Publications

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30 Jan 2018
Interview

IKEA Founder Leaves Behind a Furniture Empire and a Troubling Past

By: Nancy F. Koehn and Amanda McGowan

March 4, 2016
Article

Startups Can't Revolve Around Their Founders If They Want to Succeed

By: Ranjay Gulati and Alicia DeSantola

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30 Oct 2023
Podcast

How Framebridge Founder Susan Tynan Managed Risk While Making an Impact

Great business leaders are problem solvers. That’s what sparked Susan Tynan (Harvard Business School MBA 2003) to found Framebridge, a custom framing company. When Tynan couldn’t find a reasonably priced place to frame her beloved posters, she launched a business,... View Details

30 Jan 2018
News

IKEA Founder Leaves Behind A Furniture Empire And A Troubling Past

03 Mar 2023
Video

Qualities and characteristics that help Founders Break Through: Resilience and Grit

October 2006
Article

Stewards, Agents, and the Founder Discount: Executive Compensation in New Ventures

By: Noam Wasserman

Keywords: Management; Compensation and Benefits; Business Ventures

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05 Dec 2022
Podcast

Why Brazil’s Nubank Founder David Vélez Plans to Give Away Billions

David Vélez is a founder of the world’s biggest digital bank: Nubank in Brazil. Vélez tells Professor Ranjay Gulati that he started his remarkable business career as a boy – and with an unusual investment. Vélez describes how having a deep purpose helped his team defy... View Details

07 Dec 2020
News

Paytm founder to support two scholarships at LMSAI at Harvard University

12 Aug 2018
News

As Barnes & Noble Struggles to Find Footing, Founder Takes Heat

September 2020
Case

Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Rich or King

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani

The case examines issues such as cascading problems within the organization, changing founder roles, founder success criteria, as well as company exit consideration. In 2017, Dr. Torben Antretter, a former competitive tennis player and academic researcher, founded... View Details

Keywords: Exit; Startup; Financing; Founders; Entrepreneurship; Law; Venture Capital; Success; Financing and Loans; Business Growth and Maturation; Strategy; Legal Services Industry; Germany

September 2023
Case

Ada: Cultivating Investors

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

Mike Murchison, co-founder and CEO of Ada, has an enviable dilemma. Launched in 2016 by Murchison and his co-founder David Hariri, Ada is an AI-native company that aims to revolutionize how businesses approach customer service. The company has already attracted a buzz,... View Details

Keywords: Founder; Fundraising; Business Startups; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry

November 2019
Case

Chief: Role for Carolyn Childers

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Kathleen L. McGinn, Katherine Chen and Julia Kelley

In 2018, Carolyn Childers is preparing to launch Chief, a New York-based peer network for women executives, and must decide whether to bring on a co-founder. After becoming the senior vice president of operations at her previous company, Childers was inspired to build... View Details

Keywords: Networking; Founders; Entrepreneurship; Networks; Negotiation

Fall 2021
Article

When to Go and How to Go? Founder and Leader Transitions in Private Equity Firms

By: Josh Lerner and Diana Noble

Leadership transition in private equity firms is an understudied field, despite the important, albeit controversial, role such firms play in developed economies. We analyzed 260 firms in an empirical study, supplemented by qualitative interviews with a small sample of... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Transition; Private Equity; Leadership; Management Succession; Analysis

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01 Apr 2014
News

Khan Academy Founder To Speak at Harvard Business School Class Day

Keywords: Educational Services

2003
Conference Paper

Founder Power and Pay for Outcomes: Cash Compensation and the Entrepreneur

By: Noam Wasserman

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Compensation and Benefits

15 Jul 2022
News

The Right Step: Q+A With Rakoh Founder Raphael Kohlberg (MBA 2018)

January 2024
Case

Flashfood: The Magic of Commitment

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

Josh Domingues had accomplished what countless young entrepreneurs long to achieve: founding a promising company that aspires to make the world a tangibly better place. Shocked to learn that international food waste cumulatively amounted to the world’s third largest... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Founder; Startup; Business Model; Business Startups; Food; Applications and Software; Mission and Purpose; Environmental Sustainability; Canada

May 2004
Article

Survival Beyond Succession? The Contingent Impact of Founder Succession on Organizational Failure

By: Heather Haveman and Mukti Khaire

Keywords: Failure; Organizations