Publications

12 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

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

How can financial planners expand their businesses as their core population ages and young investors flirt with novel financial products like cryptocurrency? The most profitable path forward is to follow the very advice they often give... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Financial Services

David A. Moss

David Moss is the Paul Whiton Cherington Professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE) unit. He earned his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from Yale. In 1992-1993, he served as a... View Details

Keywords: banking; credit card; federal government; financial services; health care; insurance industry; state government

05 May 2000
Conference Presentation

Managing the Sources of Uncertainty: Matching Process and Context in New Product Development

By: Alan MacCormack and Roberto Verganti

Keywords: Product Development; Risk Management

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

Article

When Talk Is "Free": The Effect of Tariff Structure on Usage Under Two- and Three-Part Tariffs

By: Eva Ascarza, Anja Lambrecht and Naufel Vilcassim

In many service industries, firms introduce three-part tariffs to replace or complement existing two-part tariffs. In contrast with two-part tariffs, three-part tariffs offer allowances, or “free” units of the service. Behavioral research suggests that the attributes... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Nonlinear Pricing; Discrete/continuous Choice Model; Three-part Tariffs; Free Products; Price; Consumer Behavior; Analysis; Learning; Risk and Uncertainty

Read Now

08 May 2015
News

A new view of the cost of equity and capital requirements for banks

positive relationship between risk and return is strong between asset classes (say, stocks and bonds), it is weak within classes, such as the stock market. By analyzing a large... View Details

April 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Biotechnology Strategies in 1992

Describes the strategies of biotechnology companies which face similar uncertainties and illustrates different types of strategic responses to uncertainty. Each firm faces the strategic issues of which end-use industries to choose, how broad their product line should... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Business Strategy; Biotechnology Industry

July – August 2011
Article

Managing the Multiple Dimensions of Risk: Part I

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes

Based on an extensive program of case-writing and teaching on risk management, we identify three categories of risk and elaborate on the ways companies can identify and mitigate them, with particular emphasis on strategy execution risks. View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy

June 2023
Teaching Note

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited: Global Leadership in Chipmaking

By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 321-126. The general purpose of this case is to explore the evolving nature of business relations across the Taiwan strait, focusing on the prominence of Taiwan's high-tech industry. After the legendary founder of Taiwan Semiconductor... View Details

Keywords: Geopolitical Units; Government and Politics; Competition; Production; Disruption; Semiconductor Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Taiwan; Taiwan Strait; China

04 Aug 2021
News

How Companies Can Repair Trust Post-COVID

December 1999
Case

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A4): Sun Peak: Helen Yang and Mark Walden on "Running Sun on Sun"

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Jane Roessner

SunPeak was the largest project Sun Microsystems, Inc. had ever undertaken: shifting Sun's entire business transaction system from a mainframe-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to a Sun-based system. Making the shift would be complicated and financially... View Details

Keywords: Projects; Transformation; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Complexity; Risk and Uncertainty; Success; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; Computer Industry

21 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income Shoppers

Online shopping features that let consumers pay for goods in interest-free installments exploded during the pandemic, but new research questions the riskiness of such services: Are people getting in over their heads? Buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing has snowballed... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Financial Services; Technology

April 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Mastercard Labs (A)

By: Linda A. Hill, Sunil Gupta, Emily Tedards and Julia Kelley

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company’s competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard’s new vision of a “World Beyond Cash” distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify... View Details

March 1984 (Revised June 1998)
Case

MCI Communications Corp.--1983

MCI Communications Corp. is faced with a large need for external financing to support rapid growth and substantial uncertainty due to the AT&T antitrust settlement. The case illustrates the value of convertible debt as a financing instrument in these circumstances. View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Emerging Markets; Financing and Loans; Telecommunications Industry; United States

Web

Creating Value in Business and Government (HKS-HBS Joint Degree Seminar) - Course Catalog

processes, or risk management). Students will emerge from this course with an understanding of questions such as: how a regulation is developed and promulgated, and how... View Details

Fall 2022
Book Review

Book review of 'Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America,' by James P. Kraft

By: Melanie Sheehan

Keywords: Safety; Policy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Risk and Uncertainty

February 2003 (Revised October 2004)
Background Note

Antamini Simulation Model

By: Peter Tufano

Antamini is a simulation of the value of an investment project whose outcome is uncertain. This case describes the situation facing a natural resource firm as it contemplates bidding on a copper mine in Peru. The bidder faces uncertainties about the ore deposit size... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Auctions; Investment; Mining; Mining Industry; Peru