Publications

07 Jul 2010
News

On Leadership: Lincoln's wartime leadership tools

Career Coach

Peter Platzer

Peter (HBS '02) is a former hedge fund manager who currently runs a space exploration company he founded in 2012. A coach for HBS since 2002, he enjoys helping individuals find their unique career vision, matching their passion, skills... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Entrepreneurship; Investment Management; Financial Services (All); Venture Capital; Financial Services (All)

17 Jul 2017
Blog Post

Podcast: Should You Consider the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program?

Last month, HBS and SEAS announced the launch of a new MS/MBA joint degree. As a prospective student, you might be wondering what the benefit is of pursuing both degrees. The founding professors of the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program... View Details

30 May 2024
Blog Post

PRIDE at HBS

Founded in 1981 as a student club at Harvard Business School, PRIDE is a home for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning MBA students and their partners. Our goal is to make PRIDE a safe space where students and their... View Details

May–June 2021
Article

Why Start-ups Fail

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

If you’re launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School set out to discover why. Based on interviews and surveys with hundreds... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Problems and Challenges; Failure

Find at Harvard

November 2020 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Dell Technologies: Bringing the Cloud to the Ground

By: Navid Mojir and V. Kasturi Rangan

The case tells the story of Dell Technologies and its efforts to revitalize its value proposition and escape a commodity trap by acquiring EMC for $67 billion—the largest tech acquisition in history. It also shows the deeply intertwined connections between a company’s... View Details

Keywords: Value Proposition; Go-to-market; Strategic Positioning; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Technological Innovation; Business Divisions; Information Technology Industry; Computer Industry

Sara Fleiss was the co-founder and co-portfolio manager of Emeth Partners, an emerging markets arbitrage hedge fund. Prior to founding Emeth, Sara was the lead analyst on the Emerging Markets Equities portfolio at Harvard Management Company (HMC). At HMC, Sara... View Details

26 Jan 2015
News

Does the Social Safety Net Make Us Lazy?

March 2020 (Revised May 2020)
Case

Generation Investment Management

By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Sarah Mehta

By January 2020, sustainable investment firm Generation Investment Management (Generation), founded in London in 2004, had grown from a shared vision among seven founders to a 90-person firm managing $27 billion in public and private equity. Throughout its history,... View Details

February 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Theranos: The Unicorn That Wasn't

By: Joseph B. Fuller and John Masko

In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup dedicated to making blood testing easier and more affordable. By 2015, her company, Theranos, was worth $9 billion. It boasted a star-studded board and contracts with national pharmacy and supermarket chains... View Details

Keywords: Theranos; Blood; Lab Testing; Fraud; Holmes; Balwani; Shultz; Carreyrou; Securities And Exchange Commission; Food And Drug Administration; FDA; SEC; Health Testing and Trials; Corporate Accountability; Organizational Culture; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

October 2023 (Revised June 2024)
Case

ReUp Education: Can AI Help Learners Return to College?

By: Kris Ferreira, Christopher Thomas Ryan and Sarah Mehta

Founded in 2015, ReUp Education helps “stopped out students”—learners who have stopped making progress towards graduation—achieve their college completion goals. The company relies on a team of success coaches to engage with learners and help them reenroll. In 2019,... View Details

Keywords: AI; Algorithms; Machine Learning; Edtech; Education Technology; Analysis; Higher Education; AI and Machine Learning; Customization and Personalization; Failure; Education Industry; Technology Industry; United States

Richard Hamermesh was the MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. While at HBS Richard served as co-chair of the HBS Healthcare... View Details

Keywords: health care

08 Sep 2020
Blog Post

2+2 Where Are They Now Spotlight: Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes (MBA 2017)

to work in industry in order to develop my competence as an engineer, but I also knew that I wanted to transition out of big business after achieving that competency and found a company. The HBS 2+2 process gave me that roadmap to get... View Details

07 Feb 2013
News

The case for having a founder run the business

29 Jul 2017
News

Fund managers challenged to confront lack of ethnic diversity

08 Feb 2022
News

The ‘Do-Gooder’s Dilemma’: Why Purpose-Driven Companies Can’t Lose Focus On Profits

June 2015 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Uber and Stakeholders: Managing a New Way of Riding

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Daniel Fox

By 2015, technological innovations—the smartphone and the advanced data connectivity that enabled it—created new opportunities for people to move around cities quickly and conveniently without owning a car, via car-sharing services like Zipcar or new ride-sharing... View Details

Keywords: Uber; Ride-sharing; Sharing Economy; Transportation Network Company; Leadership And Change Management; Stakeholder Management; Managing Change; Leadership; Regulation; Smartphones; Web-enabled Application; Disruptive Technology; Startup Management; Entrepreneurship; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Transportation; Mobile Technology; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry

February 2019 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Theranos: Who Has Blood on Their Hands? (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Christina R. Wing, Emilie Fournier and Anna Resman

This case covers the rise and fall of Theranos, the company founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2004 to revolutionize the blood testing industry by creating a device that could provide from a small finger prick the same results and accuracy as intravenous blood draws. As... View Details

Keywords: Health Testing and Trials; Corporate Accountability; Organizational Culture; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Entrepreneurship; Lawsuits and Litigation