; Economy; Management; Success; Opportunities; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Saving; Higher Education; Training; Demand and Consumers; France

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May 2010 (Revised June 2012)
Case

From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group

By: Willy Shih and Nancy Hua Dai

As Zuo Zongshen drove the transformation of the Zongshen Industrial Group from an early imitator in the motorcycle business to a company that increasingly focused on innovation as a way to get out of the hyper-competitive commodity business, he continually faced new... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Learning; Investment; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; China