Publications
Publications
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(3,009)
- Faculty Publications (737)
- March 2022
- Case
In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault
To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020.... View Details
Keywords: Finance; Fintech; Emerging Market; Fundraising; Financial Inclusion; Strategy; Expansion; Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; Africa; Togo; Nigeria; Ghana
- March 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Pakistan Rising: Bazaar's Growth Story (A)
By: Paul A. Gompers and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2021 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are contemplating whether the year-and-a half old startup should also venture into offering financing to... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Perch
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Stacy Straaberg and Julia Kelley
In May 2021, Perch CEO Chris Bell needed to decide whether his e-commerce aggregator company, which bought and scaled Amazon Marketplace brands, should acquire up to three acquisition targets. The prospective acquisitions, Web Deals Direct, HomeCo, and Future Brands,... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Business Strategy; Integration; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; North America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; California; Asia; Philippines
- February 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
National Electric Vehicles Sweden (NEVS): Materializing a Vision
By: Shane Greenstein and Elena Corsi
In 2021, the car manufacturer National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) faced the challenge of securing funding from its investor to launch an innovative mobility solution based on fleets of shared autonomous driving (AD) cars. The system was complex as it required the... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
Pushing Past the Boundaries of ESG Investing: AQR Capital Management
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Richard B. Evans, Umit G. Gurun and Quoc H. Nguyen
Cliff Asness was facing a dilemma into how he would plunge his hedge fund into the hottest investment area worldwide—ESG Investing. Founder and managing principal of AQR—one the most storied quantitative hedge funds in the world—Asness knew anything less than a big... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Fondeadora
By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Mitchell Weiss
Norman Müller and René Serrano, cofounders of Fondeadora, a Mexican “neobank,” had lined up a $12.5 million in Series A funding round in 2020 only to run into a major obstacle: The lead investor was Gradient Ventures, a venture firm launched by Alphabet, Inc., and... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Supplement
Katerra (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving—with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place
By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein
In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down?
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Labor Market; Unemployment; Recession; Globalized Markets and Industries; Government Legislation; International Relations; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Contracts; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Spain; European Union
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Engine No. 1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil
By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski
ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
upGrad: Delivering Career Outcomes Online: Degree by Degree
By: John J-H Kim, Anjali Raina and Rachna Chawla
In August 2021, the founders of upGrad, the latest unicorn in the Indian higher education online space, were deciding how to best use the funds to execute on their ambitious growth plans. Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli had envisioned upGrad as an... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin
In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details
- September 2021
- Case
Brown Capital Management
By: Luis M. Viceira, Emily R. McComb and Sarah Mehta
Set in July 2021, this case looks at several growth strategies under consideration at Brown Capital, the second-oldest Black-owned asset management firm in the U.S. Since its 1983 founding, Baltimore-based Brown Capital has specialized in small company growth... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Diversity; Race; Finance; Equity; Public Equity; Stocks; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Employee Ownership; Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States; Maryland; Baltimore
- September 2021
- Case
Worldreader: Helping Readers Build a Better World
By: Marco Bertini, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2010, Worldreader was an international nonprofit organization that promoted reading to children around the world. For many years, Worldreader distributed e-readers to under-resourced communities and funded its operations primarily through philanthropic... View Details
Keywords: Subscription Model; Price; Financial Strategy; Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Range; Goals and Objectives; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Markets; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Non-Governmental Organizations; Nonprofit Organizations; Society; Social Issues; Strategy; Commercialization; Expansion; Segmentation; Education Industry; Africa; Asia; Latin America; Europe; North and Central America; South America
- August 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences
By: Jill Avery and Rayan Nahas
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; B2B; Technology Platform; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Social Media; E-commerce; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Advertising Industry; United States
- August 2021
- Case
Apax Digital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
The Apax Digital team faced important decisions as they contemplated raising a second fund. Apax Digital Fund I was a $1.1 billion vehicle focused on mid-market growth equity and growth buyouts in the technology sector. The fund had performed well, and the Managing... View Details
- August 2021
- Article
Don't Take Their Word for It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds
By: Huaizhi Chen, Lauren Cohen and Umit Gurun
We provide evidence that bond fund managers misclassify their holdings, and that these misclassifications have a real and significant impact on investor capital flows. In particular, many funds report more investment grade assets than are actually held in their... View Details
- July 2021
- Case
Bessemer Venture Partners: Century Fund
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In July of 2021, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) contemplated the future of its growth investing practice, known as “Century.” While still relatively new as a focused initiative, BVP’s growth investing already had significant momentum. The fund’s investment pace had... View Details
- July 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Pershing Square's Pandemic Trade (A)
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira, Dean Xu and Lucas Baker
This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund’s portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like... View Details
- July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Fynd
By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details