Publications

06 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

The Problem with Hedge Funds

way in which the market is changing against the interest of most investors.281 In 2001 the California Public Employees Retirement System, America's largest pension fund, put $1 billion into hedge funds. It was a major stamp of approval.... View Details

Keywords: by D. Quinn Mills

October 2016 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Carrum Health: Scaling Bundled Payments

By: Robert S. Huckman and Sarah Mehta

Founded in 2014, Carrum Health helped self-insured employers located in three markets (San Diego, California; Seattle, Washington; and San Francisco, California) save money on their employees’ planned surgeries. It did so by contracting directly with top-quality... View Details

Keywords: Health Financing; Health Insurance; Value-based Healthcare Reimbursements; Bundled Payments; Innovation; Scale; Health; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Health Industry; California; San Francisco; San Diego; Seattle

December 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Impossible Foods

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown started the company out of concern over livestock production’s impact on climate change. Impossible’s mission is to end consumption of animals by 2035, and its strategy is to develop and market plant-based foods so similar to... View Details

08 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Are Paywalls Saving Newspapers?

coauthors, Ho Kim of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and Reo Song of California State University, Long Beach, analyzed 79 print media firms using 10 years of circulation and subscription price data (from publishers’ statements to... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Journalism & News; Media & Broadcasting

23 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons on Life, Graffiti, and Value: 'It's in That Darkness That You Can Actually Develop and Evolve'

University of Southern California and eventually as a Ph.D. student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. But it didn’t mean abandoning lessons about identity and value he remembers from his formative years in Los Angeles. As an assistant... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

09 May 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Can Robin Williams’ Son Help Other Families Heal Addiction and Depression?

Keywords: Re: Lauren H. Cohen; Health; Entertainment & Recreation

October 2007 (Revised July 2013)
Case

Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation: Venture Philanthropy Funding for Biotech

By: Robert F. Higgins, Sophie LaMontagne and Brent Kazan

In 2001, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated acquired the San Diego-based biotech company, Aurora Biosciences. The combination of Vertex's and Aurora's technologies would improve the flow of novel drug candidates into development. However, several questions related to... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Philanthropy Funding; Innovation; Funding Model; Venture Capital; Partners and Partnerships; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Acquisition; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; San Diego

October 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Lyra Health: Transforming Mental Health

By: Rembrand Koning and Nicole Keller

In January 2022, Lyra Health was deciding between several different alternatives to grow the business. Founded in 2015, Lyra Health, was a digital mental health platform that combined technology with human therapists and coaches to deliver high quality mental health... View Details

Keywords: Mental Health; Health Care and Treatment; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Customer Value and Value Chain; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Health Industry; Technology Industry; San Francisco

October 2021
Case

Financial Reporting at Mattel

By: Aiyesha Dey, Trung Nguyen, Marshal Herrmann and Julia Kelley

In September 2020, Diana Ferguson was nearing her first Audit Committee meeting as the newly appointed Audit Committee chair of Mattel, Inc. Mattel was just recovering from an accounting scandal which had revealed the company’s poor internal controls and weak board... View Details

March 2018 (Revised September 2023)
Case

X: The Foghorn Decision

By: Robert S. Huckman, Karim R. Lakhani and Kyle R. Myers

In February 2016, Kathy Hannun—a project leader at X, Alphabet Inc.'s so-called "moonshot factory"—had to prepare a recommendation for the senior leadership of X regarding the future of Foghorn, a project she was leading to develop a carbon-neutral process for... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; R＆D Project Management; Radical Innovation; Clean Technology; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Energy; Research and Development; Projects; Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Industry; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; California

October 1992 (Revised December 1992)
Case

American Connector Company (A)

By: Gary P. Pisano

American Connector Co. is forced to reexamine operations at its Sunnyvale plant when a Japanese competitor announces plans to build an "ultimate" plant in the United States. Case examines issues related to benchmarking a competitor's manufacturing capabilities and... View Details

Keywords: Production; Infrastructure; Competitive Strategy; Global Strategy; Policy; Strategic Planning; Performance Productivity; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Effectiveness; Sunnyvale; Japan

December 2022 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Ribbit Capital and the Gauntlet Investment Opportunity

By: Shai Bernstein and Allison M. Ciechanover

Ten-year-old, Palo Alto-based Ribbit Capital is best-known for its global investments in fintech. The firm was also an early advocate of crypto and blockchain, having invested in more than two dozen startups in the space in the past decade. In the Spring of 2022,... View Details

Keywords: Alternative Assets; Cryptocurrency; Business Startups; Investment Portfolio; Decision Choices and Conditions; Negotiation Deal; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Venture Capital; Financial Services Industry; California

Fall 2020
Article

Christo and Jeanne‐Claude: The Negotiation of Art and Vice Versa

By: Michael A. Wheeler

Over the past two decades the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON) has named thirteen people as Great Negotiators. The project, directed by my colleague Jim Sebenius, has given us the opportunity to commend our honorees’ outstanding work and to learn from... View Details

Keywords: Art; Negotiation; Arts

Find at Harvard

January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

OhmConnect: Energizing the Future

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details

Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe

30 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Repugnant Markets and How They Get That Way

cockroaches in California, because nobody wants to eat cockroaches. The law of supply and demand takes care of that. But the reason there's a law against eating horse meat in California is because some people would like to eat horse meat,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

09 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Where to Find Remote Work Now: 250 Million Job Postings Paint a Complex Picture

Remote work is here to stay—but not everywhere, and not in all companies. As the business world emerges from the pandemic, some companies are demanding a full return to the office. Others are embracing remote work options for their employees. New research suggests how... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

December 2005 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Canyon Johnson Urban Fund

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Alexa Arena

Basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson and K. Robert Turner, managing partner of Canyon Johnson Urban Fund (CJUF), raised $271.7 million for investments in urban real estate. The fund considered two projects, both located in Hollywood, CA. The first was located on... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Projects; Business and Government Relations; Public Opinion; Urban Development; Real Estate Industry; Los Angeles