Publications

June 2023
Supplement

Ishani Therapeutics: Valuing a Deal (Student Spreadsheet Supplement)

By: Amitabh Chandra and Sumon Mazumdar

June 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Optimalen Capital

By: Malcolm Baker, Elisabeth Kempf and Jonathan Wallen

A new client portfolio manager at a quantitative investment management firm must explain why her firm, Optimalen Capital, has rebalanced a client portfolio with a set of trades that seem unintuitive. In particular, Optimalen has added to its position of Walmart (ticker... View Details

Keywords: Investments; CAPM; Capital Asset Pricing Model; Investment Portfolio; Asset Pricing

June 20, 2023
Article

Cautious Adoption of AI Can Create Positive Company Culture

By: Joseph Pacelli and Jonas Heese

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Organizational Culture; Employees

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June 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Simulation

Managing the Customer Journey Marketing Simulation: Adobe's Data-Driven Operating Model (DDOM)

By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Celine Chammas

Adobe started monitoring Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), one of its primary metrics, when it shifted from selling its software in a box to selling the software as a subscription-based cloud service. They wanted to know when, where, and how much to invest in marketing.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Acquisition; Customer Journey; Marketing Strategy; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Budgets and Budgeting

June 2023
Teaching Note

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (A, B, C, & D)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Scott Mayfield

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 223-009, 223-066, 223-068, and 223-086. View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America

June 2023
Supplement

Graphic Packaging: Project Cowboy (D)

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Scott Mayfield and Philipp Chvanov

Analyzes the company's decision on Project Cowboy following the events described in the C Case View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Growth Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Value Creation; Supply and Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; North America

June 2023
Case

Grittiness at Convene

By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott

Based in New York, Convene was founded in 2009 by Ryan Simonetti and Chris Kelly. Convene was founded on the question: “What if you ran an office building like a hotel?” The company offered a premium corporate events and workspace product. Convene initially took a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Hospitality Industry; Growth; Culture; Entrepreneurship; Change Management; Growth Management; Strategy; Leadership; Service Industry; United States

2023
Working Paper

Insufficiently Justified Disparate Impact: A New Criterion for Subgroup Fairness

By: Neil Menghani, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

In this paper, we develop a new criterion, "insufficiently justified disparate impact" (IJDI), for assessing whether recommendations (binarized predictions) made by an algorithmic decision support tool are fair. Our novel, utility-based IJDI criterion evaluates false... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Prejudice and Bias

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June 19, 2023
Article

Should You Start a Generative AI Company?

By: Julian De Freitas

Many entrepreneurs are considering starting companies that leverage the latest generative AI technology, but they must ask themselves whether they have what it takes to compete on increasingly commoditized foundational models, or whether they should instead... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software

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June 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Sober Sidekick

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar

Case on the nascent business model of a mobile health IT startup. In particular, should they pivot away from their successful lead generation business model to charging health plans. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Operations; Business Startups; Business Model; Health Industry; United States

June 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Communities In Schools (Atlanta): Innovating a College Program

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Lynda M. Applegate and Alexis Lefort

Frank Brown, CIS of Atlanta's new Black CEO, was keen to extend CIS's well-honed case management in schools program to youth in college. Founded 50 years ago by Bill Milliken, CIS, a network of 110 affiliates, had built a strong program of assisting and supporting... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Education; Expansion; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Atlanta

June 2023
Case

Dan McCrum - Unmasking Wirecard

By: Jonas Heese, Charles C.Y. Wang, Tonia Labruyere and Carlota Moniz

Dan McCrum, an investigative journalist for the Financial Times, had spent the past six years fighting to expose German payment processing firm Wirecard. The company had enjoyed years of exponential growth and was viewed by several investors as the poster child of... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Accounting; Financial Services Industry; Journalism and News Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; Germany

June 2023
Case

Investing in the Climate Transition at Neuberger Berman

By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta

By mid-2023, Neuberger Berman (NB), an active asset manager, had grown its assets under management to about half a trillion dollars and took pride in its client centricity and innovative spirit. Responding to client demand for investment products that integrated... View Details

June 2023 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Collaboration Wars: Slack vs. Microsoft Teams 2023

By: David B. Yoffie, Kriti Gupta, Mehek Punatar, Poonam Sacheti and Poorvi Vijay

What's the future of corporate communications? Email? Corporate messaging? The battle for corporate messaging in 2023 was stacking up as a fight between Slack, which had been recently acquired by Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams. This case explores a classic judo... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Acquisition; Technology Industry; Communications Industry

June 2023
Exercise

Experimenting with Algorithm Resume Screening

By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro, Adrian Obleton, Evelyn Ramirez and Nathan Sun

June 15, 2023
Article

How to Build a Life: The Path to Happiness Is Narrow But Easy

June 2023
Case

Royal Golden Eagle: Pursuing Cross-border Expansion with Bold Ambition

By: Kristin E. Fabbe, Dante Roscini, Adina Wong and Dawn H. Lau

About how Singapore-based natural resources firm Royal Golden Eagle, starting with a palm oil business in Indonesia, eventually expanded into a global conglomerate that also included the kraft pulp and paper, viscose, and natural gas industries. View Details

Keywords: Singapore; Indonesia; China; Canada; Cross Border; International Trade; Commodities; Expansion; Globalized Firms and Management; Business Conglomerates; Pulp and Paper Industry; Energy Industry; Forest Products Industry; Singapore; Indonesia; China; Canada

2024
Working Paper

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

By: Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa

How did southern whites respond to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA)? Leveraging newly digitized data on county-level voter registration by race between 1956 and 1980, and exploiting pre-determined variation in exposure to the federal intervention, we document that... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Race; Behavior; Voting; Prejudice and Bias

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June 2023 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Creating World-Class Board Governance at SECO

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Emer Moloney

In Spring 2023, SECO CEO Massimo Mauri had the ambition to grow the €200 million revenue technology company to a €1 billion company by 2030. Founded in Italy in the 1970s, the family-owned company had gone through a period of growth and internationalization,... View Details