Publications

May 2021
Teaching Plan

Gera Developments: Leadership at a Crossroads

By: Christina R. Wing and John Masko

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 621-018. For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Construction; Geographic Location; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Housing; Leadership Style; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Urban Development; Customization and Personalization; Real Estate Industry; Maharashtra; India; San Francisco

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

maximizing productivity? How do we help employees with work/life balance?” “How to keep people engaged and connected and OPTIMISTIC in appropriate measure while so many have so many competing personal and business and health and family... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

September 2024
Case

Topaz: Navigating Governance, Legacy, and Change

By: Christina R. Wing and Carla Larangeira

Since its founding in 2011, the Garza Sada brothers and their father positioned Topaz among leading family offices in Monterrey, Mexico, with several assets under management. Topaz aspired to have a transformative impact across multiple Mexican industries. An industry... View Details

Keywords: Business Conglomerates; Family Business; Governing and Advisory Boards; Managerial Roles; Management Succession; Family Ownership; Corporate Governance; Organizational Structure; Adoption; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; Education Industry; Energy Industry; Latin America; Mexico

May 2022
Case

Maestro Pizza: Coming in Hot!

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais

Maestro Pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details

April 2021 (Revised December 2023)
Case

The Mahindra Group: Leading with Purpose

By: Ranjay Gulati and Rachna Tahilyani

India headquartered Mahindra Group is a multibillion-dollar federation of companies operating across the globe. It is ahead of its time in articulating its purpose and mapping its values, something it had first done at inception and then refreshed yet again as ‘Rise’... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Communication Strategy; Family Ownership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Revenue; Auto Industry; Financial Services Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; India; Mumbai; South Korea; Italy; United States

27 Jul 2021
Op-Ed

What Pirates Can Teach Us About Leadership

him into the sea. A sense of ownership is powerful. Any pirate could lodge complaints or concerns without fear of reprisal, as crew members were protected by “articles”—essentially, a constitution drafted for each ship. The articles were... View Details

Keywords: by Francesca Gino

30 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Real Estate: The Most Imperfect Asset

working with HBS professor Michael Chu on a microfinance case involving the largest concrete manufacturer in Mexico, CEMEX, and its self-construct housing program for families whose incomes average $3,780 per year. CEMEX has over 80,000... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Construction; Real Estate

20 Aug 2020
Book

From the Plow to the Pill: How Technology Shapes Our Lives

gatherers, they didn’t have private property. If you were moving every day, you couldn’t have a lot of things. But once you start to farm, you need things like tools and seeds and land, and you need to have some sense of ownership around... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

08 Jan 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, January 8, 2019

supply expenses are provided. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55343 Financing the Response to Climate Change: The Pricing and Ownership of U.S. Green Bonds By: Baker, Malcolm, Daniel Bergstresser, George... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

28 Feb 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Master the Team Meeting

have ownership in a topic, the more engaged they’ll be. The team’s leader should not speak more than one-third of the time throughout the meeting. Other than updating the team about broad company topics, your job is to guide the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

28 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Profit Power of Corporate Culture

families as well. Q: How can a CEO spot a dysfunctional or at least disintegrating culture? What should be the first steps to fixing the problem? A: A CEO in this situation should be tracking and managing by the numbers—the nonfinancial... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

15 Nov 2016
First Look

November 15, 2016

Falato, Antonio, and David Scharfstein Abstract—We present evidence that pressure to maximize short-term stock prices and earnings leads banks to increase risk. We start by showing that banks increase risk when they transition from private to public View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

28 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Making the Decision to Franchise (or not)

headquarters maximize an organization's overall revenues by efficiently (and effectively) monitoring the desires of consumers representing a wide range of ethnicities and income levels, large families and singletons? Much has been written... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

01 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

A Bank That Takes Parmesan as Collateral: The Cheese Stands a Loan

stability's sake. "They remain fragmented due to Italian tradition," he says. "Most of these families have been producing cheese for centuries and take pride in what they do, resisting becoming part of larger... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Food & Beverage

11 Mar 2001
Research & Ideas

Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

public companies, which enabled family ownership and control and most of the past traditions of the former partnerships to continue with little hindrance. This was not exceptional in the corporate context of... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones

July 2022 (Revised September 2022)
Case

Birla Carbon Egypt: Building Soft Power in a Foreign Country

By: Jeremy Friedman and Malini Sen

Birla Carbon, a flagship business of the nearly $60-billion global conglomerate and India-headquartered Aditya Birla Group (ABG), is one of the world's top manufacturers and suppliers of high-quality carbon black. The largest among its 16 manufacturing plants is Birla... View Details

December 2016 (Revised December 2017)
Case

Faber-Castell

By: Ryan Raffaelli and Christine Snively

By 2016, Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell had led the 255-year-old pencil manufacturer Faber-Castell through waves of technological change. The pocket calculator decimated Faber-Castell’s slide rule business in the 1970s, and computer aided design technology... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Leading Change; Family Ownership; Manufacturing Industry; Germany